[germinalphrase]

Not long ago I was sitting with some long time friends I hadn't seen in a few years. It was one of those really great visits in which you remember exactly why someone is an important person in your life.

One of the things we ended up talking about was physical photographs and how our families had developed a natural curation and annotation system. "Keepers" get sorted and labeled on the back with names, dates, brief notes, etc. and placed in albums. There were a bore when we were younger, but now we appreciate having some long-lasting artifacts of our families' lives and history. This is a nice thing and differs in importance to my every day interaction with personal media.

If I had the talent, I would make a small journaling tool for myself. All I would ask it to do is remind me once a week to select a favorite photograph and make a brief note about who's in it and why it's important. Really, just 30 second a week. Then, one a year a nice, archivally printed photo album would show up on my doorstep with all of these photographs arranged and discretely tagged with names, dates, and notes. That's it.

[alanfalcon]

I like it. My wife subscribes to a service that will automatically print and mail her a small printed photo book for every X photos she favorites on her phone. It doesn't have the nice tagging and dates and notes, but it creates a chronological hard copy series of photo books that are great to have around, without requiring much forethought.

[rak00n]

What's the service?

[alanfalcon]

Chatbooks[1] - they're not glossy or high quality, but then a lot of the time the photos aren't either beyond the associated memories. And they're cheap so you don't have to stress over whether to hit the favorite button.

[1] https://chatbooks.com/favorite-photo-books/

[germinalphrase]

That service is pretty close.

It's also where I feel my otherness. My father was a professional photographer, I grew up playing around in the darkroom, so I do recognize that I have a bias toward high quality photo prints. One of those 'ignorance is bliss' things maybe.

The photos wouldn't need to be large, but the quality would need to be there or else I won't value them long term as distinct from digital files (which still command many advantages over physical media).