Nicole Rogers Photography » Sneak peek of recent sessions

I have always been a documenter of what is important to me.  I have always been a journler, a keeper of words put on paper to link me to the past.  It doesn’t surprise me that being a photographer would be my line of work.  Lately I have run into several articles or blog posts on-line that reiterate the importance of photographs (printed out that is).

Imagine if you survived a tsunami, just as the people of Japan did one year ago.  What is one thing that would link you (the survivor) back to your past, give you a snapshot of what life was like before the diaster hit, and give you a remembrance of your family members and loved ones?  A printed photograph.  Yes, we live in a digital age, which makes capturing images fast, easy, and constant… but if those images just remain on a computer, what are we going to look back on years from now.  What if a diaster hits and a computer cannot be salvaged?  I came across this article here entitled “Japan Tsunami:  Photographs Lost to Disaster Returning to Owners.”

An exerpt from the article reads:

In a large, bright room not far from the ocean that raged through this coastal Japanese city nearly a year ago, a handful of people with magnifying glasses pore over boxes of photographs of friends or loved ones.

The massive March 11 tsunami that levelled buildings and flattened towns along a wide swath of northern Japan, including Ofunato, also took a more subtle toll, with hundreds of thousands of photographs lost to the churning waters.

But now these memories are slowly making their way back to their owners, thanks to the painstaking efforts of a team that cleans them of mud, dirt and oil.

“I got one photo blown up, and I was so thankful for that. I put it in a frame, and it brought tears to my eyes,” said 77-year-old resident Yoshiko Jindai, looking through boxes of photographs.

I think that is so awesome that people are volunteering their time and efforts to restore and return these lost photographs back to the owners.

Here is a beautiful blog post on grandchildren visiting their great grandma and grandpa’s house (who have been married for 60 years) looking back at photographs that tell their life story.  Had those images never been printed, what would that generation have to look at of this couple’s beautiful love and life together.

Here is another great blog post on why prints are not dead.

As I wrap up this post, I want to quote Scarlett and Stephen Photography with a goal in mind.  I will do my best, as your photographer, to offer you and help you decide on beautiful wall art (printed) for your home.

There’s a lot of buzz going around in the industry about how “Prints are dead,
just give your clients the digital files because that’s all they want.” But, are
digital files all they really want, or is that just what they’ve been
taught to want? Ask yourself: fifty years from now, is a disc really all
that your couples are going to want to have to hold on to? Just ten years ago it
would have been a floppy drive. Is that what we want to pass on to the next
generation as part of their family history? As photographers in this digital
age, it is our job to not only to tell our clients’ stories as honestly as
possible… but to also make sure we’re helping them find a way to preserve
& curate that legacy in a tangible way for the generations yet to come. And
that won’t happen unless we are taking the time to help build that legacy side
by side with them.

Workers in Japan are salvaging photos to help reunited them with their owners. (Reuters)