What to do with all the photos after losing a pet

In the weeks after a pet dies, the phone is a minefield. You scroll back to last September to find a recipe and a video of them sleeping on the rug opens up instead. You delete an old photo to free space and discover three thousand more behind it. Camera Roll is full of someone who is not coming back.

People ask us, often: what do you do with all the photos? Here’s what we’ve seen the families we make memorial frames for actually do.

The first answer: don’t do anything, yet

The instinct after a loss is to organise — to give the grief somewhere to go. People delete duplicates, archive entire albums, build slideshow-tribute videos at 2am. Almost everyone who does this regrets it in the first six months. A photograph that felt like nothing in March feels precious in August.

Wait until you can sit with the camera roll for ten minutes without crying. That’s the right moment to start curating, not before.

The shortlist of ten

When you’re ready: open the camera roll, set a timer for thirty minutes, and pick ten photographs. Just ten. The criterion is not “best shot” — the criterion is this looks like them.

That shortlist is the working set. It’s what you’ll use for a framed memorial print, a small album for the bedside, the photograph you send to family who lost them too, the lock-screen if you keep one. Everything else stays in the camera roll. Don’t delete.

What to print

One photograph deserves the frame. The others want a small album — physical, not a video — that lives on the bookshelf or the bedside. The album matters because it’s pickup-able: you can open it on a rough evening and close it. A frame holds the room; an album holds the hand.

What about the videos

Videos are harder. We don’t recommend curating them in the first year — the moving image carries the loss differently than the still. Keep them. Don’t delete them. Don’t make a tribute video. The day will come when you want to hear them snoring; let that day come.

On the photo for the frame

Pick the one that makes you smile first. The portrait in the frame will be the photograph you see most often — at the mantel, on the desk, by the kettle — for decades. A photograph that holds joy ages better than one that holds the ending. The grief is not in the picture; the grief is in you. Put the joy on the wall.

A note on the engraved plate

If you commission a framed print with a name and a set of years engraved beneath, the years are the years they were with you. Some people use full life span; some use the years they were yours. Both are correct.

When you’re ready to choose the photograph and place the order, we’ll proof the print digitally for your approval, and we don’t print until you’ve signed off. If we don’t think the photograph will hold the likeness, we’ll say so and ask you to send another. The portrait either looks like them or it doesn’t ship.