Frame It

Get your photos out of your phone and onto your walls

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Today's tip is to print up some of your photos
and frame them. Giving physical photos a place of honor
will add a little extra joy to your day, and
if you give framed photos as gifts, they can add
joy to your loved ones days too. So I realized

(00:36):
the other day that I had a fair number of
printed baby photos of my eldest child. Alert listeners will
recall that he was born in two thousand and seven,
which was right as smartphones were taking the world by storm.
We are not early adopters in our family, so we
generally took pictures of him with our digital camera, and
we dutifully upload these photos to Shutterfly and print them.

(01:01):
Then I got an iPhone around the time my second
kid was born in two thousand and nine. I probably
have more baby photos total of him, just because it
was suddenly so easy to snap pictures when we were
out and about, But I don't have as many printed.
I think that's probably true for a lot of our lives.

(01:21):
After two thousand and nine or so. We have a
lot of pictures, but not many printed pictures. Now there
are obvious reasons for that. My Apple iCloud account isn't
going anywhere, I hope, so I can always look back
on earlier photos while I'm standing in line at the
grocery store. One of the reasons we printed photos in

(01:41):
the past is so we could share them with loved ones.
Smartphones solved this problem because we just text the photo over,
no need to use a middleman. But I think printed
photos are even more special than digital ones. There's something
that feels more notable about a physical object, and when
we bother to frame something, it truly stands out as special. Fortunately,

(02:07):
this really doesn't have to be as much of an
ordeal as it has been at times in the past.
A lot of sights like Shutterfly or Framebridge will print
and frame a photo for you. You can test out
different frames and mattings online with the image of your
photo to see what you like best. Then they will
ship you the finished product easy. You can also hit

(02:31):
the easy button by buying a handful of clear plastic frames.
I bought a dozen or so of these for a pittance,
and now I can rotate through photos on my desk
by sticking a new one in these frames every few
months or so. Since the frames are clear, it doesn't
really matter what the colors and the photos happen to be.

(02:53):
Of course, you can go upscale. Last fall, I got
portraits taken of all my kids, both individual and as
a group. Then I purchased the digital files and printed
up and framed fifteen individual shots. With a little help,
we got these arranged into a gallery wall. I absolutely

(03:14):
love walking by these every day. I also had the
photographer print up and frame two very large portraits of
all my kids together. My husband and I each put
one of these in our home offices. Now this was
not cheap by any means, but I love seeing my
kid's faces in a place of honor in my house.

(03:36):
Perhaps you have a family member like a grandparent, who
would appreciate a framed photo of the grandkids, or even better,
a framed photo from somewhere you all went together. When
my husband's extended family all got together last summer, I
hired a photographer to come take some shots of all
of us. We were able to print up and frame

(03:56):
a portrait of my mother in law and all her
kids and grandkids to give to her. That is certainly
better than just having the photo on her phone. Now
you don't have to frame everything. It's good to just
print some photos on their own, print them for relatives,
send them in a card. It's a great way to

(04:17):
keep in touch. Use photos as bookmarks, pend them to
the bulletin board in your house where you put things
that you want people to see. Go ahead and order
a lot. Practically speaking, if shipping is involved, each additional
photo adds literally pennies to the cost. Most of the
cost is in the shipping, so you don't need to

(04:38):
hold back. Photos are a powerful way of capturing special moments,
and in this digital age, printed photos catch our attention
and feel particularly special. Framed photos feel even more so.
So spend a few minutes this week and a few
dollars turning those files on your phone into art. I

(05:00):
am guessing you will be glad you did. In the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.

(05:22):
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.