Prints or digital images: what should you actually choose?

High-resolution digital files are flexible, shareable and future-proof in a way prints are not. Grandparents overseas see them the same day. You can reprint in ten years at whatever size you want. They cost nothing to store.

Every one of our sessions includes hand-retouched digitals for exactly this reason. You are never buying back your own photographs.

Digital files get lost. Phones are replaced, laptops die, cloud subscriptions lapse, and the folder from 2019 quietly stops being opened. The photographs families still look at in twenty years are the ones on a wall or in an album.

If you take only digitals, do two things this week: back them up to a second location, and print at least a handful, even at a lab.

A fine art print is a different object to a chemist print. Ours are 11×14 inch archival prints at $49 + GST each — the same archival quality standard used for records kept at NSW State Records — on heavy cotton-rag stock that holds colour for generations rather than years.

This is the cheapest meaningful upgrade from digitals, and the one we suggest to families who are not ready for wall art.

We manufacture our floating frames in-house, by hand, in chocolate stain, black, white and limewash, and we help install them in your home. Wall art is the biggest investment and the one families are most nervous about — which is why we mock the pieces up against a photo of your actual wall during the reveal, at real scale.

The common mistake is going too small. A single 8×10 on a large wall looks apologetic; one properly sized piece beats five small ones.

An album suits sessions with a story arc — a maternity and newborn bundle, or a growing family across a year. It also survives toddlers better than a frame does, and it is the thing children pull off the shelf themselves.

• Walk your house and find the wall. If there is no wall, an album or fine art prints make more sense.
• Set a number before the reveal, and tell us. We will work to it rather than around it.
• Choose one hero image for the wall and a small set for prints — not fifteen contenders.
• Remember your digitals are already included, so anything printed is genuinely optional.

Within a week of your session we meet over video to choose your favourites, which Aline then hand-retouches personally, and to order any additional prints, canvas or albums. No pressure, no hidden costs, and no locked room. Your private online gallery stays open for thirty days.