Family photos are more than heirlooms. They’re more than reminders. Family photos are historical artifacts. They’re emotional stimulants. If you really want to get poetic in thinking about this, any photograph is essentially a time machine.
You take the picture, see it later, and the image brings your mind back to where it was when the photo was taken.
Family photos allow you to travel back into those memories. You can look at a photo, remember when it was taken, the smells in the air, the time of day, how you felt, what you thought, what you were doing, what friends were doing-and the details just keep bubbling to the mind’s surface as you stare in reverie. It’s part of how the mind works.
So with the pictures of you and yours, you want to find a way of both preserving and portraying them. Certainly you want them safely in a physical photo album somewhere.
But additionally, it’s a neat idea to display them. You can do this a variety of unique, interesting ways, and in this writing, we’ll cover a few.
A Wall Collage
One of the most popular ways of displaying photos is to group them together in a wall collage. Essentially, you get some copies of your favorite pictures (because that’s extremely easy to do today; especially if you’ve got them backed up digitally), cut out the relevant bits of them, group them together in an aesthetic way, then attach them however best suits you to the wall.
You could have a wall that is wallpapered in pictures of your family, if you wanted. Another way you could put them together is to attach those pictures atop a bulletin board, and then apply some surface glue to keep them properly rooted to the board, as well as a pleasing sheen.
Traditional Displays From Hobby Lobby, Or Elsewhere
Traditional picture displays are pretty neat, and they come in all manner of design. Some are just a frame with slots of different size where you can fit in pictures as it suits you.
Some are configured into abstract but attractive shapes. It all depends on what moves you, what’s available where you are, and what’s available should you be willing to order things online.
You can even make your own picture display. Dioramas, frames, circular configurations, pictures checkered between mirrored tiles-whatever moves you, you can do; it just depends on how much work you want to put in. If you haven’t explored digital picture displays, those are a fine option, also.
Unique Scrapbooking
Scrapbooking is similar to keeping a photo album, but not quite the same. Scrapbooking tends to have a much more aesthetic quality to it.
Whereas a photo album may hide in a closet on a shelf somewhere, a scrapbook is meant to be the centerpiece of the “family room”, or wherever you keep family heirlooms.
While you can just get creative and see what you come up with, it’s also fun to see what those who have devoted serious time in their life to scrapbooking have put together. For more scrapbook tips, follow the link to find a downright great way to save your family photos.
The Macro Portrait
Now this is often done using digital programs, and here’s how it works: essentially, you superimpose a picture of a family member, or your whole family, over a bunch of smaller images.
When one stands back, it looks as though each small picture is a pixel, and all of them together are the larger image.
With family photos, you can use the computer to organize you, then print duplicates of favorite pictures, grouping them together into a large-sized portrait maid to fill up an entire wall somewhere.
Displaying Your Photos Beautifully
Beautiful display of family photos is almost an imperative. You may want macro portraits, it could be amenable for you to do a little scrapbooking, some folks tend to rely on display frames secured from retail outlets like Hobby Lobby, and using an empty wall as a canvas for a collage makes a lot of sense.
So be creative, and find ways of putting your family pictures on display that ultimately move you. One thing is sure: if all you’re doing with family photos is keeping them in a closed volume hidden in a closet somewhere, well, you’re missing out.