Category: Printing Memories

Photobook Transcends Time

It was inspiring to read about Mr Lui Hock Seng, an 81-year-old photographer who has a collection of photographs taken from the 1960s and 1970s. With 80 photographs in his collection, this self-taught photographer has compiled a photobook, Passing Time, and recently held his first photo exhibition early this year at Objectifs, a centre for photography and film.

It gets me thinking that as much as technology has evolved and digital prints are easily shared, print photos especially compiling it into a photobook exudes a nostalgic feel and gives memories more justice.It is no secret that more and more people are doing photobook to capture major milestones in their life – arrival of their newborn baby, graduation from college, union of love at weddings and discovery of the soul through travels. Photobook, if kept properly, can last for very long and serves as a perfect momento for future recollections. In Mr Lui’s case, it serves as the perfect reminder of his hidden talent and his contribution to capture rare photos of the past to be appreciated by Singaporeans today.

Click here to read more about Mr Lui Hock Seng on his incredible journey here.

 

Guest Post: Printing Memories

As I read one of today’s(13 Mar) Straits Times front page article, “National service : 50 years,  One Million Memories” with a photo of Supt Yep holding up photos of himself and fellow officer along with other photos layout in front of him and him commenting that whenever he feels nostalgic about his police service,  he looks for photos of himself posing with his fellow officer during his full-time national service days. 

This again highlighted to me that photos in physical prints truly stand the test of time when it come to reliving precious memory. In today’s digital era where images are so conveniently captured and in many more “copies” are on the contrary tough to retrieve to relive one’s precious memory. I reckon why this is so is the very convenience of capturing memories in digital format results in the end state of the digital image residing in countless storage like memory cards, cloud storage or some other data archiving devices. The literal countless images captured digitally makes the retrieval of specific events a tedious and unappealing effort having to scroll through the many directories to locate specific memorable events. It comes as no surprise that if one wants to look back on photos captured 10 years ago for any event,  most will be put off in doing so if he needs to scroll through the many directories in his storage device just to locate it or most may have forgotten where those images resided in.

However if memories of events were printed out in photo books and proudly displayed in cupboard, the efforts needed will be minimal as the uniqueness of each photo books make the retrieval of photo books of any event from any storage cupboard an easy task. In the past, we tend to archive our printed photos by category in shoe box or in small photo albums with slip in slots for single photo and paste-on for our commentaries. Not only does p;log photo books do away with all of the above, p;log photo book also provide user the ability to professionally create themed photo books for every single event with user commentaries printed in any desired pages from a long list of available selectable fonts.

The advancement of technology is a double edged sword, while it make the capturing of memories a lot easier, it make the retrieval a lot more tedious. The efforts needed to create photo books of memorable event no doubt double that of digital archiving but the returns in enjoying those memories far outweighs the efforts needed. 

I am sure most will agree that passing your kids a collection of photobooks of the many holidays and memorable events in their life make the memories more close to heart and relivable compared to handing them a storage device or Cloud address of where those images reside which may run the risk of incompatible format 10 years on. 

The nostalgic feeling when one flips through pages of a photobooks can never be replicated by the clicking of a mouse to scroll through the digital images on a monitor. Like what is depicted in the Straits Times article on Supt Yeo 50 years on,  whenever he feels nostalgic about his police service,  he looks for photos. 

The convenience of p;log photo book is what make us all want to flip through and relive the pleasant recollection of our past history. Let us make us of technology to enhance our ability to recollect our pleasant memory with ease vs being a victim to losing it among the constant flood of information.

Clara Chua

Guest Post: Documenting School Activities With Pictures

My boy is in Secondary 1 this year and a marked difference I notice between his secondary and primary school days are that secondary school teachers are more proactive in broadcasting students activities via online or mobile media to parents along with photos attachments on every major class events. Though a mobile phone is not a stated pre-requisite for every secondary school child, it is nonetheless a necessity and it can be qualified that every students carry one. 

With teachers constantly pictorially updating parents on major class events, a good project for every secondary students will be for the students in a class to combine broadcast photos from their teachers along with photos taken with their mobile to pictorially document their activities along with commentaries in p;log photo books on a termly or bi-termly basis. This is a good “archiving” class project which will enable them to pictorially document and literally look back with fond memories of the activities they had carried out as a class. 

Clara Chua

The Importance of Printing Your Photos

“The ideas of burying our pictures on a hard drive or keeping them on a memory card, is in my opinion, a waste of great memories”

 Bryan Caproricci

Digital cameras and mobile phones equipped with state of the art cameras have found their way into a significant number of households over the recent years. Taking photos has never been more easy and less of a hassle. But what happens to these photos after they are captured? It is safe to assume that many of these digital images never find their way off the SD cards or mobile phones.

Creating memories will always be important to you. Sharing your photographs with your friends and family online through Facebook or Instagram is also easier than ever. However, we often forget to look through the digital images as time goes by. Digital images are simple to share and store but digital images can easily become corrupt, accidentally lost and even forgotten.

In this digital age, still nothing beats viewing a photograph that is hanging off the wall, a framed image on your desk, or a photo album on a table. When you take the time to view the photo album years down the road, you can always be reminded of those precious moments. It is important to you, as the creator of those memories that you are able have those captured memories for life and printing your images are the best way to do it. It will also serves as a reminder of how much you have changed and grown over the years.

Whether it’s your wedding day, graduation, a family vacation or a new addition to the family, having a printed piece of those images in your home will certainly put a smile on your face every time you look at it.