Happy Labor Day!

With the official holiday to close out the summer, it’s time to start thinking about what you want to accomplish by the end of the year. And if you want to make a photo book, one of the best ways to start is to organize your photo library.

An organized library saves you time whenever you decide to print your photos. You’ll know right where to find your favorite photos and they will already be edited and ready to print!

Let’s get started with an easy challenge finding recent photos you love.

Challenge: Selecting Your Favorite Summer Photos.

I want you to go through your photos from the summer – Memorial Day through Labor Day (for those not in the US, basically June, July and August photos) and select 10 of your favorite photos.

They could be all from a vacation or you could select photos that sum up your summer.

Don’t overthink this: just select up to 10 photos from the summer that put a smile on your face.

Now here comes the organization part. Make sure you rate, star or tag the photos you select with your preferred rating system.

If you’ve never used a rating system before, start now. Most photo organization programs allow you to give a star or number rating to your favorite photos. Here’s a screenshot from iPhoto showing how to rate your favorite photos by quickly hitting the “heart” on a photo you love.

Don’t skip this step. It’s what helps you organize the photos that you love so they are easily accessible.

Here are my favorite 10(ish) photos with some suggestions to help you select your favorites from the summer.

PORTRAIT

It’s always good to include a classic and a creative portrait of your kids. They grow up so fast, it’s great to have a static frame showing who they are at this very moment.

BEACH OR POOL

Select an image from time spend at the beach or the pool.

HOLIDAY

Select an image from celebrating a Holiday. This summer our kids had fun with sparklers for the first time.

EVENT OR MILESTONE

Select a photo from the summer for any special event or milestone achieved in your kids’ lives. My daughter’s second ballet recital occurred at the beginning of the summer.

SIBLINGS

A favorite of mine is whenever I get these two in the frame together.

PLACE

Usually summertime includes travel to exciting places…or exploring fun places close to home.

EPIC LANDSCAPE

If you traveled to an expansive place – like the beach, lake, mountains, forest – chances are you have a great photo of an epic landscape.

FAMILY TIME

Include a photo that documents a visit with family.

EVERYDAY

Even though summer includes vacations and fun trips…and it also means times at home. Here’s a photo of my son and his stuffed bear while watching a movie.

EMOTION

And I’m sure you have a photo of extreme emotion – happy, sad, anger, laughter – from the summer. My daughter was not too happy to learn that an animal had been messing with her fairy garden.

SOMETHING NEW

If you worked on your photography this summer, challenged yourself with a project, or tried something new, include a photo from this experimentation.

Feel free to share your favorite summer photos on instagram, #favesummerphoto and tag @bookthisproject to hold yourself accountable. Plus, I’d love to see your favorite moments from your summer!

White Background versus Black Background

When I’ve seen successful photo books with a black background, it’s typically for books containing a majority of black and white photos with high contrast – or – to create photo books a dramatic, enveloping mood. With a black background, it is easier to establish a high level of contrast or striking difference between the photos and the page.

An easy way to think about this is with interior spaces. I’m sure if you’ve been around pinterest, picked up an interior design magazine or watched HGTV at all, you’ve seen light and airy living rooms with clean white walls and maybe you’ve come across a more dramatic living room with dark walls. (And of course, all of the varying shades of paint color in between….but for this example, I want to stick with the extreme ends of the spectrum.)

Look at these two examples below found on pinterest. Are you immediately drawn to one example? What do you like about it? What feeling or emotion does it invoke? Or if you are indecisive like me and feel drawn to both – what are the characteristics of each that you like and how does that start to shape your vision?

For example, if you’ve returned from a tropical vacation and wanted to make a travel book of your photos, chances are you’d have a lot of colorful, vibrant photos. The colors in the photos may pop more against a white background. A black background may overwhelm the photos.

On the other hand, if you wanted to make a photo book of your street photography, those photos may have a high degree of contrast and stark divisions between the bright whites and deep blacks. A black background will help ground and immerse the photos and almost create a more intimate experience in which to view photos.

Comparing White and Black Backgrounds

As I mentioned at the beginning, using color really does come down to personal preference. So, I thought it would be fun to share two layouts with both a white and a black background for you to determine what you think works best.

Creative Use for a Color Background

The great thing about using a color background on important pages, particularly if it covers a decent amount of spreads, you’ll be able to quickly find this section of your photo book by looking at the edge of the book.

In my recently released Catalog Collection photo book template, I spent quite a bit of time analyzing catalogs and one of the things I noticed in a J. Crew catalog was their use of a white background for the pages featuring women’s clothing. For the men’s clothing, the pages had a small black border around the edge of the page. It created a bit of separation without it becoming too apparent. True to their brand, it was classic, refined, structured, and intentional.

