The “Addiction” We All Have To Our Devices

The “Addiction” We All Have To Our Devices or:

Why Photographs Need To Be Printed!

by William Lulow

I was reading Andrew Sullivan’s interesting article a while back, in New York Magazine which dealt with our growing addiction to devices of one sort or another. We all have smartphones these days, in addition to our regular computers and/or laptops/tablets. There is no questioning the fact that we are on these devices every single day for many hours. Some may question whether or not we are “addicted” to these things, but we all use them. Just walk down any street in this country if you need proof! Mr. Sullivan points out that we just might need a good rehab program to help us get back to “reality” rather than “virtual reality!”

How does this relate to photography, you might ask. Well, I’ve been writing in this space for quite a while now that we now see photographs mostly on screens. I actually have north of 5,000 images on my iPhone myself. The shots I take on my smartphone are terrific, but when I do a real photo shoot, even with just my own family, and then print the pictures for the everyone, it’s quite a different experience. They become treasured items rather than simply another image on a screen. So for us photographers, one of the cures for the “screen addiction” is to make prints every once in a while. As a matter of fact, my business model allows for me to actually give away an 8×10 print or two whenever I do a portrait sitting. There are many studios that get customers in the door by charging a modest sitting fee but then charge an absurd amount for a print. My plan is exactly the opposite. I charge enough for the sitting so that the print is free. Of course, if they want something larger than an 8×10, then I charge them accordingly. But they always walk away with at least one print.

(Shot with a Canon 60D, on location and printed on Inkpress Pro Silky paper, 300GSM. This paper is super sturdy and has a nice sheen to it. Naturally, I made copies for the family!)

This is one important reason why I’ve said “photographs need to be printed!”

When you go to someone’s home and see photographs of their family members in frames prominently displayed on the wall or on a piece of furniture, you understand how important printed photographs are to people. I know people who have come back from a vacation and shown me unedited images, still on their smartphones! Think how much more impressive it would be if only a select few of them were edited, cropped, printed and framed.

Photographs were meant to be exhibited. By this I mean that they should be carefully edited and printed on paper for people to view. When you view images on a screen, they are often fleeting and the size of the screen itself usually doesn’t allow for introspective perusal, as images in a gallery or museum might. So, I encourage all my students to print their edited images. In addition to being much more impressive as prints, images are often much clearer and sharper on paper than they are on almost any screen anyway.

I have also noticed that apps like Instagram have images that disappear after only a few seconds. Yes, you can prolong the viewing time, but it is still a kind of fleeting experience. Not one conducive to actually studying the photographs. Which leads me to my next point that if you want people to study your images carefully, you need to think about making them better.

Photographs, by definition, are “light pictures.” Try to break some of your addiction to screens by printing your images!