Pictures, pictures and more pictures

What do you do with all those pictures? That’s a pertinent question for newly married couples and others who have just gotten their photos back.

Just this week I delivered 600 to 700 photos for a recent wedding I have done. I deliver the photos through an online gallery and ask the couple to download them to their computer. I, however, can’t imagine the decision couples have then they have to decide what to do with these photos. How to manage them? Where to put them?

In years past people put their pictures in albums. I suspect some still do, but I think more often than not they stay in the computer, on a flash drive, on a DVD or an external hard drive. It’s good that photos are placed there — they should be placed there. But it seems that they should be put somewhere else as well.

I think some couples make prints of some of their photos — but I suspect they don’t get a lot of them. Probably not even close to the number of the pictures they really love. You can always get an expensive photo album from your photographer, but here are some of my low-cost ideas for what to do with your pictures.

1. Make small prints of all the pictures that you like, even if it is a few hundred. Take those pictures and put them in a photo album. Think about your parents, and think about their wedding photo album. They most likely have a treasured album full of photos from their wedding that has lasted for decades. Wouldn’t you want the same thing? Small prints don’t cost a lot, so I suggest just getting them printed on archival paper and ink and putting them in a nice photo album or two for safe keeping.
2. Making a photo book. There’s all kinds of companies that will take your digital images and put them in a photo book. The cost is generally pretty low and depends on the number of pages you want.
3. Make a video slide show of your photos. Companies like Moments in Time Images can take all your photos and put them in a video slide show for a relatively lost cost.

So next time you get a selection of hundreds of photos, remember to think closely about what to do with all those pictures.