Not that many people print their photos anymore. Now that most everyone has phones, tablets, laptops, smart TVs, or what have you, it’s way more convenient to display photos on a screen of some variety than on paper.
But I want to convince you that you should print your photos. Why? That’s a big question. I’ll do my best to answer it succinctly.
You can see the whole thing at once, without needing to zoom in and pan around on your screen. Smartphones are particularly bad for viewing large, beautiful landscape photos. The experience of zooming in on your screen and sliding your thumb around to examine different parts of the image 3 inches at a time is, frankly, pretty lackluster compared to the experience of stepping close to a 16x20 on the wall and taking in all the detail at once. Most social media doesn’t even host high-resolution photos that preserve the detail anyway. Indeed, one in particular won’t even let you zoom in at all (looking at you, Instagram). Which means the gorgeous vista you captured has to fit into a tiny rectangle, that can’t come close to communicating the level of detail and craftsmanship that may have gone into making the image. I always thought it was ironic that we’ve gone from 35mm cameras capable of producing a good 8x10 print at best, to mind-blowingly advanced DSLRs and mirrorless cameras that can crank out 50+ megapixel prints… and the most popular photo app in the world forces you to stick with the width of a smartphone for displaying them.
Prints can have true blacks. Ever had a screen left on, but showing something “pure black” in a dark room before? It’s surprisingly bright. Most monitors that don’t cost an arm and a leg can achieve, at best, a very dark blue. Compare that to an inkjet or silver print that has a rich, true black tone reproduced on the paper. A screen won’t ever be able to deliver the same drama or punch in photos where black tones are really important.
You can get tactile textures. I’m not talking about textures you superimpose at a low opacity in Photoshop. Different kinds of paper, canvas, metal, acrylic, etc. all have different surface finishes (you’ve probably heard of “matte” and “glossy” at least). These can really add to a photo in a way that no screen can replicate.
Prints tend to hang around longer. An archival quality silver print can last well over a century if properly stored. While theoretically digital files can be put into archival formats and copied from hard drive to hard drive indefinitely, it doesn’t usually pan out that way in my experience. I know for a fact I have lost RAW files even from back when I was shooting with my first DSLR, barely more than a decade ago. Go dig through your hard drive on your computer, how many photos in there do you still have from 2005? And if you answered, “more than 0,” when was the last time you looked at them? Even when they aren’t unintentionally lost, old digital photos tend to just sit there and gather dust on hard drives, forgotten.
People look at prints more closely and more frequently. I have a few photos of mine that I have printed in the darkroom, put into inexpensive frames, and hung on the wall. Whenever people come over to my house, they see them. Sometimes they step closer and really take a good look. I don’t have to pull up my Flickr account and shove a laptop in their face for them to see my work, and they never swipe past the 11x14s on the wall. This is good for my ego (obviously very important), and I like to think it’s good for our house guests, who now have a chance to engage with some art for a minute or two—art that probably wouldn’t have caught their attention the same way on an iPad, assuming they even came across it.
This last point is true even of prints that aren’t necessarily “artistic photography.” For Christmas one year, I dug through mine and my wife’s smartphones and curated a couple hundred snapshots we had taken of good times together over the previous few years. I had them all printed inexpensively as 4x6s and put them in a photo album. It was one of the best gifts I ever gave, I think. Sitting down together, we can get lost in good memories while we work our way through all the photos, and really take a minute to recall each one. Before we know it, we’ve spent an hour together reminiscing and laughing. I’ve never had that same experience digging back through my iCloud photo library, at least not without getting distracted by a text or notification at some point. We still break out my parents’ old photo albums from the early 90s from time to time, and do much the same thing.
To summarize, prints offer a better viewing experience than screens (particularly for prints with texture, deep blacks, or high resolution). They stand the test of time. They get seen more and for longer. They work their way into our lives better than digital files.
So here’s a challenge for you. Go find a photo you took. Whether it’s a grand vista painstakingly crafted with your nicest camera and many hours in post-processing, or a grainy picture of your cat you took on your iPhone 4s, go print it out and display it somewhere. A 5x7 from CVS is a few dollars. While you’re there, you can grab a little frame for another couple of bucks. Put it on your desk or hang it on your wall. I promise you’ll look at it and smile when you see it.