I have a quite substantial stack of photos sitting on my shelf. That’s physical photos on glossy paper as opposed to digital photos in a directory on my hard disk. These photos stop suddenly in 2002 when I obtained my first decent digital camera and I never looked back.
It wasn’t just the unlimited shots thing. I really had no use for these pieces of paper other than to scan them in which was always too much hassle so digital cut out the middle man. And after all, I could always get prints if I wanted to, right?
Three years on and I’ve never gotten a print made of any of my 5000 digital shots. At first it just wasn’t that easy and then by the time services had sprung up all over I was sharing all my photos online, initially on this site then through Flickr. My mum occasionally desired hard copies of family related stuff and I sent her the jpegs but I never did anything myself.
However, it occurred to me that the guys might like copies of the photos I took of Plinth the other week since they were dead happy with them. So for the first time ever I clicked on the “order prints” button in iPhoto. Hmm, 15p a photo and £1.99 postage. Seems a little steep on the postage front. Ofoto which my mum had mentioned using, were doing an introductory offer of ten free prints and their postage was just 99p. What the hell, let’s do it.
The photos came through yesterday and they’ve come out rather well. Admittedly they’re deliberately grainy so I’ve no way of knowing how a nice sharp image will develop but I’ve suddenly got this desire to have hard copies of my work. The downside to film, for me anyway, was I’d pay a sizable amount of cash for an envelope of dodgy photos with only one or two being any good. Now I can pick and choose which ones I want. There’s a bit of novelty, certainly, in having a physical object of something I created there in my hands, but it’s generally a good thing.
Who knows, I might even start scrapbooking like my sister. Or maybe not.
In other news, Glenn Dakin and Rian Hughes now have significantly more substantial Wikipedia pages.
If ofoto don’t do it for you, you could try photobox.co.uk.
Their postage lies between the two you mentioned at �1.50. But bulk bought prints are pretty cheap, and I thought the speed and quality was pretty awesome.
Kodak have pimping their photo printing booths pretty heavily at the moment. Your decision to get physical is coincidence I assume :)
Scrapbooking rocks! Actually Muji do these really nice minimal postcard and photoalbums, they’re dead cheap and classy looking too.
Jez – complete coincidence, maybe spurred by seeing Sam’s digital prints a few months back. I am immune to marketing campaigns because I never see them.
Mard – Don’t go there. Actually, I’m thinking wall mural growing over time.
get thee down to Boots 50 6×4 prints for a fiver.
Yeah, but that involved getting down to Boots…
High Street…
Shops…