Before I tell you about this bad habit of mine, I will confess that I’ve been guilty of this since I switched from film to digital.  I also know that it’s not an illness that is just prevalent among professional photographers, there are plenty of moms & dads,aunts & uncles, grandmas & grandpas out there who are just like me.

I try to photograph my children every opportunity I get, although I will say that these days they want no part of it.  Sort of how the cobbler’s children don’t have shoes analogy.  However, when I do get the chance to get some candid shots, what happens to those photos?  Are they in a album or on display for everyone to see?  Sadly, no they are not.  They are sitting here on my computer, on a external hard drive or even backed up to my flickr account.

With the digital age I think that most people I know are often guilty of this same exact thing!  I can’t tell you how many non-photographer friends I have that have called me crying because their hard drives crashed and they lost all of the photos of their children (it’s happened to me too, but they were recovered).  Consider the photos that you take as your digital negatives.  Back them up not only on your home computer, but to a private online site such as flickr, smug mug, etc where they are there in case something happens to your computer or home.  The most important thing is to also PRINT THEM OUT.  I certainly need to take my own advice and that’s on my resolution list for next year.

When your kids grow up and they want to see photos of themselves you don’t want to miss out on those fun times flipping through photo albums together!  I know my kids get the biggest kicks out of looking at photos from when they were younger (of the few I actually have printed out).  Can you imagine your son or daughter asking you “Mommy what did I look like when I was a baby?”, then you have to go over to the computer, try and find the files, nope they are on a cd somewhere, go and try and dig up the cd, nope wrong one, it must be somewhere around here right?

You want to be sure to not only have your wonderfully awesome professional portraits to show them (from your friendly neighborhood photographer, say oh me ) but you also need to have those special every day photos to look back on as well.   Children grow up so fast and you don’t want their childhood trapped on your computer do you?  (See how I’m guilting you in to printing your snapshots from your digital camera, is it working?  What if I offer you chocolate?)

I recommend www.mpix.com for consumer printing, Costco even does a great job!

So for your list of New Year’s Resolutions, be sure to add to the list: I (insert name here) promise to let my children’s every day photographs be seen and not trapped on my computer.  I will make sure that I print the photos from my camera often!

See that wasn’t hard now was it?  While I was going down memory lane and uploading old photos of my kids, I came across a few of my youngest that made me giggle.  I haven’t even gotten to the stacks of cds from my son, that could take a while because there are a ton!

I should have known back then that she was going to be one feisty little girl!  These photos are almost four years old and yep you guessed it, have never been printed until today, I uploaded them to my lab and they will be arriving soon!