You’ve invested in family photos and you’re not sure what you’re meant to do with them? You’ve come to the right place. Too often, I hear people have downloaded them to their phones from the gallery and just left them there.. maybe ordered a little 6×4″ print or two and stuck them on the mantlepiece. Sound familiar?

While there is nothing wrong with doing that, you’re wasting your investment and potentially damaging your product without knowing it in the meantime. Let me break it down for you to make sure you don’t!

First and foremost.. you should download your favourites to your phone, absolutely.

I have ALL of my favourites on my phone and always will do. It’s easy and convenient and means I can look at them whenever I want to, whether or not I have internet.

However, downloading your images to your phone will shrink the file size – most phones do this in order to increase the capacity on your phone.

So if you order your prints from your phone, they will likely come back not looking quite as crisp as they do on your phone. Throw in a cheap printers and it can be a different colour too. Leaving you feeling a bit miffed at the result that is now up on your wall.

So what should you do?

When you receive your gallery, if it is from me, through to your email, I want you to get on to your computer/laptop whenever you have chance and hit the download button on there.

In the meantime, obviously, stick a few on your phone, make it your Instagram profile picture (please tag me, I LOVE seeing them!), put it as your wallpaper, send it to friends and family.. do all of the digital things!

As soon as you have downloaded your full gallery on to your computer or laptop, I want you to back them up – again, no immediate rush, but just when you can. There are plenty of free cloud storage that will be suitable for something the size of your gallery – Google photos and if you’re an Amazon Prime-er, Amazon Photos, both have free options that will work PERFECTLY. Then once they’re in there, save a link to it on your home screen on your phone and now you have 24/7 access to your entire gallery so you can show your family off to anyone who comes in to contact with you. This also means that if your 4 year old chucks the laptop down the stairs, dunks the USB or hard drive in the bath or it gets lost with all of the left socks, you still have your gallery. Forever.

Next up is printing..

I can’t say it enough but PRINT YOUR PHOTOS.

It is so wonderful to have the photos on your phone, of course it is! But that isn’t why you’re investing in family photography.

It is to see you and your family on the wall, smiling, beaming and having a great time every single day. I really do practise what I preach – there isn’t a wall in my house that doesn’t have photos on it and it brings me more joy than I can put in to words.

To share with family and friends. To give them the gift of a serotonin boost every single day when they see you all smiling back at them.

What an incredible gift to your little ones to grow up surrounded by joyous photos, seeing how happy they are, see their beaming smile before they leave for school, to be reminded of their family in such a gorgeous manner. To see the bump that grew them whilst their parents shine and smile.

It truly sets you up for the day and will put a smile back on your face as you walk in from a hard slog at work.

I can’t emphasise enough how incredible it is to have crystal clear, sharp images on the wall. It’ll change the energy in your house and truly make it a home.

There is a few ways you can do prints – you can do them small, framed and sat on a shelf or a desk – gorgeous. You can get them done yourself (but PLEASE use a professional printers, don’t spend money on a professional photographer and then get it printed by someone in the supermarket or cheap online printers because the colours and quality will be different). Or you can get me to do it all for you.

You can do them big, framed and up on the wall – also bloody gorgeous.

Or you can do them small, unframed and standing in a beautiful wooden mount.

I personally have a mixture of all of the above all over my house. I’ve taught my husband, over the years, textures. He knows NOTHING about interior design but what he will always tell you is textures have such a big impact. I don’t think he really knows what it means though.. he just says the word textures at me every now and then when we potter about the shops. But still.

Don’t be scared to mix and match for each room – however you display your images is perfect.. because it’s you! However, if you do need a bit of guidance on what to pick, ask, ask, ask. I’ll help you design your wall space, as I have for many of my Clients, so that you can feel confident in your choices.

What about the rest of the photos, though? I’m so glad you asked..

Now you can obviously only get so many up on the wall and shelves – and after looking through your gallery enough times, certain ones will become your favourites that you pop up on the wall. But what about the rest of them? The rest of the photos that you couldn’t not buy because.. I mean.. FAR too gorgeous to never be able to see again.

Albums are the perfect way to do it. And I don’t mean those big-bright-red and brown leather-chunky-weigh more than me-ring bound albums that every child of the 80’s and 90’s will know.

I mean a beautiful, luxury leather, linen or velvet album that can sit on the coffee table or shelf and not look out of place. With your family or babies’ names on it in gold lettering so anyone who pops over for a cuppa can have a flick through without pulling an arm out of its socket.

I curate a beautiful smorgasboard of albums in a range of luxurious materials from linen, silk, faux leather, velvet and real leather in a range of sizes with professional grade printing made to withstand little fingers flicking through them as they grow.

I have Client’s who create an album from each shoot with the name and date on the spine so together, they stand as a beautiful collection in their living area or babies’ bedroom shelves. Imagine being able to look through gorgeous photos of your early years – and not just those tiny, red-tinged photos and noisy that we all grew up with. But so perfectly crisp, unique and timeless photos of yourself having a blast with your family – truly priceless.

Are you interested in having your own newborn, baby or family photography done at my studio in York? Then get in touch here to find out more or follow me on my Instagram page here for more inspiration!