Why I Started Printing My Photos (5 Ideas To Try)

After replacing my phone last week due to yet another phone shattering episode, I glanced at the number of photos on my camera roll to discover that there were - wait for it - 22,375 pictures in there. The photos date back to 2017, but STILL - that number is ridiculous.

This same digital photo overload is what prompted me to start rethinking my photo organization when I first started printing my photos back in 2015. Now that we all pretty much have a super sophisticated camera in our pocket wherever we go, we take a LOT of pictures. and I’m not just talking about the 48 selfies it takes to get a good one (been there). We’re capturing so many aspects of our lives every day, but the question is what on earth do we actually DO with all of them?

if you’re like me, you may have experienced one of those disastrous laptop crashes in the past. You know, the ones where the rainbow wheel of death just won’t go away, everything freezes, and next thing you know you’re at the Genius Bar trying to salvage what’s left of a fried hard drive (that you didn’t back up).

hopefully this hasn’t happened to you - because it’s kind of a nightmare - but this did happen to me awhile back and it really sucked. I lost so much stuff because I was too lazy to have a hard drive backup plan.

then I started thinking about backup hard drives. THOSE might eventually crash, right? that’s when I realized I probably wasn’t ever gonna look at my photos if they’re stuffed on a hard drive somewhere (let alone floating around in ‘the cloud’), and decided I needed to switch gears.

today I’m sharing my favorite photo printing ideas because ever since I started actually printing my pictures out the old fashioned way I’ve gotten so much more enjoyment out of them.

1. Photo Printing And Framing Services

You probably see ads for these services all the time, and honestly I’m so glad something like this exists. services like Framebridge or Minted make it super easy to upload photos from your phone, choose a frame, and have it shipped to your house. The frame on the upper left of this pic is a photo I printed with Framebridge not too long ago that hangs in my studio and I love it! (I’ll be sharing more photos of my house soon)

Alternatively, printed photo books are a great way to go. Services like Artifact Uprising let you upload right from your phone or desktop and the books are really beautiful. A great option if you’re super busy and just want to get some photos on paper!

If you just want the prints by themselves, photo printing services like Persnickety Prints make it really easy to to order a bunch of photos at once.

2. Polaroid Photo Printers

I love these because while Polaroid cameras are really fun, they’re a huge pain to lug around everywhere (especially if you’re traveling). this little printer allows you to choose a photo on your phone and print it out on actual Polaroid film, so it looks like you just took the pic on a Polaroid camera in the first place. So fun!

I have this Fujifilm instax share printer and love finding random stuff on my camera roll to turn into a Polaroid.

3. Photo Journals (aka Scrapbooks)

Hi, my name is Kate and I’m a closet scrapbooker. I grew up getting all my photos developed and putting them into books, and I started making photo journals again as an adult a few years ago. It’s a really fun creative outlet and there are a lot of cool modern memory keeping products (I like using traveler notebooks and Kelly Purkey’s shop a lot for paper/stamps).

The book in the above photo is a travel journal I made during my 2016 European tour, and it’s really fun now to look back on all those shows. I’ve made a lot of little mini books for friends and family and they make awesome gifts!

4. At Home Photo Printer

When I started hanging up more photos in our home and making more memory books of trips and travels I invested in a good photo printer because it’s super convenient to be able to print photos at home. I like this Canon Pixma 8720, but there are tons of good options out there.

5. Mobile Phone Photo Printer

A lot of companies are making these mini printers now that will print photos right from your phone, and the quality has gotten so much better in the past few years. I think some of them even make photo paper that has adhesive on the back in case you want to stick the photo in a book, on a notebook, or whatever else. So easy!

This Canon Ivy mobile photo printer seems to get pretty good reviews and has photo paper with the peel and stick back. I need to try this one!

How do you guys feel about the digital photo overload? Do you print your photos??