Documenting Life in Tangible Images

I love photographs.  Photographs are virtually accessible to every single person despite one’s background, country of origin, and language spoken.  Everyone can look at an image and it typically evokes a feeling.  A photograph is a great way to communicate, to preserve our history, and photographs make wonderful family heirlooms.  For the past several years, I have made a concerted effort and commitment to document our daily lives with my camera some of which I have shared here on the blog.  Below, I have outlined my process for how I document the everyday.

Take Photographs: I keep my camera with me as often as possible to enable me the ability to photograph moments in time.

Download Images: Usually one to two times a week, I download the images from my camera’s memory card onto my computer.   I keep an archiving and filing system of all of my digital photographs.  I always back up my images and work in two to three places to ensure I do not lose my images and work.

Edit Images: After downloading my images, I go through every image and make copies in another folder of all of the images that I like.  Then, with the selected images, in Photoshop, I make minor alterations with each image.  Depending upon the number of photos, this is quite labor intensive.  (I prefer Photoshop over Lightroom).

Print and Frame Images: After I am done editing a batch of images, I print the images that I want to keep in paper form to place in our photo albums.  I like to have images that are tangible, which creates a record.  (I keep all duplicate paper images filed by date.)  For the images I really, really like, I have Giclée fine art archival prints made, which I then typically have professionally framed and preserved (museum quality) or give as gifts.  I am also going to start experimenting with creating photo books as well.

Hang Images: Finally, I hang the framed images around our house to enjoy each day!  Doug is very good at measuring and hanging images — Doug always helps me hang the images to ensure precision!

For the above process to work, I have to continually stay on top of my editing, which can take quite a bit of time depending upon the images and number of images.  Sometimes, life gets in the way, and I just do the best I can to not fall too far behind.  While documenting our everyday, I continue to simultaneously work on my long-term photography project — therefore, I am constantly working!

For those of you who like to document your everyday, I hope that this above process proves helpful!

Happy Tuesday!