I almost never print out hardcopy photos now. It seems kind of obsolete.
All the photos I have are stored in thumbdrives and external drives. Soft copies rock. I could do lots of magic with them on photoshop. It's so convenient to send them to friends if necessary. If the disks crash and the soft copies are lost, so be it. As much as I admire beautiful photos, angles, contrast, lighting and computer wizardry, I've learnt not to be so sentimental over them.
My camera takes more photos of inanimate objects than humans. Say for instance the recent vacation, out of like 2000+ photos taken, probably only <50 captured smiling humans.
However, I decided that printing photos at home would be too much of a bother. There're ink, paper, quality, alignment and whatnots to consider. I cannot be bothered. If hard copies are needed, I'd rather go to a printing shop or something, stick the thumbdrive into the machine and print all that I want.
That was exactly what I did last weekend. Went to the shops to print out plenty of photos to snail mail them to Aunt E in London. Aunt E loves photos in hard copies. So I extracted out a couple shots for her, squished them into 2 separate envelopes and popped it into the postbox.
Aunt E called to specially tell us that the photos are now safely sitting in her living room. She sounded so happy! I'm glad I took the effort. I didn't realize that such a simple thing as receiving photos would mean so much to her.
12 comments:
Note of advice - scan your camera memory card for viruses. The last two times I went and had my photos printed out, the PC attached must have had a virus.
dawn: point taken. i use U3 syst for thumbdrives and scan all SD cards regularly. I HATE VIRUSES.
Older folks adore hard copy photos.
Aunt E will be looking at them over and over again. You're sweet to have sent them to her so fast. :)
I'm a sucker for hard copies... especially those I develop myself in the dark room, which I've not been doing for YONKS.
i don't do much of human photo takings where everybody smile at the camera. i do like photos of dancers in performance though:)
we are so guilty of not printing hardcopies of the many photos...
it has been ages i printed out any photo in hardcopy too. The last one is the poster for our ROM, this count too lah oh? haha =)
I too can't recall the last time I actually printed out hardcopies. And just recently, I have thought of doing so, for my mil. photos of her taken with the grandchildren during meimei's birthday party!
There is something visceral about holding a hard copy of a photo, be that it underscores the impermanence or transient nature of the moment captured, or the play of light on the texture of the paper providing an additional/alternative perspective to what is shown in the photograph.
I like to keep my work digital too, as far as I can, for sake of being environmentally friendly, and I believe it makes the choice of _what_ to photo and print even more important – paper is wasted on meaningless photos.
mistipurple: only because i knew she wanted hard copies.
kachunknorge: only when you have amassed this mountain of them, then you'll move your ass to process them.... how about soon??!
lms: no lah, only those you really want- you could have it instantly if you want! :P
elaine: counted! coz that's pretty and lovely and something u'll keep.
jomel: do that lor! i'm sure you mil will like it.
sinlady: those would be poetry in motion.
Eric N: Good to pick and choose those hard copies we really want then. Makes alot better sense.
here is where i think Mac is genius. their photobooks still allow you to tinker with images & then print them out in a professionally bound photobook. :)the best of both worlds, really. but when it comes to greeting cards, i prefer the handwritten variety.
geesmo: definitely- or those sites that let u print your own photobooks. awesome. just that i'm too lazy to even sit down to do that.
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