Paper! Beautiful, sustainable, inspirational, protective, tactile.
These are words that may leave you scratching your head when thinking about paper. True, most of us don’t often think about paper. And when we do, it may be in a limited way:
“Hmm I’ve got to print that report.”
“Urrgh! The photocopier is out of paper again!”
“Don’t squeeze the Charmin.”
Digital, because of its immediate convenience, is becoming the medium of choice for the written word and to a lesser degree, the medium to display photography.
A hard drive / discs and computer screen is where many people choose to keep and display their letters & photos. Seriously, when was the last time you held a hard drive and said “Wow, what a beautiful hard drive. I love how it feels in my hands. The texture is just lovely. It smells wonderful and reminds me of my last hard drive.”
Dean Oros Photo + Design uses a wide range of fine art photographic papers.
Paper: Why Not?
Paper has been around for so long that it’s easy for us to take it for granted, and it’s often not used to its full potential. It is what we make of it.
Photography is my primary method of communicating. But because all of us use words to communicate, let’s take a look at both words and imagery. Unless this blog post has been printed on paper, you’re now in front of a computer screen. Right off the bat, you’re experiencing LESS. Not more. NOT EVEN ANYTHING REMOTELY EQUAL.
“Huh?”, you may be asking. Allow me to walk you through the subtleties you’re missing right now:
1. If you want to continue reading this, you’re locked into being in front of a computer screen. Or worse, you’re reading this on a tiny screen like your iPhone, iPod, Blackberry or some other small device. Can you say: “Where are my eye glasses?” The image included with this blog post is now so small it might as well be on a matchbook cover.
2. You’ve lost the feeling of touch. You aren’t holding paper in your hands while you read. You can’t feel the paper’s texture. When was the last time you received a handwritten letter penned on beautiful stationary and ran your fingers over the words? Images that have been meticiously and professionally created and colour-corrected now look like two-day old soup on an uncalibrated computer screen – which most people are using. You can’t run your fingers over the images and words on a computer screen unless you want to leave it full of fingerprints and smears, and probably create a mess of static electricity in the process.
3. You can’t inhale the scent of a computer screen. Now imagine that hand-written letter on beautiful paper from a loved one. You instantly know who wrote the letter because you recognize the writer’s penmanship. Perhaps whomever wrote to you left a trail of fragrance on the paper and envelope. It smells wonderful. Maybe they’ve included a printed photo that immediately evokes a memory. That letter now has even more meaning to you.
4. Paper is protective. The letter and photograph you hold in your hand is permanent. The words and images are protected and archived. Digital images, emails, text messages, and online blog posts can only be saved to hard drives. And ALL hard drives eventually will crash and die. Say good bye to all those beautiful words and digital images. And remember, you need a computer to even access the information hard drives / CDs / DVDs contain. That handwritten letter and professionally-printed print can be stored and displayed anywhere. And the bonus is that they’re immediately accessible – you don’t need to install a hard drive or boot up a computer to see them.
Educate
As a photographer, I do my best to educate clients on the benefits of paper, especially newlyweds-to-be and families. Creating a heirloom in the form of a professionally designed fine-art wedding album and archival prints will increase in personal value the longer you keep them. When created by the photographer you’ve commissioned to photograph your special day or family portaits, the final product is created with lots of loving care (at least here). We want the images we created to look their absolute best and to tell your story.
I hope you found this article helpful. Please note that if you’d like to use any part of this article for your own website etc, you must ask us first. Please call or write for permission. Respect copyright. Thank you.
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