You did it! You booked the shoot and showed up, the kids were brilliant (or brilliantly chaotic, which honestly is just as good!), and you came away with that warm, fuzzy feeling of I actually ticked this off my list. And then… life happened. The school run. The parties. School trips. Not to mention the seventy other things on the list that somehow always feel more urgent. And those photos? Still sitting on a hard drive somewhere, waiting.
I see this all the time. And I’ll be honest – I used to let it happen too, before I changed how I work.
The problem with “I’ll do it later”
Here’s what I’ve learned after years of working photographing families: the longer you wait to choose your photos after a shoot, the harder it becomes.
It’s not because the photos change but because you do. And your kiddos do. A few weeks pass and suddenly your three-year-old looks completely different in your eyes, and the photos feel like they belong to a version of your family that’s already slipping slightly out of reach. The emotions from the shoot cool down and the magic fades from the front of your mind. What was once an easy, joyful decision starts to feel a tad overwhelming.
Look, I still have things on my to-do list from a year ago. I’m not judging. I am that person too; everything is always pulling me in ten different directions at once. But I don’t want that for your photos. So, I put a time limit on choosing them.
You pick the time frame – that bit is up to you. But there is one because you need to choose your photos while you’re still in it. It’s while you’re still reliving the shoot, still feeling the warmth of it, still thinking oh my god, that one of him laughing, that’s when you pick the photos for the now that you’ll want forever.
Photos that live on hard drives don’t get looked at
This is the thing I feel most strongly about, and I’ll say it plainly: photos only really come alive when you print them.
My son goes through our family albums all the time. He tells stories about moments he couldn’t possibly remember in that level of detail – but he’s filled them in… from the photos. From being shown, over and over, he gets what it felt like to be there. He feels and has grown to understand the laughter and the love. He’s built real memories from printed pictures, and they are as vivid and detailed to him as anything he actually remembers.
I’ve seen this with families I photograph too. Kids who come to shoots and tell me elaborate stories about when they were babies – stories grown from photos and from being shown how it felt to be in those moments. That’s not just sweet. That’s what photographs are actually for.
Photos on a hard drive don’t do that. They don’t get pulled out on a rainy Sunday and held by small hands. They certainly don’t get stories built around them.
How to actually choose your products (without overthinking it)
Once you’re ready to choose, the question becomes: what do you actually want? And the answer is different for everyone. Here’s how I’d think about it.
Are you choosing for yourself, or as a gift?
These two things might lead you in completely different directions. A gift for grandparents might be a beautiful set of prints or a folio album. Something for your own home is a different decision entirely.
How do you want to experience these photos day to day?
- Are you the kind of family who would get an album out together, sit on the sofa, and all look through it? If so, an album is your thing. That shared ritual, retelling those stories, and the experience of holding it – that’s what you’re paying for.
- Or would you get more joy from walking into your kitchen every single morning and seeing your family printed big, mid-laugh, on an acrylic print on the wall? Because that version of joy is just as valid, but it works on a completely different level.
Neither is wrong. But knowing which one fits your life means you’ll end up with something you genuinely use and love.
What would you actually use most?
This sounds obvious but it’s worth sitting with. The most beautiful album in the world doesn’t matter if it lives in a drawer. The most stunning wall print doesn’t get enjoyed if it’s not in a room you spend time in. Think about your real house, your real routines, the wall you actually look at.
Why this matters
The reason I’m so direct about timelines and printing isn’t because I’m trying to add pressure to an already full life. It’s the opposite. I’m trying to make sure the whole point of what we did together doesn’t get lost in the noise.
You booked that shoot because time is passing. Because you wanted to catch something before it changes. Because you finally, finally did the thing you’d been meaning to do for two years. And the photos from that day deserve to exist somewhere real – not buried in a folder, not accidentally deleted in a phone upgrade, not just surviving on a hard drive that might one day give up.
Your kids deserve to hold those photos. To build stories from them. To know, in that specific and detailed way that only pictures can give them, what it felt like to be your family right now, in this chapter, in this house, with all this chaos and all this love.
That is what printing is for.
Ready to make sure your photos actually make it off the hard drive?
If you’ve got a shoot coming up, or you’re thinking about booking one, this is part of how I work with every family. The shoot, the choosing, the printing – all of it is part of the process, not an afterthought.
If you want to talk through what the process looks like, or you’re ready to get something in the diary, get in touch here and let’s get planning.
Your family’s story is worth more than a folder no one opens.
