I am sharing this from the blog of one of my vendors.  I mean, I couldn’t have said it better myself 🙂

“It’s been a hard day. You’re tired–and let’s face it–a little cranky. OK, a lot cranky.

So to cheer yourself up, you walk over to your computer and fire up the DVD of your recent family portrait session so that you can flip through the images. After seeing the slideshow playing on your tiny laptop, you can’t wait until the rest of the family comes over so that you can pass the computer around the dinner table.

Here’s another scenario, similar to the first, except for one crucial point: those incredible, indelible images are hanging on your walls. You see them every time you walk by; you smile every time you walk by. In each room of your home, the heirloom photographic art makes your heart swell, overflowing with the investment you’ve made in your family, the investment in adding permanence to your memories.

The impulse to purchase images on a disc instead of a canvas or a print is strong. We feel as if we don’t actually own something until we possess every image from our shoot, as if the only way to experience our family is by being able to make as many reprints of them as we want.

But images on disc sit around. They become stuffed into a desk drawer, until their media is rendered obsolete and the images cannot be accessed anymore. They remain untouched, until that day when we’ll have enough time to put them in an album or print them ourselves.

Finished products, on the other hand, are just that. They are ready to hang, ready to enjoy. They are instant–and constant–gratification. They are objects that can be passed down to your children, and your children’s children.

The tangible nature of fine art–that it is an actual object, hanging on your wall or sitting on your coffee table–is meant for enjoyment, for experience, not to be archived on a shelf in a plastic media case. A CD of all of your images is not fine art.

And the creation of fine art cannot be cheap. Crafting memories and creating personalized products that can be enjoyed for generations is a job that carries a lot of responsibility and weight, and demands finesse and skill. With professional photography, as with so much of life, you get what you pay for.

Photographic art is an investment, to be sure, but it’s one that you’ll never regret.”

I can attest to this!!  My own hard drive is chalk-full of photos I have yet to print and hang or otherwise display in my home (I’m talking 15 THOUSAND photos from 2013 alone).  I do plan to set aside a week in November to select and gather photos from the past two years and create heirloom albums for my own family before I simply lose the motivation to do it!  All that being said, I am so proud of the beautiful newborn portraits of my sweet girl hanging in our home.  We paid a pretty penny for our photographer’s time, talent, and artistic vision to create the images we selected to have on our disk and because we did make such an investment of our time and our money to have high-quality photos done of our new family, you can bet the first thing I did was have photos printed from a professional print lab (by my own photographer, as the images on her computer were calibrated to her professional print lab) and went straight to the framing shop.  Although it was an additional investment of time (and more money!), the rest of our investment would have been worthless if I had simply taken the CD and had a 4×6 and a few 8×10’s printed at the local CVS of each of those photos.  You know where that CD is now, with the extra photos we didn’t have printed and framed?  In a desk drawer.  A junk drawer, really.  And I guarantee that’s where it will stay for another decade.  The large photos on our walls, though?  Sure, they might get moved to another wall when we expand our family…but they will always be somewhere prominent as they represent the start of our family and the greatest love we have ever known.

Since then, I have cultivated my own artistic vision and searched and tested high and low for unique, yet classic products that will showcase your pride and joy in your own home!  I am so excited about all the new products I will be offering in 2014.  If you are a current client and you’re interested in being a tester, contact me and I can let you sample (well not really, because you’ll get to keep it!) these products at a discount.

Just a little sneak peak of the beautiful, classic frames (and mattes!) I have selected for my beautiful, classic clients!

*Framed images NOT taken by Heather Carraway Photography*

And did you know that now I can show you EXACTLY what your art (framed print or gallery wrapped canvas) will look like on your own wall?

I put together a little example today using a blank wall in my office that is aching for me to figure out what I want to decorate it with AND a few of my favorite images from my BFFs recent newborn session.  I might just hang these three on my walls…I wouldn’t mind looking at and thinking about them every day 🙂

The first is your standard 8×10…I even framed it to give it some extra depth 🙂  As you can see…not much impact with those “big” 8×10 prints.  

“Can I have a magnifying glass with that print, please??”

The next one, a generous 24×36, fills up the wall almost completely and makes a HUGE statement in the room.  If you’re looking for impact, this is it.  Gahh, aren’t they beautiful?!

As a side note, I outfitted and processed Anna’s images with the color scheme of Baby Caroline’s nursery in mind (a satin-y light pink and tan).  For my office, I might have processed these to have a “warmer” look so that it blends more with the color scheme of the room.

Okay, fine…here’s what I mean 🙂  See how it now makes a statement without being overbearing?  By thinking about where you might like to hang your art before your session, I can do this for you, too!

For this one, I decided on a beautiful image grouping that featured mom, dad, and baby alone.  This happens to be (1) 20×30, (1) 12×18, and (1) 16×24.  There are just SO MANY options and I love that I am now able to provide this custom experience for my clients.

 To book your custom newborn portrait session (now including wall art consultation!) in the comfort of your home, contact heather@heathercarrawayphoto.com.

Past clients, if you are interested in having a wall art design consultation so that you, too, can get those images from your session off your flash drive and onto your walls, just email me and I’ll be excited to work with you!