You’ve received your gallery full of gorgeous, professionally edited photos and absolutely love them! You immediately share them with your friends and family but…. Now what? What do you do with your photos after receiving your gallery from your photographer?

Here are 6 ideas for what to do with your photos after your session!

Back Them Up!

You don’t want to rely on your photographer to store your images forever. Many have it in their contract that they’re only responsible for your images for so many years, and even then you typically have to pay a fee to access your gallery again after it expires. The best way to make sure you can always access your photos is by backing them up yourself, and doing so multiple ways!

I always recommend backing up your photos both physically (a hard drive, thumb drive, etc) and in the cloud (Google or Apple photos, Back Blaze, etc) so you have a backup in case one fails. Technology is a fickle thing and doesn’t always work like it’s supposed to. By having your photos backed up to a hard drive as well as your preferred cloud storage you make sure you can access your photos no matter what!

Share Them on Social Media & Tag Your Photographer

It’s 2024, of course one of the first things we want to do with our photos is share them with our friends and family on social media! When you do so I highly recommend tagging your photographer in your post. It’s the perfect way to let your friends and family (and your photographer!) know that you loved working with them and love your photos! Word of mouth referrals go a long way and this is one of the easiest ways to share about them on your end. While this isn’t required by any means, it is highly appreciated!

Print Them To Display In Your Home

Your photos deserve more than just living on a hard drive or being posted to social media! Printing out your photos and hanging them throughout your home is a wonderful way to look back on this point in your life. As you take more photos throughout the years you can update the ones displayed in your home, and before you know it you’ll have a memory wall showing your family growing throughout the years! This is also a perfect way to add a personalized touch to your home truly making it yours.

Gift Them To Your Friends and Family

Parents and grandparents especially love seeing updated family photos! Gifting them to your friends and family is a great way to give them a personalized gift, especially for Mother’s or Father’s day, Christmas, or any other holiday you may celebrate! You can gift them a framed print, or get more creative with it by using them for ornaments, a wood project, or use a website like Shutterfly or talk to your photograher to create a fun custom gift!

Get a Digital Photo Frame

Historically I’ve been terrible about taking photos and just storing them on my phone or in the cloud, not really doing anything with them. My husband gifted me a digital photo frame for Christmas a couple of years ago and I’ve loved being able to display so many of my photos at once! I have photos from a bunch of our trips, our wedding and engagement photos, and various other photos I’ve taken over the years that cycle through all on one frame. While I still have other photos of us hung up throughout our home, this has been the perfect way to have so many more of our adventures visible! It’s also helped cut down the dread I feel when it comes to choosing which photos to print since I can put them all on my digital frame 😆

Use Them For Holiday Cards

Rather than just choosing one photo for your family holiday cards why not use a collage of photos? This is a great way to show how your family has grown and changed over the past year, and you can even use pictures from some of the adventures you went on! You can make a collage on the front of your holiday card or include one as part of your family letter if that’s something you write each year!

Who says you have to use a “holiday photo” on your holiday cards? Even if you don’t want to use a collage of photos on your card you can still use a photo from earlier in the year when you’re making them! You can avoid the rush of fall photos by doing them earlier in the year and prolong the life of your family photos this year.

I hope this was helpful for you when it comes to knowing what to do with your photos after your next session! Family photos are something to cherish, and what better way to do that than by putting them on display? Your family grows and changes so much over the course of a year, you deserve to have those changes documented with family photos!

If you’re interested in booking a session with me, you can reach out to me HERE!