I love this picture. It captures so much of our summer so far: life at the lake; the game that has consumed my family; Ava with her cousins; children imitating their parents. I love that the bean bag is mid-flight between Ava’s hand and the board. Both girl’s stand tranfixed by it’s flight. Will it go in the hole? Will Ava be able to pump her arms in the air and holler like her uncles? Or will it bounce unmercifully off the board and land in the grass?
The only trouble with this picture is that with my current track record, it will never see life past a screen.
Back when I was a working girl, I was also a 35mm girl. My office was one skyway away from a film processing center. As soon as a roll was in the can, I would drop off the film on my way to work and then hurry down at lunch time to see the pictures. I was generally so eager to see how the prints had turned out that I would leaf through the entire stack before I had finished paying. Capture to print to album was a seamless and nearly effortless process.
Then the fall before Ava was born, I was given my long wished-for “chh-chh-chh” camera, a digital SLR that took loads of brilliant and vivid pictures. I could snap away until I captured the picture that I wanted. While I gained the instant gratification of seeing my pictures immediately, I lost the urgency to print them.
Plus submitting digital files to print is not as simple as dropping off a roll of film. There is cropping and editing and enhancing involved. And of course, there is no longer a processing center between my bedroom and my lunchroom. In the past five years, I have yet to find a printing system that works. Therefore nearly all of our photos are hanging mid-flight between capture and album.
I want to change. I want to actually print pictures and put them in albums. I need your help.
How do you do it? What is your process? Do you use online printing services? Which ones? Do you like their print quality? Do you bring them into a service center? Do you make prints and put them in albums or do you make print them as pre-made albums?
What is your process?
Or are you like me, albums of beautiful pictures that you need a screen to view?
Send your advice. Help me pick these pictures off the grass and toss them to the printers.
Rachel, I upload all of my keepers to Flickr, and order from them. I have always been happy with the pictures. They almost always surpass what I saw on the screen.
Sometimes, however, they do not come out as expected, having cropped where I did not think a crop should have occurred. Usually I will order the 4×6 shots to see how they come out before spending the money on an 8×10.
These days its easy to order bound books of your photographs as well. If you have a 30 or so special shots you can usually get a bound album for less than $20.00. That’s a bit expensive, but if you don’t have a lot of such albums, it can definitely be worth looking into.
One thing I have not done but have not heard great things about, is printing from a kiosk at the drug store. I think you’ll be happier printing with a site like Flickr or snapfish.
Ugh! I need help in this area, too! I am Johnny On The Spot with developing photos for other people…you know, since they are paying me, but with my own family, I have fallen behind!! I guess we could just keep our fingers crossed that the internet, as it now stands, will be around forever!? Ugh, that’s no good, either. I’ll be checking back for some good tips!
we are the same as you. but, on occasion, we have had snapfish help us out, and we like them a lot.
do you remember that big italy print in our kitchen?
snapfish.
Ooh, I want to know more about this captivating game!
confession worthy of a post on my own blog:
i have developed ONE roll of film since jillian has been born. i haven’t developed ANYTHING digital since she’s been born. if my computer crashed and flash drive failed me, jillian’s first year of life would exist in our memories alone.
that said, i’ve got some other stuff to do right now.
I haven’t printed a picture since August 2005. And truthfully, it doesn’t bother me. I’ve done a few printed books (I use Shutterfly) in that time, and they’ve turned out LOVERLY. I look at those WAY more than I would ever look at photo albums, since they include captions.
Note: Since I don’t have any prints for the last few years, I make sure my digital photos are backed up to at least one if not two external hard drives.
Rachel, I am EXACTLY the same way. I have years of photos on my computer, and precious few actually printed. Not good, as I have many empty picture frames, photo albums and scrapbooks. I’ve been trying to change this.
I’ve tried a couple different routes to getting them printed:
1. Print them on my own printer. This works OK for individual pictures, but obviously takes up a lot of ink (and $$$)!
2. I’ve gone to the little photo kiosk at my neighborhood Snyder’s. You can bring a disk of your images there, select what you want to print, and have your prints ready by the next morning. I think it came out to like .15 a picture if you have over 50 to print.
3. I’ve started taking advantage of what iPhoto has to offer. I’ve had the best luck with this option. I love that, with just a click of the mouse, I can order prints directly from where my photos are automatically stored when I import them into my computer (so I avoid the extra step of having to upload them to a site). The prices are fairly reasonable, too (though shipping can be a bear — so it’s best to order lots of prints at once). Also, I can customize and order photo books through iPhoto, too, and they aren’t that pricey. I created a photo book of Will’s 6 month photos for mother’s day, and have seen lots of other people’s books that have turned out beautifully.
My only gripes with iPhoto are that sometimes the cropping isn’t quite perfect (hasn’t been a big deal, though) and they charge shipping for every separate item you purchase. Other than that, I’ve been very happy with them!
Walmart.com and I were best friends. That is, used to be, before the little girls were born. He used to take such great care of my photos, delivering them quickly and carefully to the store where I would then pick them up at the 1-hour counter. However, if I don’t take time to scrap the pictures, I’ve found there’s really no hurry in developing them. Hmmm. No help, am I! But cute post, Lake Loungin’ mama!
