10 Tips for Creating a Photo Book

In the northern hemisphere, the summer travel season is almost upon us. We will soon be packing our sunscreen, bathing suits, hiking boots, reading material, and digital devices for our next big adventure. While on vacation, it is great fun to post pictures of our feet on the beach or group shots taken at arm’s length, but footsies and selfies don’t tell the story of our great adventure in the same way as a photo book. With today’s technology, your images, and a little know-how, you can create photo books equal to your experiences.

1) Why make a photo book?

Online photo galleries are convenient, free, and a great way to view your images from anywhere in the world with internet access. These galleries are quickly becoming the electronic equivalent of the box of printed images stored under your bed or on the back shelf of your closet.

Each of these images, whether stored in digital or print format, is a moment in time you experienced. Each snapshot captures and records a bit of your story. Photo books allow you to choose those special moments that when viewed together tell your story – or the story you wish to create.

2) Creating a photo book in the best format

On Lulu you can create photo books in both hard and softcover formats in a variety of sizes. When making your choice consider the following:

• Where will this photo book be displayed – on your coffee table, bookshelf, etc.?
• Is this photo book for personal use or will you be purchasing lots of copies for friends and family?
• Is the subject matter of momentous import – does it tell the story of your life, your child’s milestones, the vacation of a lifetime?

The story you are telling will help determine the proper format for your book.

3) Tell your story with photos

The best photo books have a cohesive theme and tell a story. They are not just a collection of your very best photographs. Think about the story you wish this book to tell and select images that tell that story. This is not to say that you can’t include those beautiful sunsets, landscapes, and pictures of lovely buildings, but you should use these as a means to set the stage for your story rather than allowing them to be the star.

4) Select the right images

A well-crafted story requires atmosphere, character development, and a tight plot. The same applies to your photo book. Careful image selection is the first and often most difficult step of putting together a photo book. Our natural tendency is to include every picture from our latest adventure. When selecting images for your photo book, remember you have a limited number of pages to tell your story and think about how can you tell this story with the images you captured?

5) Include what you want to remember

When sorting through your pictures, you may think, “How silly – who would want to look at a picture of ___?” If the answer is “I would,” that’s reason enough to include it in your photo book. We all want to make an interesting and beautiful keepsake from our experiences, but in the end, these are your memories and this is your book. Make it yours by including images of the moments you don’t want to forget.

6) Image order – Telling the story

Once you have selected the images that best tell your story or tell it the way you want it told, start putting them in order. Consider the flow of the narrative provided by the pictures. Avoid grouping all the landscapes, buildings, and food shots together on a page. Instead, use these images as filler to provide atmosphere to your story.

One way to present your story is to create your photo book in a linear fashion (“On the first day we did this. On the second day…”). Another option is to place complimentary images on adjacent pages or in a collage of similarly themed pictures such as food, shopping, or selfies. Remember, it’s your story, how do you want to tell it?

7) Presentation is everything

Once you have selected your photos, think about how they are going to appear on the page. The Lulu photo book wizard provides a variety of book themes and page layouts. Choose a theme befitting the story you are telling, then have a look at the available page layouts. Themes and layouts help you to further organize and more effectively present your images. Depending on the book size and selected theme, page layouts will include full-page images for your best photos, as well as pages with two, four, six or eight frames for grouping similar shots.

8) Is your picture worth a thousand words?

Text and image captions are not required, but they can add useful details to your photo book. Include information like the date, place, name, or event if it is not readily apparent from your image. When adding text to your photo book, use the same font throughout to provide cohesiveness and place text so that it compliments your images rather than overwhelming them. Text should serve as a prompt to help you tell the story and recall the details.

9) What about the cover?

There are several cover designs to choose from in the Lulu photo book wizard. You can choose to insert a picture into a frame or select a cover that is created entirely from your image.

Regardless of the cover format you use, the image you place on the cover of your photo book should capture the feeling of the book as a whole. It can be an image included in the book or an image you select specifically for the cover. The image should be of high quality and immediately identifiable with the book’s story. For example, a wedding album cover should include a picture of the happy couple, a travel album cover may include an iconic picture from the destination, and of course, a baby book would include a picture of the baby on its cover.

10) Keepsake albums

Like the scrapbooks of yore, today’s photo books allow you to capture, organize and present your digital memories. Instead of paper, tape and glue, you choose a theme, upload your pictures, then drag and drop them onto the page. The best part of creating a digital album is that you can experiment with different themes and page layouts until you have a photo book that’s perfect for you. A bound photo book printed on high quality photo paper is a much better way to tell the stories of your life than either that forgotten box of prints or those electronic photo galleries.