Enjoying Your Wedding Photographs To The Fullest: Protect and Preserve Them for a Lifetime and to Share with Future Generations
After the wedding celebrations are over, the food is gone, and your guests leave, there are few things that will remain to tell the story of your wedding day better than your wedding photographs.
Whether it be a digital image, a physical print, framed picture, canvas wall display, or an album, our goal is to help you relive your special day every single time you look at the photographs. To help ensure that you can enjoy your wedding for your lifetime and be able to preserve and share them with future generations there are some important things to keep in mind.
Protecting Digital Files
At Muschlitz Photography we are a big proponent of giving our clients the ability to view, share, and make prints of the digital images by providing them with a reprint release. While we do offer professional printing, framing, and custom designed albums, we do understand the importance of having a digital photograph in our digital age and believe in empowering our clients to be able to share their images however they choose.
In order to ensure that you can enjoy your digital images for years to come there are a few things that we recommend:
Back-up, back-up, back-up!
Digital files are VERY fragile—if you scratch a CD, lose your USB Flash Drive, or your computer goes bad, your images can be lost forever. We highly recommend that our clients back-up their images in multiple places. Once we present you with the final USB Flash Drive, we always advise to not only copy it to your computer, but to copy it to an external flash drive, back it up online, and save it to other drives if possible. We also recommend storing the original flash drive in a fire-safe lock box if you have one!
We always back-up our clients photos in 3 different places in case something happens and welcome our clients coming back to us if they have a problem. That said, we still highly recommend that the client back-up their images in multiple places in the event that they need a new copy of their images quickly and we are out of town for the holidays or to capture another event.
Updating the form of media that your photos are on to meet the changes in technology
CD's used to be the most popular way to share digital images. As technology changes, however, many computers and devices no longer come with CD/DVD drives. To meet the changing times, Muschlitz Photography now provides all digital images on a USB flash drive. As technology continues to evolve, we highly recommend backing up your USB Flash Drive on these new forms of media.
The Best Way to Preserve and Pass-down Your Images: Prints, Framed Pictures, Canvas Wall Display, and Albums
Remember when you would drop off a roll of film to have it developed and remember the excitement of getting your physical prints? It was an incredibly exciting moment: holding the images in your hands and sharing them with your family and friends.
In the digital age, you lose some of the experience of physically handling your own prints. All too often the beautiful wedding photos a couple invests in, stay on a flash drive or in a random folder on your computer. While we are a proponent of sharing the digital images with our couples, we've found that after a couple days of receiving the digital images, that they will file the USB Flash Drive away and not enjoy their pictures further. It’s a shame to invest in professional photography and not to enjoy the images for years to come. Rather than having your photos only visible on a screen, I highly recommend you make prints or an album of your favorites. While technology will constantly be evolving and file formats may not always be accepted, (think about old-types of film negatives that are difficult to find places to reproduce), the tangible print or album is much more likely and more easily able to be passed down from generation to generation.
Get Professionally Printed Prints, Canvases, and Albums
The first secret to preserving your prints, canvases, and albums is to have them professionally printed. While we do give our clients the ability to make images on their own with a reprint release, the quality and archival properties of a professional print are second to none.
All prints, canvas, and albums that we offer are made with the same high quality chemical processing that was used for film photographs are are archival and made to last over the years. Comparitively, the prints that can be made at your local drug store are often run through a low quality, inexpensive ink jet printer and do not have the same professional quality or archival properties of a professional print. You can easily tell the difference when you hold them.
Safely Store Your Images
Store your images away from high humidity and avoid direct sunlight. Humidity will cause your images to deteriorate over time and direct sunlight can cause your images to fade or become bleached by the sun. When displaying the images in your home, we recommend selecting areas where there is good air circulation and a consistent temperature and to avoid hanging or placing them in areas where the sunlight is strong. If you have a lot of single prints, we recommend storing them in a non-acidic photo safe box with photo safe papers. Prints and Albums are best stored in above-ground interior closets or shelving with a consistent temperature year round. We highly recommend the top shelf to protect them from a water spill on the floor or being bumped from being on the ground.
Framing a Print? Matte Finish is the Best Choice.
If framing your images, always have them printined in a matte finish. Glossy printed images have the tendency to actually stick to the glass when framed. This can result in damaged prints. This damage will only be increased if an image is later removed from the frame. Matte finish printed images are much less likely to stick to glass behind a frame and can easily be moved from one frame to another without sticking or damage.
Looking for a wedding photographer?
Are you looking for a wedding photographer in Columbus, Ohio? We'd love to work with you! Contact us to tell us about your wedding plans and to see if we're a good fit for your wedding day! You can also reach us by calling 614.301.8579 or emailing us at [email protected].