As you know, I love taking photos when I'm on vacation and sharing them via Instagram (@angloyankophile, btw). When I'm feeling down or bored, I'll flip through the photos on my phone and look at pictures from trips we've taken because the memories make me smile: John poised to sip from a fresh coconut in Ho Chi Minh City, New York's Times Square on a buzzing Friday night, sipping wine on a terrace in the Sicilian countryside ...
I was doing some spring cleaning over the weekend and found dozens of old photos from college that had been tucked away in a "memory" box. Which made me think: what do you do with all your photographs? Do you keep them online and look at them once in a while? Do you make photobooks using services like Snapfish or (my personal favorite) Artifact Uprising? Or do you frame them and put them around your house (sidenote: I love buying picture frames. Love.)?
I do a combination of all three, but I'd like to print more. While a flat is too small to display many photos, I'm hoping to be a London homeowner some day and it's my dream to have walls filled with visual memories - photo collections that tell a story.
Photobooks are great (especially when they're beautifully done, like the ones from Artifact Uprising or Social Print Studio) - sorry I keep mentioning these - I don't work with them, but I just love their products), but I don't look at them often enough. And I don't know about you, but the UK always seems to be a little behind on stuff like this - I find printing services here amateur and poorly designed (if you have a favorite printing studio here, by all means, please let me know).
I tried Inkifi once, for a framed collage print, but was so appalled by their shoddy work (framed photo arrived completely crooked) and could-care-less attitude (their response was that I could easily fix it myself or re-ship it back up to them in Manchester, after it had taken days to arrive in the first place) that I never ordered from them again.
Recently, I tried Pwinty (because I get frustrated with the high shipping cost from the US and I hate having to wait for them until my next trip back to the States) which is a no-frills app that lets you select your photos from Instagram and print them. No borders, no size variations - nothing fancy, but I ordered them while I was still in bed on Saturday morning, the whole process took about 5 minutes, the prints arrived today, and I'm pretty impressed.
The finish is slightly glossy, rather than pure matte, which is usually the more popular choice of finish, but I like them. A lot.
So, tell me: what do you do with your travel pics? And do you have a favorite shop you print with here in the UK or US?
For my first couple of big international trips I printed out photos and made scrapbooks but these were so time consuming to do! And like you said, once I finished creating them I never really looked that them much. I now travel a lot more and rarely get photos printed, they usually just end up on instagram/facebook/the blog and stored away on a hard drive. In the 2.5+ years I've lived in London I've only had photos printed out twice and I haven't actually done anything with them. If I ever bought a house and settled down I'd love to get some of my travel photos printed out as canvases to hang on the walls.
ReplyDeleteSounds like we're on the same page, Stacey! YES ... I totally forgot about the time-consuming aspect of making photo books. UGH! I actually hate making them ... but then, I love looking through old photo albums when I go home. Maybe it's just digital ones that annoy me? I kind of like the old fashioned photo albums where you can stick prints onto a page.
DeleteI think it started out fun at first but then feels like a chore after a while (these were 3-4 week long trips I was scrapbooking so I had tonnes of photos, ticket stubs, etc. and it just gets a bit too much). It was definitely much easier back in the day of film photography and just sticking the photos in the sleeves of an album
DeleteYup, yup, yup - you nailed it. It started feeling like a chore for me too. I used to love scrapbooking in high school and college ... I kept (and still keep!) ticket stubs, etc. At some point, it just didn't appeal to me as much anymore, though maybe I should look into starting up again!
DeleteI scrapbook my holiday photos and my young son looks to look through our albums. You can gain an insight into what I do here (should you so wish) : http://suburbansahm.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Scrapbooking
ReplyDeleteYes, I remember, Ruth! And your scrapbook pages are beautiful and creative - such a fantastic way to preserve memories.
DeleteWhat did we ever do before digital photos? I definitely do a combination of all three, loads of framed photos round the flat! We did a whole book for our Australia trip from Bob books and we keep meaning to make one from our other trips.
ReplyDeleteLots of love,
Angie
Love framed photos, Angie! I'll have to look into Bob Books ... thanks for the tip.
DeleteI have a pin board in our kitchen - but it definitely needs to be updated. There is just something so nice about seeing photos printed...
ReplyDeleteOooh ... pin boards are the best. Definitely going to invest in a giant sized one of those! I agree with you about seeing photos printed ... it's also something I look for when I visit friends' houses!
DeleteI tend to keep the few printed photos I do have in my personal journal. I would really love to print more photos and buy one of those large, multi-frame pieces to put on the wall (currently lusting after this one: https://www.oliverbonas.com/homeware/rubix-15-picture-multi-wall-frame-32240), but first I need to decide which photos I like enough to display! It's just so much easier to cue them up on your laptop when you feel like reminiscing :P
ReplyDeleteI love that wall frame, Maslo (and I'm sure it'll go on sale at some point too, which is when you should definitely nab it!). My dream is to have one of those walls with mismatching photo frames ... do you know what I mean? But a lot of them, of different sizes.
DeleteYeah! I plan to do that in my flat with the artwork I've collected over the years. Just gotta choose a wall!
DeleteI'm with Ruth....scrapbooking is the way to go.
ReplyDeleteAnd your pages are lovely, Jacky! Thanks for stopping by to read. :)
DeleteI'm with Ruth....scrapbooking is the way to go.
ReplyDeleteI have been scrapbooking since my daughter was born and she is 50 this year. It wasn't called scrapbooking when I started - at least I never heard it, and it wasn't a "hobby" it was just that I like to tell the story behind the pictures and the way to do it was with big pages and memorabilia that included ticket stubs and paper napkins but now my children show their own children and grandchildren the albums and they tell the stories as they heard them from me and by using the stories on the pages. My Dad always said that you have to make memories they don't just happen.
ReplyDeleteHow lovely, Ladkyis - thank you for sharing. And your Dad was absolutely right. That's one of the things I say to my friends back home in the US all the time ... that I can't wait for their visits to the UK so that we can "make new memories" together! Scrapbooking or collecting tangible reminders of past events are wonderful ways to preserve those memories.
Delete