Why Family Portraits Matter in the Phone Photo Era

As a family photographer serving Valdosta, Georgia and the surrounding South Georgia area, I've spent years helping families preserve their memories through professional family portraits. In a world where billions of photos are taken every day, I believe preserving those memories matters more than ever.

I had to look it up. Yes, I Googled it.

Over 5 billion photos are taken every single day.

Every day.

That's mind-numbing.

Now, not every one of those photos is going to be a masterpiece. And let's be honest, people photograph some pretty bizarre things. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing what everyone had for lunch, but we're probably not hanging those photos on the wall.

In fact, we're not really hanging many if any of those photos on the wall at all, are we?

What scares me about all these photos living on our phones is this:

One day, these photographs may be all we have left.

The pictures of our children. The snapshots of our parents. The images of family vacations, birthdays, graduations, and ordinary days that didn't seem important at the time.

Our memories, our lives.

All on a device that can jump into a pool because it’s still in your pocket (ask my son) or worse fall into a toilet (we take that phone everywhere).

There's a very good chance they'll still be sitting on a phone in a drawer or possibly on the bottom of a pool somewhere because we never found the time to do anything with them.

We Photograph Everything but Preserve Almost Nothing

It seems to me that the problem is that we photograph everything, but we are not preserving anything.

Our phones, this wondrous “blessing” has made photography effortless.

What I have discovered in my time on this blue bouncing ball is that effortless and valuable rarely travel together. This is why most of the pictures we take stay right where we take them, on our phone. One of the lessons I have learned is that just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.

Technology changes. We’re not saving anything to floppy discs anymore.

Hard drives fail. I can’t even start to tell you how many high-priced door stoppers I have now.

Phones fall into pools. This one speaks for itself.

Posting on social media is safe right? Have you ever tried to find a picture that you posted of your kid ten years ago. Or how many times have you gone back to your Myspace account this week, this month or anytime in the last decade.

One of the most defining pictures in my life was a picture in a small frame that my grandmother had in her house of my great grandfather.

The Photograph That Changed My Life

It wasn’t in a digital frame, and my grandmother did not have a phone. It was a printed photograph. I still have this image. When my grandparents passed, this was something of theirs that I needed to have. This tiny, framed image now sits on a shelf in my office at my house. It was this picture that made me fall in love with photography. Looking back, I realize that what moved me wasn't photography itself. It was the power a printed family portrait had to connect generations.

I visited my mom’s house down in St. Augustine. She has an entire room devoted to family photo albums that tell the story of our family. One could spend hours looking back at everything from pictures from back when we were in school plays to all the family trips we took. Like the one we took to New York, and my mom took a picture of my dad wearing a Statue of Liberty foam crown while eating a giant pretzel.

You see here’s the thing that I think we have forgotten, I can look at those pictures anytime I want because they are printed. I can’t look at pictures on someone else’s phones, and no one can look at pictures I took on my phone because they are on my phone and not in an album printed out.

Why This Valdosta Family Photographer Still Believes in Prints

This is one of the reasons I believe family photography is about more than creating beautiful images. It's about preserving a family's story. A couple years ago, when Los Angeles was burning, what struck me was that the firefighters weren't risking themselves to save electronics. They were carrying out framed family portraits.

Time Moves Faster Than We Think

Time moves so much faster than we think. We think we have all the time in the world. We have this toddler who every morning comes stumbling and giggling into our beds to wake us up. We turn around and he is now a grumpy teenager who stayed up all night and won’t wake up. In the blink of an eye, we’ll be packing the car as it will be nothing but taillights on their way to college. And then it’s just us again sitting in a room with no portraits on the wall of the most important thing we have ever created our family.

Print the images.

Hold those memories in your hand.

Preserve Your Family's Legacy

But first, book a session with a professional family photographer to capture the most important thing in your life, your family.

Digitals have their place. We all want to share images with friends and family. But don't let the digital files be the final destination for your memories.

Get the framed portraits, hell, just get the prints. Invest in your family’s history.

Preserve the legacy.

Years from now, when the house is quieter and life looks different than it does today, you'll walk past that portrait hanging on the wall. You'll stop for a moment, smile, and remember exactly who everyone was in that season of life.

Here in Valdosta and throughout South Georgia, I see every day how quickly families grow and change. Family portraits give us a way to hold onto those moments long after they have passed.

That's why photographs matter.

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Why Professional Family Portraits Matter More Than Ever in a World Full of Phone Photos

We Photograph Everything but Preserve Almost Nothing

The Photograph That Changed My Life

Why This Valdosta Family Photographer Still Believes in Prints

Time Moves Faster Than We Think

Preserve Your Family's Legacy

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