You probably have a ton of photos in the cloud. Or they may be neatly organized into computer folders. But let me ask you this: Have you looked through all the pictures on your phone or your computer recently?
Be honest. You probably have not opened them in months.
Having digital photos is great for the purposes of storage, and even organization. But it is not the best way to display and enjoy them.
The easiest way to get photos out of the digital realm: photo books! If you have not yet explored this wonderful tool, I share with you 10 simple ideas for photo books to get you started!
Why photobooks?
You could certainly print your favorite photos and put them in a photo album. It is how it has been done for decades. Truthfully, it is also a cheaper way to go.
The reason you are probably not doing that is this: printing hundreds of photos is quite daunting! It is quite a chore to think about the sizes that you want and how you will fit them in an album. And you may be limited to how many photos you can fit in an album, so you will have to be very picky.
And this is why I love photobooks: they are so versatile!
You can be creative with the arrangement, layouts, photo sizes, and themes. The possibilities are endless.
To help you decide how you want to start arranging your photos, here are 10 ways you can use photobooks.
Simple Ideas for Photobooks
Travel
Ever since my husband and I started dating in late 2009, we have been adventuring and traveling as much as possible. I will say, this is all thanks to him! He is an expert traveler and knows the best ways to make it work! I digress.
We had SO MANY pictures and we were having a hard time remembering all the places we had been. I realized that I needed to start some sort of system so that we could look back and remember the trips we had taken. This is how I started with photo books.
There are two ways you could do this.
The first way is to have a summary of all the trips you took in a specified period of time. This is how I started because 1) We traveled regularly, and 2) We are weekend warriors due to time constrictions, so our trips tend to be short. It is difficult to come up with enough material to fill a book with only one weekend’s worth of travel, so it made sense for us to have a yearly summary.
The second option if you travel less frequently, but travel BIG, then it makes sense to have a separate photo book per trip.
Let’s say you finally went on that backpacking trip to Europe, or explored Australia and New Zealand for multiple days. Maybe you took your kids to a Disney cruise. You probably invested a lot of MONEY. You probably planned these trips for MONTHS. Needless to say, those trips would be MEMORABLE and you want to remember EVERY.LAST.DETAIL.
While we stick to yearly summaries, they only exception for us was our honeymoon trip. We went to Paris, to the Swiss Alps, and to Africa for a safari in a space of two weeks. The BEST trip of our lives deserved its own book!
Wedding
For our wedding, I made the mistake of purchasing a package that included printed pictures from the photographer. I am talking well over 400 printed photos. That is an INSANE amount of photos!
Because they were already printed and I did not want the photos (or my money) to go to waste, I ended up putting as many as I could in a normal album. I was obviously unable to do all the photos, so I still have hundreds that are just hiding inside a box.
Guys, I really wish I had just bought the digital package. I did make photo books for our wedding and sent them as gifts to our parents. It was SO MUCH easier setting up the photobooks than dealing with physical albums! And there was the perk that I could just make as many copies of the photobook as I wanted.
Baby Book
I think I would enjoy being crafty and making my own scrapbooks. But I am also a (wannabe) minimalist. Doing beautiful baby books and scrapbooks would require having an area to store all the cutesy things to put on the books. That does not work for me. I cannot stand clutter, and I do not have space to store too many crafts.
Using photo books to make baby books is a great way to record all the beautiful memories! Not to mention, you are probably already using your smartphone to take the pictures, so they are already in digital format. That is a lot easier than printing them out, other than to display them on a frame.
Family Yearbook
This is what we do now. As I mentioned we started with books focused on adventures. I arranged the trips in chronological order within each year.
After having kids, I started incorporating random aspects of daily life in addition to our travels. Not because we traveled less (we didn’t), but because I did not do separate baby books. For us, it is easier to have it all together.
If you choose to go this route beware: it does result in a THICK book.
Memorial
This is, sadly, a personal one. My father unexpectedly passed away recently. Throughout the arrangements for the funeral, we collected photos from as many people as we could. The funeral home arranged a video to play during the wake, and they created a photo book based on those pictures. They put together a nice book, but they did not know my father as I did.
I decided to make my own. It helped me in the grieving process. A form of catharsis.
I put together a memorial book from the moment he was born to the location of this resting place. I included as many details of his life as I could. His favorite things. Some of his trips. I put pictures of him holding each one of his grandchildren when they were born.
I made multiple copies and gave them to my siblings, my father’s siblings, and my grandmother. Now we all have a book about my father’s life. Even better, I have already used the book to talk to my own kids about their Nonno.
It is the best I can do to preserve his memory.
Gifts for grandparents
Grandparents LOVE pictures. The grandparents in our family are relatively well versed in the digital world and can handle smartphones just fine. But they still prefer to look at albums. Talk about an easy gift for Christmas, Mother’s day of Father’s day!
In the past, I have put together calendars with photos of all grandkids (not just my own kids) and gifted those to the grandparents. But it does need to be limited to grandkids. I have also put together calendars with pictures of MY grandparents to give to my mother. This could easily be done with photo books as well!
Kids Artwork
You will be collecting so many beautiful drawings, paintings, and scribbles from your children. You feel terrible discarding them, but they can also be a bit much! Granted, there are services that do this for you already, but you could also do this yourself!
Now that my son has started Pre-K, here’s what I will start doing:
- I will start the photobook project.
- I will take photos of his best artwork each week.
- Each week add the pictures to a single page of the book.
At the end of the year, I will have a 52-page photobook ready to print. The best past: I will be able to take advantage of Christmas time discounts!
Here is a bonus idea for you: Leave the last page blank and have your child write something special at the end of the year.
Portfolio
This is not only for the professionals out there, but any photography enthusiast such as myself.
And it does not even have to be just for photography! It can be for any other type of artwork that you want to preserve in a beautiful and organized way. If you are a painter, a confectioner, or an interior designer, you can easily use professional layouts to display your work in a photobook.
Pet book
We cannot forget our non-human family members. A pet parent snaps almost as many photos of their fur-baby as a human parent. Should those photos be forever confined to the digital kingdom?
No way! There are many occasions worth celebrating. The moment you received your fur baby as a puppy, or through adoption. Birthday celebrations. Funny occasions and cuddly moments.
Our pets are not with us for very long, so let’s make sure we celebrate them as well.
Instagram Yearbook
If you are like me, you probably already published your best photos on Instagram. Without realizing it, you have already selected your best photos. You probably already edited them and improved them for display.
In other words, you have already curated your best content!
All you have to do now is download them and print them out into a yearly Instagram photo book.
In conclusion
In case it is not obvious from this, I LOVE PHOTOBOOKS. Making them is a bit of a fun project for me, and I have been making them for over seven years now. I prefer them over physical albums for many reasons, but that is a post for another time ?
Do you use photobooks? If so, in what ways have you used them?
Leave your comment below!
Rosanna,
What a great list. I love making photo books. I’ve actually made 5 out of the 10 you’ve listed. My travel books are separate ones about big trips.
Keep up the good work.
Dawn