Your Top 3 Steps You Should Take After Your Photography Session

Here are 3 actionable steps you can take after you work with your preferred family photographer. Don’t miss out on these opportunities after your session (and spoiler a LARGE percentage of families and couples neglect these three steps and miss out on valuable opportunities)!

So you’ve got your online gallery sent to you from your preferred photographer, now what? Unfortunately, many people let their digital files live either on their computers, thumb-drives, etc. and only share a fraction of the gorgeous images they paid for through social media posts or maybe through a printed end-of-the-year Christmas card.  As the years drag on they forget about all the previous milestone sessions buried deep within their computers (desktops, smartphones, online storage, etc) and there are so many missed opportunities to physically hold past cherished memories which can be forgotten because of the rush of current life events.

Does this scenario sound familiar to you? If so, please read on for 3 options you can take after your photography session.

Option 1: Print Your Photos

Print your photos after your photographer emails you the digital online gallery. This seems like a very obvious next step for many couples and families but unfortunately (due to the rise of digital photography) our tendency is to keep everything stored away on our computers, phones, and various hard-drives (which we eventually forget about as time goes on). We really don’t take the time to truly enjoy the final physical products in our hands, but instead, we can opt-out and just share online through an Instagram post or through another form of social media. Again, there is nothing wrong with that, I do that, but we never take the next step in actually PRINTING off our pictures.

So if you are at a point where you are wanting to take your digital files and print them here are some suggestions:

1. Please do not print your professional photos at Walmart, Walgreens, CVS or any other store which doesn’t specialize in photography. I know, I know I am going to get many eye-rolls about this point, but hear me out! As a photographer, it pains me when I see prints from these certain stores because the printers used at these corporations change the quality of the photo and the colors are different, and the quality just goes out the window. To the untrained eye, it doesn’t matter if there are slight changes to photos. But for me, I think if I invest in a photographer I would want the physical product to match the quality of service I received (again, I know this is all personal opinion as a photographer)
2. Consider printing your digital products at a local professional photography store.
3. Another photo printing service I have recommended to clients is MPIX. They are a photo lab company based out of Kansas but they make printing your digital photos easy and affordable too!

(oh and if you are wondering, I shoot film and print off my family’s pictures at Dury’s and I currently am printing off these film pictures to add to the family gallery! So I practice what I preach!) 

Option 2: Order Professional Canvases Or Galleries For Your Home

Now I know this step is an investment but if you decide to have a gallery wall in your home with high-quality picture frames (not frames from the Dollar Tree or frames that easily break) you can easily swap out the images once a year in the frames after every milestone session you have with your preferred photographer. Honestly, this is what I do with my gallery at home. I have already invested in some great frames which go with the aesthetic I love and I have just updated the pictures for those frames once a year (OR I have added a new frame to the gallery with an updated picture). My gallery is one of my favorite parts of my home to look at because it is jam-packed with so many cherished memories that I show Blaise daily. He loves pointing to the photos of his “Dada” and it just makes my heart leap with joy that he loves looking at those photos.

Option 3: Order an Album 

As a professional photographer, I actually do not like the quality of Shutterfly Books when used for wedding albums or for milestone family albums (and in the past, I did order a Shutterfly album to send to a venue from a past wedding I photographed and I wanted to cry when I received the final product because of how pixelated the album was and how distorted they made the spreads…I felt so sick to my stomach for wasting time and money with Shutterfly and I chalked it up as a lesson learned and only to use them for “just for fun albums”). When I am working with a client I like to encourage them to take the route of ordering an album through their preferred photographer or through a source that creates heirloom and high-quality albums.

Here are some companies which I suggest looking into if you decide you want to have an Album for either your wedding photos, family milestones, or other special occasions:

1. KISS Books: now this is only available for professional photographers to use (so if you have received an online gallery from your photographer and you LOVE the way KISS books look, ask them to create one for you from this company!) This is the go-to album company I use for all of my family albums for my own family, & for my clients.
2. If you are not wanting to work with your preferred photographer and you are just wanting to order on your own check out: MPIX OR contact your local professional photography store in your town/city so that they can help you create your very own heirloom album.

Here is an example of what a KISS album looks like (this is a simple linen album of a milestone session of Blaise and Santa Claus which I am planning on creating a Christmas Album for Blaise every year mostly as a memory gift for me, but also to gift to him and his future family so that HIS kids can look through their dad’s Christmas albums and smile! And as I am typing this very sentence out I am crying thinking about my future grandkids!) 

Summary

It pains me as a photographer to know and see that clients are just keeping their files digitally and doing nothing with the photos. Carve out time to truly decide what photos from the past year you would want to print, or have on a gallery in your home, or even to have printed in a high-quality heirloom album.

Please do not let your online digital gallery die as the years go by. Take the time now to start curating your favorite photos so that you have physical prints and albums to pass down to your loved ones and eventually down to your grandchildren. Because let’s be honest, they will not be going through your old computer because your computer WILL be long gone…instead, they will be holding a physical print of you in their hands or flipping through a photo album to learn more about you.

If you have worked with me and would like to order an album (or even prints) from one of your sessions please email me at thedollydelong@gmail.com and let me know how I can best serve you in your next steps! I want you to have memories to pass down to your loved ones, and I do not want them to die on your computer!

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Meet Your Friendly Nashville Family Photographer

Dolly DeLong is a Nashville-based family & personal branding photographer, and also serves as a business systems educator to new creative entrepreneurs (which is a fancy way of saying, she enjoys teaching how to best lay a good foundation for automating your new business).  Dolly loves serving families, and business owners with her timeless, radiant photography.  She loves capturing the joy and emotion in both digital and film photos.

She also has a heart for serving the larger business community. Dolly shares her knowledge of tools like Pinterest, email marketing, automation processes, and time management with fellow creative business owners in an encouraging and supportive way through her T.A.S.K.* method (an example of this can be seen in her Pinterest Foundations Mini-Course), through helpful blog posts, and other resources. 

Dolly’s faith and love for her family motivate her to help other business owners find the joy and freedom she’s found in running a successful small business.

Whenever she has a spare moment, she enjoys watching TV (i.e. Survivor), eating way too many sweets, and listening to podcasts while running or walking. To work with Dolly DeLong Photography LLC, please email her at thedollydelong@gmail.com or fill out her contact form here.