Tiff
Well, I try to scrapbook, but that is starting to taper off. I’ve used Kodak Gallery and Snapfish. I prefer Snapfish as the quality seems better. I have friends who are very loyal to Shutterfly. But, truthfully, I wouldn’t sweat not printing them. I would just be very sure to back them up. Not that I’ve learned that from personal experience or anything. Ahem.
Shutterfly works great for us and often has really good discounts and coupons. But sadly most of ours aren’t printed either… one day I want to have my grandkids looking at photo albums and scrapbooks….. perhaps I’ll get to it!
i love snapfish–they have the best quality prints of any online service and i’ve tried them all! good prices and FAST turn around–they rock. good luck getting yours printed!
I sign up for email notices from snapfish and shutterfly and clark photos and… I think one other one. When they’re having a promotion, like 11ยข prints or 25 free prints, I order a stack of my favorite pics from the last few months. Then I pile those in a rubbermaid container until I have time to work on scrapbooks or put them into albums.
I’ve tried most online ones too..shutterfly, snapfish, ritz, target. I like Shutterfly because you can send those to any Target..so I can either order online through Shutterfly or if I need them right away fro scrapping I send them to Target and can pick them up within an hour. I also tend to go with whoever is giving a deal..currently ritz is by far the best! My sister in law took 750 pics from their two week vacation..her total include shipping came to roughly $75..that’s what i paid with shipping for 350 pics through shutterfly! ugh! So go with the deals I guess!
Our photo album is on an external hardrive. When Hector has the time he goes through all of the photos on our computer, edits and labels them and then sorts them by date onto the hard drive. It isn’t as pretty as a photo album, but it is really easy to take with us to visit family and because it is organized by date, it is easy to view.
I do try to print pictures every now and then to send with Thank You cards and for that I love Costco. We are there at least once a month anyways and I can just upload the pictures from home and then they are ready to be picked up the next day. It is like .07 a print and they have always come out just as expected.
Good Luck!
Oh, how I SOOOOO relate here!!! Now that it is so rewarding to just see the pictures on the computer, there IS such less urgency to actually get them printed out…unless they are for a frame or something!!!
My “plan” now is to do some developing quarterly! Come fall, I would like to pick out, crop, enhance and develop summer’s pictures. Come winter, hopefully I can develop, fall’s…and so forth!
I did a scrapbooking retreat last spring and literally went through a YEAR’S worth of pictures in order to go. I told myself that I would NOT do that again!
But…here it is summer, and I have yet to go back and order spring’s smiling photos yet either! Good thing that I still have time!!!
I’m a Shutterfly fan as well. Was from the start. I’ve seen their site go through lots of changes over the last few years, mostly for the better.
I order prints from them and I get them FAST (since I live comparatively close to their outfit, which is in Northern Cali). I’ve made a few photobooks to keep and to share…I feel that their books were better a few years ago, but maybe it was because a few years ago I ordered the top quality leather and suede editions for our wedding albums, as opposed to the less expensive cutesy ones I’ve made and send to my parents of our annual vacations more recently.
Regarding the prints again, I am still working on an excessively detailed hand-made scrapbook of my wedding (we got married over 2 years ago, and I made a photobook on-line with Shutterfly right after the event, too). I feel that Shutterfly is good enough for what I’m doing, and any more advances in quality would have to be on my end (get a better camera as I only use a itty-bitty baby Canon).
Shutterfly also lets you organize and save albums (I have close to 50), share pics, and they’ve been really good about doling out coupons and deals on shipping for loyal customers.
Walgreens.com. It’s the perfect combo of online and real world for me. You upload and order on line, but then you pick them up at the store IN ONE HOUR. (If you’re like me, once you finally get it done, you lose all patience for waiting for the mail!)
(although I really don’t to albums anymore. I do what Kelly@ love well does: back them up on an external.
This is a great photo! Love the action.
I don’t do well with getting photos printed. Her baby book is almost complete with all photos and I did an electronic scrapbook through Picaboo…other than that we don’t do a lot of printed ones for ourselves. I send some to her grandparents and when she has a “photo shoot” we get those in print. sorry, no advise!
HEY…you’ll want to check out my blog…you might find something special FOR YOU there!
CORNHOLE!!!!!!
I’ve always been a snapfish fan. Was years and years and years ago back when we lived in your area. Back when I used 35 mm. I think shutterfly is just as good. I tend to upload my photos save them to 2 copies, one for home one for Jims workplace (incase of fire). As for actually scrapbooking them. Well, its a thought in process. (well, okay I do the scrapbooking thing, you know, print them embellish a page and agonize over the arrangment of everything WAY to much…did I use the right colored paper? Is that picture good enough? Should I use black &white instead of color on this layout? UGH!!) unfortunatly, I have found with my digital I feel I can take 100 pictures of the exact same thing…you know to delete the bad, keep the good. However, when that exact same thing is a smiling baby how can you delete even one? so now I have 100 photos of almost the same pose but unable to rid of any!
I’m a HUGE fan of scrapbookpictures.com; I crop a lot of my photos before printing and they have a huge selection of reasonably-priced sizes (including squares). Plus, shipping is only $2.00 no matter the size of your order. Another GREAT resource for bloggers is “Blurb” – if you put a lot of photos/journaling on your blog, you can simply have your blog “slurped” and printed up as a book! The web address is: http://www.blurb.com/create/book/blogbook – it looks very cool though I have yet to try it myself!