Yesterday, I showed you how I took some photographs on a crowded beach during our recent vacation.
Today, I want to show you how to incorporate your vacation photos into your annual family photo book.
Q: We just got back from vacation and I would love to put some photos in my annual family photo book. But I have a lot of photos. How do I decide which photos to use and how to place them in my book?
A: Yes! You should definitely put some of your vacation photos into your annual photo book. But it is easy to see how you could get overwhelmed with the number of photos…I have a couple of suggestions for you.
1 : Decide how many pages you want to include in your book.
This depends on how many pages are in your book – and – how long your vacation was.
If you have a 400 page photo book, it is easier to fit more vacation photo pages in your book. If your annual photo book is only 100 pages, and it was a week trip (or less), I recommend only one spread. (Unless you don’t take as many photos throughout year as I do.)
My annual photo book is 240 pages with about 20 pages per month. So I’m going to use 2 spreads (4 total pages) for my book.
Another family book I have designed, they took a very long vacation in June, so I devoted the whole month to their vacation.
2 : Decide how many photos you want on these pages.
Once you know the target number of pages, you can decide how many photos you want to include. Use a rating system in order to narrow down your photos. Keep in mind the orientation and the content of the photos. You may only want to show certain photos that really tell the story.
If you have so many more photos that you can’t decide, design your own vacation book. That way you can include a lot of your vacation photos and only include your very favorite in your annual family book.
3 : Decide on the look of the layouts.
If you are familiar with this blog, you know I recommend designing your layouts while you are selecting your photos. How can your photos inform your layouts? Are they mostly horizontal? Vertical? Do you have a couple of standout photos? Or are you wanting to collage a collection of them together? Are they color? Black and White?
For my recent vacation, I had a lot of horizontal photos but one main vertical photo of my son on his boogie board. I decided I wanted to find one horizontal photo that could work as a full spread bleed. Then I would use the second spread as a collage, mixing in my vertical photo, with some beach portraits and another fun photo really showcasing the beach.
Here is what I came up with.
I hope this Q&A has helped you with how to incorporate vacation photos into your book.
Leave a comment below letting me know where you went (or are heading) for your vacation this summer!
And stay tuned…in August I hope to have a custom book design option for your vacation photos.
