Are You Creating Family Heirlooms? {Family Photographer ~ Northamptonshire}

As the custodian of our family's photograph albums my aunt, a wonderful woman in her eighties has looked after these treasures, which include photographs of my grandmother as a young woman, for years. Recently my aunt sent me a cutting from the Daily Mail with the headline  'Will the digital age leave a legacy of family photos?' The moving letter written by a professional photographer from Kent  asked ". . . what will our children and grandchildren have to remind them of their childhood?"

If you look after it well, your CD may last for a few years, but will your computer software be able to read it in 10 or 20 years time? And if you get past the hurdle of using your computer as a virtual store for your digital photographs and have them printed by a high street store, or one of the many online labs, how long will the prints last? Already some of the colour photographs in my aunt's collection taken with conventional film in the 70's are fading fast.

These are some of the reasons why the digital copies that I sell will only print up to 9x6. As an artist I really value my work and much prefer to supply my clients with books and portraits printed by a specialist trade professional laboratory using archival materials. Not only can I guarantee the quality, but also the longevity of your portraits so that your children and grandchildren will be able to enjoy your photographs in 50 plus years from now.

These photographs from my own shoebox collection are over 50 years old and beautifully preserved. The first is of my mother taken, it says on the back in June 1948, by the Butlin's Holiday Camp 'pros'. The second is a virtually indestructible 1950's laminated colour photograph of my mother and I printed from slide film and captured by a friend whom was a keen amateur photographer. The last was taken with a Kodak Box Brownie by my mother or aunt when I was a young child, and printed on Ilford paper.

So are you creating family heirlooms or will your photographs evaporate into the vapours of history?