A Hill I Will Gladly Die On
by Maureen Miller / www.maureentmillerphotography.com
Story Time
Recently I was chatting with a long-time client, someone whose family, kids, and wedding I photographed. She mentioned that for her anniversary each year, she and her husband pull out their wedding album and reminisce. (Love this!)
Then she said, “I never did get the digitals from my wedding. Could I still get those?”
My soul momentarily left my body.
As I mentally rummaged through storage drives wondering if I still had those files, it hit me: Her wedding was in 1999. I used film.
I gently replied, “I’m pretty sure I photographed your wedding on film." She nodded and said, “Right, but can’t I still get the digitals?”
We sorted it out. A friend married in 2007 told her she should have the files, which sparked the FOMO. We talked about scanning, but she didn’t really need it. She already had prints and an album. All good!
That moment, and many similar ones, remind me how rapidly and impactfully the photo industry has changed over the years. But for me one thing hasn’t changed, the power of a printed photograph.
Then & Now
Photography has morphed from silver halide, paper, and chemicals into bits, pixels, gamuts, and screens. If in “the late-1980-somethings” someone told me that image-making would involve photons, radio waves, and pocket-sized computers that also make phone calls…I would ask them if they needed to lie down.
Technology is amazing—and a little terrifying. And it changes constantly.
The industry is always pivoting. One thing, at least for me, that has not changed is the importance of printing images. The physical finished product is a photograph. I am a photographer. Which is why I am, admittedly, more than a little adamant about delivering finished printed products to clients.
I print as less of a tradition, and more as an essential part of preserving a family’s story.
The Truth about Printing
The desire for digitals is unquenchable. For years, clients treated digital files like the modern version of negatives—freedom and ownership in one neat folder. And yes, sometimes it’s simply a way to avoid investing more with the photographer.
But now something new is happening: People want the digitals . . . and only the digitals.
After working with two pro labs for a decade, I’ve seen a steady decline in both pros and consumers printing photos. Many fall mini sessions result in holiday cards - and that’s it. A treasured memory that will end up in the recycling bin after December 31st.
The digital file seems to satisfy people because over the past few decades our relationship with photography and imagery has changed. Photos are instant and infinite. Everyone is a photographer, and images flood our phones and social feeds daily. That constant access, however, often comes at the expense of images losing their value, their impact, their importance.
In a sea of snapshots, images can feel less significant, and less permanent. While printing all the images we currently have access to is nonsense, curating the ones that bring you joy and printing them is a gift to your future self. Printed photos help to continue the physical preservation of our memories.
Back It Up to The Wall
Today, with the ease of digital sharing, printing sometimes feels optional, even outdated, and it gets forgotten. I like to remind people that it’s more important than they realize.
When talking with clients about any type of portrait I ask, where are these images going to live? Yes, I know they’re going to be on screens and phones, but where is their permanent home? Where are the hard copies, the printed images, going to be displayed? This opens up an opportunity for discussion that can go in a variety of different ways.
Of course I hear things like:
- ‘I’m not sure what to do with prints” - I can help with that.
- “I don’t know where I’d hang a wall print.” - I can show you.
- “We don’t really have any walls/wall space.” - What’s it like living in a tent? Kidding - What about an album?
- “I just want the digitals" - Wanna hear something scary? I’ll get to that…
Digitals are great, fast, fun, and versatile. If your clients are creating multiple backups, using secure cloud storage, and are fastidiously keeping a catalog of their family’s most precious moments, great! But, I’m going to gamble that they're not all doing that. And even if they are…
Here’s The Scary Part
Data isn’t tangible, and here's why that matters.
There is a CBS Sunday Morning interview done by Mo Rocca with Vint Cerf, that has lived rent free in my brain since I first watched it in 2018. In the interview, Cerf, considered one of the “fathers of the internet”, talks about the term The Digital Dark Age. A term that describes a time when digital files like photos, documents, and videos become inaccessible, not because they’re lost, but because they can’t be read.
He warned that future generations might look back and find little trace of our lives because we relied so heavily on formats that didn’t last. Software becomes outdated, file formats change, and the devices we use today won’t always exist.
Think about floppy disks, CDs, even USB drives. The information on them might still be intact, but many modern computers don’t have the ports to read them.
Everytime I watch this video I fall more in love with prints, especially at the 4:07 minute mark.
We Are Historians
For generations, photography has been about more than simply documenting a moment. It’s been aboutpreserving history. Because it was the only way, those visual memories lived on as printed photographs, displayed in frames, in albums or hung on the walls of family homes. These printed photographs are a window to the past.
One of my most treasured possessions are old photographs of my family, my ancestors. I have professional photographic prints of my grand patents, great-grandparents, and my great-great-grandparents. Untethered from technology, it’s extraordinary to hold something that is over 125 years old, that I am personally connected to.
Seeing these humans, what they looked like, what they wore and the environments they were photographed in, is magical. Of course, making time stand still is a photographer's super power, but how will our future see us?
It’s Hard to Sell The Future
I say this to clients and anyone who will listen to me ramble on about photography. Preserving the best, the most impactful, and most meaningful images in print, for you, your family, and the next generation, is something that I will never shut up about.
I’ll get off my soap box in a moment.
My father passed away a little under a year ago. While preparing for the celebration of life, my mom asked me, “Should we take thepicture?” The picture was the last family portrait we did on vacation in 2022.
We took the framed 20x24 off the wall and displayed it on an easel at the event.
During the celebration, I was told countless times how great the portrait was. Yet, it brought so many guests to tears. People got pretty emotional often, not because the image made them miss dad, but because they didn’t have something like that with their own families.
And as one woman told me, “I’d love something like this, but it’s too late for us.”
Print the d@mn picture. Put it on display without electricity, modems, passwords, and screens, and enjoy the history of you.
