Make Your Photos Work for You
“When I was happy, I didn’t look at my family pictures,” explained the singer in Korean, before dedicating his song to his parents. “When I got lonely and things got hard, I started looking at my family pictures.” Kim Jin Ho then went on to perform a haunting 7 minute song about his family, named, aptly, “Family Picture.”
The song was beautiful, but the intro really stuck with me. It makes sense: when you’re busy and happy and moving through a normal day, how often do you stop to go actively look through old photos? (We know the answer is rare to never.) So then.. if we’re only looking at photos when we’re sad, lonely, or grieving, photographs become less a thing of joy and more a thing associated with pain and sadness.
I posit that if we aren’t seeing happy photographs when we’re happy, we’re robbing ourselves of the real joy that seeing images of our loved ones can give us, and not letting our photos do their proper job.
How do we make that shift, from using photos only as a tool of therapy to a way to supplement our happiness in our daily lives? The answer is, we have to look at photos when we’re happy, not just when we’re sad. We have to make our own photos more accessible to our daily lives so we see them more often. And we have to make those same photos accessible to our children so they, too, can see the happy photos in their daily lives.
The best way I know how to make our photos accessible to our daily lives is to print them. I just heard you sigh. It was a loud sigh, accompanied by an uncomfortable shift in your chair. Get out of your chair, and let’s take a quick walk. Walk to the kitchen (you need more water anyway), to the bathroom, to the bedrooms, to your office/workspace, to your family/living/tv room where you spend the most time. Note the spots, right now, that are available for big or small photographs. Note what rooms don’t have any photos in them at all.
The kitchen is a casual room in your house, and it welcomes casual, unframed photos. The fridge is the obvious first choice, but if you have a stainless steel fridge that doesn’t allow magnets, think creatively. Do you have room for a bulletin board where you can tack up some snapshots from your phone?
The bathroom can be tricky, especially if it stays humid, and you know your house better than me. But what about the hallway leading to the bathroom? Would hanging a photo or two in this space make your many trips to this room (thanks to all that water) better each day?
What beautiful reminders of your family would you love to wake up to every morning? What about your kids’ rooms? Do you have space on your desk for a 5x7 next to your computer? What images would you like to be surrounded by in your family room? Is this the right spot for a professionally-created (ahem) photo or three?
You don’t need to fill every blank space in your home with photos right now. Pick one spot today, and set up a time on your calendar one night this week to find a photo or three (depending on size) to fill that space. Then set a calendar reminder for the second week in February (and March, and April…) to do it again. Rotate through those spaces, so you’re seeing new photos every month in new spaces around your home. This doesn’t need to be expensive. You can print photos at Richmond Camera (they will ship to you) or mpix and get great color and quality for not a lot of money, particularly for smaller prints.
Adding the happy photographs you’re taking back into your home can do wonders for your mental health. Email me if you’d like help deciding what to print, where to get photos printed, or how to display your images. Start today.