Update: 8/3/2010: After reading below, see my follow up to this post!
______________
Did the title get your attention? I’ve been spending so much time writing about photo book deals and coupon codes that I haven’t had the chance to take advantage of all the offers from various companies that I come across every day. I’ve been saying to myself – hmmm…I’d like to try this or that feature or try this company or that company. It can take a good amount of time and thought to put into making a great looking photo book and silly me kind of offered to make a photo book for my jet-setting-buddy who recently got hitched, and somehow I’m doing not one but three photo books for him. Boy, got to get to working on those…
Well, we all have a list of things that we mean to do and we try to find time to do them. Here’s a list of my “gotta try someday” as it relates to photo books:
Flush Mount Professional Wedding Photo Book
As you might have read in my post about making your own wedding photo book, as a newlywed, I’m planning to make my own professional wedding photo album using a company that has a lay flat or flush mount option. Some examples are below. Some may have a very small gutter between the two-page spread and some have no gutter at all for a seamless look. These albums stay open and lay flat so you don’t have to hold down the page to keep the book from closing.
Picaboo, Black River Imaging, AdoramaPix, Ritzpix, Lifephoto and Somerset Albums are just a few of the companies I’ve seen that offer flush mount or lay flat photo books. I have already made wedding photo books as gifts for our parents and family using MyPublisher, Blurb, Mpix and Snapfish, but I’d like to go a bit “high end” and higher quality on this next one. I’m contemplating one in the $300+ range. That would be the most I’ve ever spent on a photo book. If there’s any event that would warrant that, it would be a wedding! Promise to let you peek over my shoulder while I go through that process.
Portrait Size
I would like to try a portrait sized hard cover photo book rather than a landscape one. You get different layout options going with portrait style and if I’m really ambitious, I may work up some custom magazine-style layouts and use more narrative. Kind of like a travel magazine. This would be perfect to document a big trip like a honeymoon don’t you think?
Autofill
One day, I’m going to try one of those autofill functions and see how big brother would arrange a photo book. Maybe when I’m feeling all tapped out of creativity or lacking inspiration (which I hope never happens), but I could try the auto function first and then do a slight rearrange…I shouldn’t knock it until I try it. Anyone out there use autofill before?
Digital Scrapbook Photo Book
As you may have seen from my past photo books, I favor clean, streamlined designs and layouts. For an average 11×8 landscape book, I normally don’t pick any more than 4 to 5 photos per page and often I like to showcase a single large full bleed photo. I also normally don’t prefer to use captions for every photo. Instead I opt for a one-page narrative at the beginning of the book and break up sections of photos with what I call “title” pages. Clean. Modern. Simple. However, there’s just something a little decadent about going crazy with embellishments and overlays and I’ve admired many scrapbook type photo books I’ve come across on the web. It takes a certain skill to artfully layer photos and decorative elements. I find myself longing to throw a bunch of patterned backgrounds, stickers, borders, frames, shadows, and other do-dads on my photos and see what happens!
The Project that Never Ends…
I definitely have preferences for some photo book companies over others, but I certainly haven’t found a single company that fits every project. There is always room for another innovative company with a great product and customer service to match, so I hope to get a chance to try some of these new photo book deals soon and share my reviews with you. That way, you can tackle your “gotta try someday” photo book list!
hi