These Photos Aren’t Going to Print Themselves

How I got hundreds of photos off my phone and organized without losing my mind

Hi there,

We all know the story: we have roughly one million photos living somewhere in a cloud. We take pictures daily, share a handful on whatever social platform, and never look at them again. They’re all tiny digital souvenirs of moments interesting enough to capture, with many worthy of existing IRL. So why don’t we print them? To me, it’s not the editing or printing itself that turns me off. It’s the logistics and inflexibility of making a real photo album that give me anxiety: Do I build a digital one first or just make a real album? What if I want to print more and it runs out of pages? Does it have enough space for me to write on? What if I want to add later? Surely I could ask someone to do it, but how much of the work I still have to do it before delegating it? I am exhausted already, so I do nothing instead.

Last summer, when I went to Japan for two months, I was hell-bent on not letting those memories die a quiet death in my phone. I wanted something physical and real, so I had to force myself to create a method that made things easier for me to print and assemble my favorite photos without turning this into a full time job. Then, my mom came to visit for the holidays (she’s been asking for printed photos) and I ran out of excuses.

There were thousands of photos. Sifting through them was a reminder that I should have edited as I took them (who does that, though?), but also a joy to relive the trip with my family.

In today’s newsletter, I’m sharing my method which requires zero crafting skills. The only thing I had was a printer (yes, I lost my mind and printed every photo, but you don’t need to if you send them out to Staples like a normal person), an Amazon account to get the materials (not many) and a huge desire to free your most loved photos from your camera roll.

I’m also sharing a few pages from my own book so you get some ideas and hopefully get inspired to just start. I didn’t want this to be an art project, or something for Pinterest because I would agonize over every page and never finish. This just needs to be personal - and that’s exactly the point.

Time had already started to soften our memories and, taking the images out of the cloud, and bringing them to this material world made my trip real again. Now we can share it without unlocking a phone or passing a screen around. I printed all the photos before my mom left, and we are still working on getting everything laid out. It was a lot of work (it was a long trip after all) but I know one day I’ll be grateful we actually did this.

Scroll down for the shopping list and examples of my printed photos. Sending love,

Patricia