Recently I completed three photo encaustic pieces for a client. She provided the old family photos and I turned them into encaustic works.

I'm thrilled that she and her husband loved the three pieces enough to commission another one! Above is the original photograph after I scanned it. And here's the finished encaustic:

Mum and Baby

© 2012 Susan Stayer

Encaustic, 8 x 6 inches

Private Collection

I really enjoy giving new life to old photos. I hate to see photos languish in a box somewhere, unlooked at and unloved. 

All this got me thinking about the current state the the photo print. While I was visiting Ohio, I was talking with my family about how kids nowadays don't really have small prints of photos in an album or a box. My sister-in-law said she's got almost no physical prints of her two kids. They're all images on electronic devices, unless someone happened to give them prints. When my brother-in-law's smartphone died, he lost all the images on it.

I think that's a real shame. There's something truly wonderful about holding a photograph in your hands or flipping through pages in a photo album. To me that's the difference between photographs and images.