As I continue to improve the products that I offer my clients, I struggle with what means more to them. . .Do they prefer digitals or prints, which do you feel is better than the other?
As I struggle with this decision, I took a look at what I have personally treasured most over the years. I also asked everyone I know. 🙂 When I started photography, there were two options of developing film, prints or slides. Anyone remember slides? 
I have tons, and my projector still works!!! When our first granddaughter was born, I remember going down memory lane viewing slides of my own early childhood, when my daughter in law, Allison, walked into the room. ‘Who is that? It looks like Isis.’ (my granddaughter) 🙂 After telling Allison it was me, the three of us curled up on the sofa in front of the fireplace and watched as the slides projected larger than life on the wall.
My first digital camera was a Canon Digital Elph, an anniversary gift from my husband back in 2001.
I remember being so excited to see my photos as I was taking them. At the time, it was not a question as to whether or not I would print them, I just won’t print any ‘BAD’ ones because all of ‘those’ would have been deleted. 🙂 It was then that I was introduced to another option when printing my photos. . .a disk to share with family and friends. Little by little I have stopped printing everything I photographed and started archiving images on my computer and backing them up on CDs, DVDs, external HDs.
Over the years, I have accumulated several CDs, Zip disks, Thumb Drives, external Hard Drives for my ever growing image collection! Camera technology has changed, and so has computer technology (to include changing between Windows to Mac). They say that computers become better and faster every six months, but I surely am not able to keep up with the latest technology, and I do not know many people that can. However, when it is time to upgrade, getting the best that I can afford is always the goal. Now, here is where it gets a little sticky. I have at least 3 zip disks and 2 CDs that the ‘new’ technology can’t read. 🙁 I honestly have no idea what photos are on them as I now have thousands of digital images on my computer that it will take weeks to sort through them and even then I am sure I probably still won’t realize what I am missing, until . . . my mother calls me in a sheer panic to see if I have still have those photos of her backyard she sent me! Let me backup a bit, my mom’s home was destroyed in the tornado that devastated Plaza Towers in Moore, Oklahoma in May 2013. Her backyard was her sanctuary and now that she has rebuilt her home she would like to replicate the backyard, but she can’t remember all the details and the photos will help inspire her.
Now I am literally freaking out, are those the images I can no longer retrieve from those unreadable disks? Or is it that I just can’t find them amongst the hundreds of folders I now have across two externals and this thing called the ‘CLOUD’, that promises that I will never lose anything ever again. ;/ As it turned out . . . the prints from my last birthday party in her backyard were found quicker by my brother. Even though his house was also lost in same tornado that hit my mom’s home 3 miles away, all of his photo albums were recovered, intact! 🙂 Amazing how tornados can destroy some things and leave others untouched.
Today there are so many options for printing your photos, 
You can put your FAVORITE photos in ALBUMS, not the albums of yesteryear, that you have to print all the photos individually and put them in a book! 
Have them printed directly into hardbound books that you can enjoy viewing over and over again while sharing them with family and friends. They come in all sizes and children of all ages (0 to 99) love to pull out picture books, great for family time or bedtime, there is always something new that you may have missed the first time through and oh the stories you can tell! 
As I close for the night, I will leave you with this, both prints and digitals are important for different reasons. Printing allows you to enjoy your favorite photographs everyday or anytime that the convenience of a computer is not available. If you chose to archive digitals, please be mindful that you will have to keep up with technology over time and may have to reformat them along the way. That reminds me, those 8mm videos of my kids growing up need to be converted to DVD or BlueRay, it has been almost 20 years now since I have been able to enjoy them and I would love to share them with my grandchildren, I think they will really get a kick out of seeing that their mommy and daddy were little too. 🙂