Making Photo Books

How do you share your photos?

In the 60's we pulled out the Kodak carousel projector when we had people over for dinner and we needed some after dinner entertainment. Slides were loaded in and photos were shared. Pet peeves were blank spots in the carousel when the screen went blank. Some people got tired and feel asleep and snored loudly after the dinner meal. The slide show became a poor way to share your treasured memories.

Affordable hand held photography followed. The audience could look in a more intimate setting the photos to be shared. The media was still 35 mm or newly invented "disks" and hand held photo albums. The photographer could share photos in any light with a friend or two without getting out the projector and waiting until dark to share the memories.

Slide shows made a come back when web pages were designed.When I was making them, I even figured out a code to put multiple photos timed through the webto make a slide show. The audience needed to be sitting at a computer however to see the photos that were displayed along with the text. The computer got personal photography back to the setting of commentary with the photos as slide show and photo albums had done before. The computer screen took the place of the projector. The computer screen usually made this photography more intimate and user interactive. Now people use facebook or twitter to share their stories and photos instantaneously. The sagas are short and the photos are quick and often poorly formed.

Dad has been real good about framing my favorite travel photos. My Epson stylus photo 1800 does a great job of cranking out photos that are 13 by 19 inches. We have been rotating framed photos of our trip and it is really great to have these beauties on the wall. Not everyone has a lot of wall space or a good framer. Wall space and big framed photos is another mode to share your memories.

Along the continuum back around the horn, personal photo books are starting to bring back the element that the photo album had. Their advantage is that the photo books are usually edited and contain a printed story in parts that many photo albums were missing. Again we are morphing into the stand alone from the personal annotated works of the 80's and 90's. They can be fingered with photos not being ruined by their display. They are more expensive but multiple copies may be made and shared.

I have just completed two personal photo books. Both of the books were printed by Apple directly from Apple's professional photography program Aperature 3. The product is shipped off electronically to Central Point Oregon and the books arrive in beautiful printed form in about a week.

There are other players in the photo book world besides Apple. Snapfish is a favorite vendor for my friend Tom who makes photo books of his light house quests. I see that Costco is also getting into the personal photobook business too.

Some books are hard bound and very large. My first one is of that nature. It is 23 pages of Glacier National Park in July. Some photos stretch across both pages. In this book because it is a photo/picture book without a significant amount of writing has no more than one photo per page. The second book that I made is a book that celebrates the various stops and attractions along the way. It is a much smaller book and it has some pages were two or more photos and considerably more text is used. I am going to make sure that all of those participants on the cruise will get a copy. It is softbound, smaller overall, and reflects more of the journey than the single subject Glacier Bay book affords.

I can hardly wait until the second book arrives. The Glacier Bay book I feel is a real success. After all our homes have only so much room for framed photos. Glacier Bay is truly a special place. Its magnificence can barely be shown in a book. I am hoping that the trip overall will be nicely annotated by the photo book.

Consider making a photo book with your latest trip photos.

: ) Pat