It goes without saying that if my house were to burn down and I had 60 seconds to grab our family’s dearest possessions, my family albums would be at the top of my list.
No, not my external drives that host all of my digital images… My printed family albums.
I am often asked what I do with the captures I take of my own family. I create heirloom albums for my clients as a living, so naturally when it was time to put together a plan for documenting my own children, I knew I wanted something simple, beautiful, and timeless that I could pass down. Here is what I’m currently doing…
1) Annual Albums: If you haven’t been following my blog or Instagram, I have been chronicling Lyon’s life since the day he was born. I’ve missed days here and there, yes. But for the most part, I’ve been journalizing every single day of his life and piecing together annual albums of Lyon’s life.
Part of what I love about this project are the words I include with my daily captures. Journal entries written to Lyon about our struggles, our triumphs, our milestones, and our enormous amount of love for him. These albums are simply designed, beautiful, and meaningful in so many ways….
2) I’m also putting together smaller coffee table books of our trips as a family. Mixed Instagram images + professional shots of our adventures using one of my favorite new book companies, Artifact Uprising. I absolutely love how simple yet visually stunning their books are. It takes me less than an hour (compared to the whopping 20 hours I spend on Lyon’s annual albums) to put together these books online. I absolutely love them.
3) And lastly, I’m constantly printing images. Hard copies of my favorite digital negatives, whether they make it to an album or not. These images are priceless to me, and I know they will be treasured more so printed and in a box than stored somewhere on a hard drive. My favorite vendor is postal pix and printstagram via our mobile phones.
We all are constantly capturing our family’s lives through our mobile phones, point&shoots, and DSLR’s. What we often fail to do is convert those priceless images into something tangible and beautiful for our children.
I’d love to challenge each of you to start printing those memories and formulating a plan for making this an annual project for your family. I promise and cross my heart that you will not regret it….