Question: What should I do with the photos from my family event?

Answer: There are tons of options, but I love giving these kinds of photos as gifts, using them to create family heirloom albums, and reusing them on things like invites and shirts for the next year’s event! The opportunities are endless, but they all start with having a photographer attend your upcoming family event.

Family events need photos too!

Sometimes, when you book a family photo session, that’s an event in itself. Like, you get all of your favorite people together, to get in front of the camera, and make magical memories. And that’s fair! Having a photo session is allowed to be a fun event you do with your family – especially if it’s something you do regularly, and you make it into a tradition.

But that’s not the only way to end up with amazing photos of your family, together, having a great time! What do I mean? Well since you’re here… I’m guessing you already know, I mean by having a photographer attend your family event. Anniversary parties, birthdays, reunions – all of them are amazing opportunities to document the people you love most, enjoying being in the same space.

It’s rare to have everyone together.

After all, having your family all together? It’s not a common thing. So when you’re all in town for your parents’ anniversary party? When you get together for your cousin’s vow renewal? Or when you’re all spending the afternoon together for your niece’s christening? Those are amazing opportunities to bring in a photographer, who will make sure you remember the moments you might’ve missed since you can only be in one place at a time.

But when it comes to family event photography, I’m guessing if you’re here, you’re already on board with how important they are. You get it. So I’m not going to beat that one to death today – instead, we’re going to talk about some of the ways you can use the photos you end up with after your family event photography! It’s so easy these days for photos to just gather digital dust on a hard drive somewhere in a box once you’ve got them. And if that’s what happens… then you’re not getting everything out of your photos that you should be!!

Using family event photos as gifts

The biggest way I love recommending to use family event photos, is for gifts you give to your favorite people throughout the year. Mothers’ Day gift for your mom? Taken care of. Christmas for that family member who already has EVERYTHING? With regular family photos taken, you’ve got an annual gift that can become a tradition in itself.

I know families who order everyone a Christmas ornament of a photo from their family reunion each summer, and after a few years, they’ve got a collection of physical mementos of their family through the years. What’s cooler than that?

And in this day and age, it’s easier than ever to get creative with the actual product you print the photo on. There’s always the classic “framed print” direction, which we’re going to talk a little bit about in the next section – but there are tons of more creative options you can consider. You can have photos printed on everything from acrylic blocks, to novelty socks, so your options span all the way from super-chic, to basically white-elephant. So whether you’re going for “sweet smiles” or “vaguely chaotic laugh-crying” when your recipient opens it… you’ve got options!

Printing heirloom memories from Family Event Photos

I mentioned I’d be coming back to the classics, because you can absolutely always use your family event photos for prints, albums, and more timeless options – and in fact I highly recommend it. You can have a devoted frame in a gallery wall in your home that gets changed out every year, for example. Or, you could create a space intended to show off the images of your family together over the years, that gets added to each time you hold a family event where your photos are updated.

But it doesn’t have to stop at your walls, you can also go old-school, and have heirloom albums made for your family events for each year, or for a collection of years all smooshed together. I call these kinds of items “heirlooms” because that’s, at the end of the day, what they are. When you have an album printed, you’re investing in an item that can be passed down in your family for years. And with archival options available, and easy-clean, water and UV resistant pages, you can trust that the albums you print today will still be gorgeous when your grandkids are flipping through them in your livingroom years and years from now.

Our digital era has changed the way we interact with the past – philosophical, I know. But it’s true! We’ve all got that memory, whether recent or from years back, of going through old albums of printed photos from back when our parents or grandparents had point-and-shoot photos printed, and slid into the sleeves of a photo album, right? Doesn’t exactly have the same vibe as scrolling through images on a hard drive. But we don’t have to lose that experience, just because we live in an increasingly digital world! And heirloom albums make it happen.

What about next year?

Beyond gifting and heirlooms, there’s a whole other category of things you can do with your family event photos after they’re taken! For example, if the event is a reunion? Have you considered shirts for your next year? They’re super nerdy, fair. But definitely a classic to consider!

And if the event is an anniversary or a birthday – you’ve got even more that can be done with them! Imagine being able to, when your little one is 18, gift them an album of photos pulled together from each of their birthday parties over the years. Images of them hugging their grandparents, or playing that board game you always gather around the table for. Not in a digital album that they’ll store away on their laptop and never look at again – but as a gorgeous, heirloom quality album, that they can take with them wherever they go, to remember where they came from, and everyone who loved them on the way there.

Anniversary event photos can be done similarly – gifting an album at your parents’ 50th anniversary of their love through the years? Pure. Magic.

Looking for a photographer for your next Minneapolis family event?

So if you’re looking to add photography to your next Minneapolis area family event – we should talk. I want you to be able to look back at these times together OFTEN. Not just when you go through your digital archive to take a trip down memory lane. I want them to be hung in your home, and scattered all over your life like mystical memory confetti. With the world as chaotic as it is these days, we all need more real, physical reminders that we are loved.

And not to be too emotional, but it’s an honor to be the person who helps make that happen for a family.