Say Cheese Please

The top shelf of my wardrobe is full of boxes and albums bursting at the seems with my photographs. They are my treasured possessions which I could not live without. From a young age I owned a camera. It seems like an age ago when my mum would buy me some 110 film and then take it back to the shop to have the pictures processed. Some would be good, others would have heads or other body parts missing, or look like they were taken inside the wardrobe with the door shut! In those days there was no editing before processing, you got exactly what you took. Including the picture of your left toe.
I remember my excitement of one Christmas when I received a Polaroid instant camera. Yes, you took the photo and the picture came out almost instantly. Then you had to wave it around manically until it dried, but it was unsafe to touch the picture for an eternity, so many of mine were marred by fingerprints. The fact that you got to see the photograph so quickly partly made up for the absolute rubbish quality of the print.
The best photos got carefully placed into albums, and the rest stacked into shoe boxes. Sometimes there was a photo worth framing, maybe a special occasion picture that had turned out just right. My framed photo’s formed a gallery on my staircase.

Fast forward a couple of decades and I don’t even own a camera now. Yes, I’ve had digital cameras, but now I’m quite happy with my phone…the quality is actually better than my last camera. The photos are viewed and then either transferred to my laptop or sent immediately to my social networking pages for all to see. Occasionally I’ll upload them and order prints, or maybe create a photobook of a special occasion. There are still a few I like to frame, but I have nowhere near as many printed photo’s from the last 7 years as I have from the past.
If I go out for the day or on holiday I create an online album for my friends, before I would wait for friends to visit and then pass around the little wallets of photos for them to view. How things have changed.

To edit my digital photographs I use a fabulous free online site called PicMonkey  It’s really user friendly. You can most things from cropping and resizing, removing red eye and adding text or frames. I love making collages of my photos.

For storing, sharing and printing photos I use Photobucket
although I’ll go elsewhere for printing if I see a bargain.

I don’t really feel the need for albums anymore, photobooks are a nice alternative. Most places that pring photos will make up a photobook for you. You pick your photos and decide the order you want them. Often you can edit your photos or add frames or text. Then you receive the entire book just how you made it.

A home still needs it’s framed photo’s though and here are a couple of frames that I really like.
The first is a Jumble Collage frame from Next. I love the way the frames are all joined haphazardly, this would look great in my hallway.

Next – Jumble Collage Frame

For the more formal photographs I’d go for this lovely set of four large frames. I love the metallic finish to the wood.

Set of four A4 metallic finish frames