Photo Books: Capturing Life’s Everyday Moments, Not Just Milestones
Making photo books is a fun way to share photos from your recent vacation or pictures from the highlights of the past year. But sometimes there are so many photos we want to include that we get overwhelmed or completely overthink the process.
I went through that while making a photo book for my daughter as a graduation gift. I spent countless hours looking at photos and scanning memorabilia to make sure I had all of the “just right” pictures. Then I spent countless hours creating the book, editing it, adding to it, editing it again, and finally forcing myself to push the order button. It was a labor of love, but it was exhausting! (And I’m a professional!)
What I would like you to consider is that a photo book doesn’t have to commemorate a momentous occasion or reflection on a life well-lived, even though those are fabulous ones to make. I would like to propose that photo books that capture something silly or a theme you’ve noticed in your photos can be just as meaningful as a wedding album or a year in review.
Photo Books Can Be Simple
Case in point: My family goes to the beach every year. We’ve been doing it since I was 5 years old, and my children have gone almost every summer of their lives. We all have great memories of being on the beach with family and friends at various stages of our lives.
One of my kids’ favorite beach activities is digging holes: big ones, small ones, ones that fill with water. They like to sit in the holes, play in the holes, get buried in the holes, and even look for shark teeth in the holes. It is a recurring theme of our family beach week. This year our daughter, who is now 26, even reminded us to bring the good shovels!
As we looked at photos in my daughter’s graduation book, I made the offhand comment that I enjoyed looking at the years and years of beach photos, and I could make a photo book of just the holes. We all got a good laugh about that.
When the craziness of graduation passed, and my brain could think again, I decided I was going to do just that: make a photo book with just pictures of the beach holes that we have created over the past couple of decades.
First I looked through my years of beach photos and found as many “hole” pictures as I could. One of the benefits of having all your photos digitized and labeled is being able to do this quickly and easily. Then I made copies of them in a single folder on my computer with plans to delete all the copies after the project was complete.
For this project, I chose to use Mixbook for my photo book company. Using their photo book creation tool, in less than two hours I made a very simple book that highlighted “hole” photos from 1984 when my sister was little up until 2017 when my children were very grown teenagers. I used a very simple template with white pages, and I added the bare minimum of text (basically just the dates). The result is not only a look back at all of the holes we’ve dug but also a chronicle of the growth of all the kids over the years.
Now I take this photo book with me on our annual Beach Week to continue to share the memories. That’s part of the fun of making photo books.
Most of our “kids” are now legally adults, and some of our adults still act like kids, but I know when we return to the beach year after year, there will be some major holes dug, and fun will be had by all. And we can all enjoy looking at our family’s history of digging holes.
What is the least “momentous” photo book you’ve ever made?
If you need help getting your photos ready for a photo book or making the photo book, let’s talk.
About the Author
Andi Willis started Good Life Photo Solutions after searching for photos of her late father and realizing how easily a family’s memories can slip away. Now a Certified Professional Photo Organizer with more than 15 years of experience, she helps families across the country bring order to overwhelming photo chaos and preserve the stories that matter most. She works from Smithfield, Virginia.
If your own photos feel like too much to face alone, that is exactly the kind of puzzle we solve.
More Photo Organizing Tips
Affiliate Disclaimer:
This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of these links, Good Life Photo Solutions LLC may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Your support helps sustain our small business, and we truly appreciate it! For more details, please read our disclosure policy.
Pin Me!
I just love this! How fun! One of the “downsides” of the digital era for me is the loss of having printed photos. We did make books of many of our vacations, and we look at them often. I wish we had made more. Maybe I’ll take this on as a little project to make a few with fun themes like beach holes! Great idea:)
I think people of our generation (ahem!) appreciate a printed photo (a print or in a book) more than our kids since our photo collections straddle the print and digital age. It’s never too late to print a print or make a book!
Oh, I love this idea! I’m in the process of organizing my photos (very slowly I might add) so I’ll have to be alert to possible themes.
Slow and steady, Janet! You’ll get there. You’ll be surprised all the “small” themes you find.
I love this idea. I just recently bought a small photo album from the dollar store and filled it with pictures of my family from early days and gave it to my dad for Father’s Day. It was a huge hit at our family gathering.
It always makes my heart glad to hear of families gathering photos. Such a great bonding experience!
When my son was born I started making “family yearbooks” through Shutterfly. My son is 6 now and loves looking at them. He calls them “the Ben books” because really they’re all about him! You’ve got me thinking that maybe I should create one with just me and my husband. 😉
That’s so sweet. I need to do a better job with family yearbooks. I have done a few and we all love them.
What a beautiful idea! And I’m guessing that your family just LOVED the book of holes. I’ve made all types of photo books over the years…initially the non-digital ones, and later the digital type. I’m not sure what the least momentous book was, but one comes to mind. For years, my husband’s mother sent an old photo and very short story (as in a few sentences short) to our daughters on their birthdays. I think we collected 10 or 12 in all. My intent was to make a book for them with these. However, time passed and I never did. The stories were mostly about my husband (their Daddy) growing up. Fast forward many years later after my mother-in-law had passed away, and I came across this collection. I decided to make a photo/story book as a gift for my husband’s birthday. He loved it! And the book is available to share with our daughters too.
What a treasure no matter when received!
This is awesome! I was actually working on a book last night of our beach vacations and the same thought came to me about our love of ice cream at the beach! Every year, year after year, there is ice cream and plenty of it!!! Thanks so much for sharing!