Make a Photo Book
/
Digital pictures. We are all taking them these days. And what are we doing with them? If you are like me, you are collecting them. And lots of them. Now that the incremental price of each additional photo you snap is approaching zero cost, you are taking more and more photos. And they are going no where. Except for your hard drive, where they are piling up. In this blog post, I’m going to suggest that you create photo books to save and archive your photos. At the end of this post, I’ll point you to a comprehensive overview of 12 different book printing services recently referenced by LifeHacker.
In the old days when we used film, we would take a half-dozen photos at a birthday party, making sure everyone posed nicely for the camera with the birthday cake. Now, the sky is the limit. We are taking candid photos of all the fun throughout the party with our cameras and cell phones. There are photos everywhere! We send them in email to each other, or via a MMS message. But how many are we printing anymore? Hint: not very many… When was the last time you shared a set of printed photos with your family or friends? Rather, we are creating huge digital archives of our lives that tenuously exist as nothing more than a tiny magnetic charge stored on a set of spinning platters inside our hard drives… And we place more trust in these hard drives than we do our cars (where we at least have periodic maintenance!). Guess what? Hard drives don’t last forever either...
So, what better place than here to make sure I remind you to back up your hard drive. Once or twice, at least. You should burn them to CDs or DVDs, or use an external hard drive. And store those backups in different locations. Maybe you’ll want to buy an additional small hard drive and store it off-site with a family member or friend. Or choose an online storage location like Carbonite, BackBlaze, or Mozy to name a few. Don’t trust your hard drive not to fail. It will. They don’t last forever. Neither do your computers.
For more than five years, my friends have heard me describe the first decade of this century as the one that will be known in the future for being the one where good intentioned parents will have to explain to their children that they don’t have any of those cute newborn baby pictures because of a hard drive crash where they lost all their photos. Or any other photos from the life events that we record in photographic format -- weddings, reunions, birthday parties, vacations, etc. And, as we begin this decade, I don’t see mass adoptions of backup strategies, yet I hear about hard drive crashes and malware infections all the time. It may turn out that a whole generation of family photos are lost before we are either backing up our photos religiously, or before there is a convenient (read: transparent) way to back up our digital lives.
So, backup those files! Do it for the children. They’ll be happy one day. Trust me.
Now, back to the topic at hand. If you talk to your local photo shop owner about how many photos they are printing these days, you are likely going to hear a story about a decline in business. My local store has broadened their offerings and now include custom framing and an in-house portrait business. My local Rite Aid drugstore has a sophisticated one-hour photo printing system in one corner, and I’ve never seen it running. My local Walgreens has one too, but they let me upload my photos from home. Plus they often have weekly coupon codes you can find online for extra savings. Guess where I get my photos printed? It’s 2010 after all, we should be able to expect this, especially since there are countless online companies ready to mail me printed photos for about ten cents each. This is the perfect solution when I choose to make a few prints to share with my family and friends. As you might expect, there is never a line there when I go to pick up my photos. And these photos are always ready in under an hour -- it’s as if they are waiting for someone to order some prints. Probably because they are. The bins behind the counter that hold photos for pickup are nearly empty and there has never been any confusion finding my order.
And, I’m not going to help matters for my local photo printers with this blog post...
Rather, I’m going to suggest a new way to archive those favorite photos. Create photo books. Plain and simple. Photo books allow you to tell your story with your photos, and preserve your best and favorite photos forever. Since they are in a book, it is something you can share with your family and friends. And, if they really like it, you can print a second copy for them. Or give books as gifts. And, guess what? There are a number of companies who specialize in printing photo books for ordinary people like you and me. You don’t have to be a wedding photographer or own a photography studio to get high quality books printed with your photos inside. And, you don’t have to be a graphic designer to create your very own book. All you need to get started are your own digital photos, a few hours of time, and a credit card.
So, let’s say that you took 1,000 pictures last year. You may have taken them at a few birthday parties, maybe a wedding, at the arrival of a new child, a vacation, a family reunion, and you probably even took a handful while spending good times with friends. Plus, I’m sure you have some other family events, social group events, or things you do for a hobby. No matter what the subjects are for your photos, they tell your own personal story. You might choose to create a theme book to document a great time you would like to remember forever, or you might choose to create yearbooks that cover everything that happened in your life during the past year. And, what better way to document the story of your life than to publish it in a book. Now, I’m not talking about writing a book to sell on Amazon. Of course you could do that if you think someone outside your family and friends would care to read your story, but odds are good that few others would care.
What format should your photo books take? The options are only limited by your imagination. And, the companies who print these books even have options for you if you’re not very creative. You’ll have options for different sizes, different papers, hard or soft covers, etc. And then you get to choose the subject, topic, or theme for your book.
What about your old photos and negatives? Well, there are options for that also. You’ll have to scan your negatives or prints before you can begin to create your new book. There are two options for you here -- buy your own scanner and learn how to do this, or send your negatives/prints to a service where experts will do this for you. For me, I’ll be doing both. My most precious photos aren’t leaving my house; so I’ll be scanning them myself. But my other photos and negatives are going to be shipped out, because my time is worth something! I haven’t done this yet, but I plan to try Scan Cafe first.
So, you might be asking yourself, how much is this book going to cost me? Well, the answer is simple. They start at around $20-$30. And the price goes up from there depending on how many pages you include, what kinds of paper you choose, and what kind of cover you select for your book.
Remember when you used to use film? Suppose you were taking 500 photos each year. Out of all those photos, how many would you say are your favorites, or you best shots? Maybe 50 or 100? In the days when we all used film, if you took 500 photos in a year, that would be about 20 rolls of film. At $5 per roll to buy, and about $10 to print, you would have spent $300 to capture & print those photos. That works out to $3 for each of your 100 favorites! Where are those photos now? In a shoebox stored in the attic? Or in an album? Are they telling a story? Or are they collecting dust? Mine are… Compared to what we used to pay for photo printing, these photo books are a bargain.
Last week, LifeHacker featured an article about making photo books in a blog post written by Jason Dunn. Jason has done his own personal test of 12 different book printing services. He created the same book at each of these services, and he has written the ultimate 15 page blog post to describe his project, his test methodology, and his results. He even includes YouTube videos to show you the results of the work from each vendor. That’s right -- 12 videos describing in 2-6+ minutes each the results he got from each company. This level of detail in his 15,000+ word review earns the fabled “GrumpyHerb Seal of Approval” because of his attention to detail and exhaustive search to do the best possible job and then share it with us. My only disappointment with his review is that he did not try out the book service offered by Apple via their iPhoto and Aperture programs. And, there are probably more companies that he didn't try - but the fact that he did such a comprehensive review of 12 vendors more than makes up for this omission.
This is what has convinced me to make photo books with my digital photos. The price for a book or two for all my photos from last year, along with the ability to share the book, keep it on my bookshelf, and easily review the story of my life at some time in the future make this decision easy for me. Besides, just like backing up your data, there is a good reason to make photo books - Do it for the children! They'll be happy one day. Trust me.