Are you photographing your family with a smartphone?

I’ve never really touched on this subject before but it’s something I should probably address.

These days, in times of ever changing technology, people sometimes see the smartphone as the best way to capture their family. They’re actually right, but only partially.

A smartphone with a camera is just as good as any camera that you have with you. It’s always there to capture moments that photographers can’t get. It’s going to be there for your children’s first steps and for that holiday abroad. This is great because it means that unlike before, we really can capture those memories any day, at any time.

But there’s a problem… It’s not secure.

Think about those photos you have on your phone right now. I bet that some of them are possibly on Facebook too and the rest of them are just sitting on your phone, possibly waiting to be lost or stolen. The images you uploaded to Facebook might seem secure, but they may not be. Who knows what could happen to Facebook in the future and besides this, when you upload to Facebook, you images are compressed and resized to make them smaller so you’re never going to get them back in their full glory.

So why am I suddenly bringing this up?

I’ve seen recently, an increase in posts online that go like this “someone please help, I lost my phone today at the park and it includes all of my photos of the kids”.

Those images are likely gone forever. They were once a great way to reminisce when you were bored and were part of a great conversation with friends.

I know I’m being quite blunt here, but there’s a lot of people out there who believe that they don’t need a photographer because they can use their phones, whenever they want, to take photos of their families. These people tend not to have any professionally created images in their homes and nothing that’s going to last long enough to hand down to their children when they’re older.

The whole point of a photographer is to purposely take timeless photos, in the best way possibly and to produce artworks, that can be cherished forever. A good photographer will guide you through the process of creating stunning displays that will last a lifetime on anyone’s wall that creates a warm fuzzy feeling, every time you look at them.

If you’re putting off booking your family photo shoot because you have a smartphone full of photos, I want you to think carefully about how you see those phone images in 10 years time.