How to Add a Color Background

Once I finished this photo book for my sister-in-law, I knew this was something I had to try for myself. While I do not have a major life-changing event, such as a having a baby, I still know that our lives change in subtle ways. And these shifts in our everyday routine become more apparent when they are documented in photos and printed in photo books. Once printed, the patterns of everyday life and how the evolve become more apparent after 6 months, 12 months, 2 years. 

By isolating your year to two days spaced out by 6 months, you have fewer photos to cull, edit, and export for a book. This makes it easier to focus on the design. To try something new with how to arrange the photos. To have more fun and experimentation with design elements.

I’ve set this up as a challenge to my Photo Book Club Members to work with me on documenting our life changes over time in a very unique photo book. The goal is to limit the type of photos – either by event or time span – in order to focus on the design vision and how to best represent the photographs. 

Now, some of the Photo Book Club members are using this as an opportunity to dig into their own archives to select photos that have repeated over time, such as frequent trips to Disney or Christmas mornings. Others are following  my goal to document a weekend in the life in the spring and again in the fall, six months later. 

I just wrapped up shooting my first weekend and will wait until late October before I shoot the next round. I thought it would be fun to share some of my photos from my first weekend. It’s been a while since I’ve been consistently photographing my family….so it took a bit of energy to remind myself to pick up the camera. But I’m glad I did and can’t wait to see what our life looks like in October! 

Want to make your own Two Days in Six Months Photo Book? Click here for advice and help to make this special project for your family.

You may have noticed that Blurb no longer offers BookSmart as part of the free software options. It’s now officially been replaced by BookWright.

While I’ll miss being able to create text styles and having a grid to help with design, there are a few aspects that I love about BookWright:

• being able to design as a spread (instead of customizing a single page at a time)
• setting up grid lines to create a custom margins for a photo book
• a more user-friendly interface

In this month’s tutorial, I’m explaining how you can make a small adjustment to Blurb’s 4-photo layouts to customize it to your photos.

Plus, if you’re starting to get a little frustrated with BookWright and ready to go all in with designing photo books, I’ll share how easy it is to design a 4-photo layout with InDesign.

Out of the box, here are the 4-photo grid layouts included in Blurb’s standard layouts:

It’s true, these layouts are centered and will work for a photo book, however, it’s important to recognize that these boxes don’t fit the standard proportions of a photo – creating more work for you later. You’ll have to adjust your photos if you don’t want them perfectly centered in the photo box.

And for some layouts, you may want more space around the photos without using a square box.

Here’s the finished layout I created in BookWright. It’s still centered but in this layout there is extra space at the top and bottom and the entire photo is shown on the page.

To see how I skipped the standard layouts and created my own 4-photo layout, watch this video:

Want to learn more? Sign up for my Photo Book Design Workshops. Registration is open now and workshop starts on March 20, 2017.

This week, my youngest, my little girl, starts kindergarten!

Two years ago, my oldest started kindergarten. As I’ve written before, it was a transition that I wasn’t too concerned with. As a baby and toddler, he always dealt with transitions like a champ. Kindergarten was a different scenario. We had a bit of a rocky start but after the first few months, he finally got the hang of navigating a larger school and making new friends. Eventually, he began to really love – and thrive – in school.

So with my youngest – I’m ready! For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been talking about school more. We’ve walked through what will happen on the first day. We spent more time in her classroom on orientation day so she could be familiar with the room. Hopefully, all of this will help her have a great first month of kindergarten!

With the start of every school year, it’s time for First Day photos. As I’m sure you’ve also heard me mention before: I’m not great with first day and last day of school photos. I completely buckle under pressure, never have a sign and always capture awkward poses.

A couple of days ago, I took this photo during our evening walk. My daughter had to wear her backpack for practice. And even though this is not technically on the first day of school, this photo acts as my back to school photo.

Look at them. I love how this photo captures each of their personalities. My son is completely not interested and my daughter is willing to strike a pose at any moment. –ha!

In addition to the traditional back to school photo, I try to take a more symbolic photo capturing the emotion or feeling of the day. When my son started kindergarten, this photo of my daughter watching him leave was priceless.

A year later, when he left for first grade, she gazed from the sofa.

I love how even though these were taken a year apart, they both represent a similar vibe. Bittersweet and longing.

And of course, there is the obligatory portrait. I love portraits! Here are both of my kids right before they started kindergarten. Do you see any resemblance?

This year, our story will be a little different. This time, both of my kids will be heading off to elementary school together. It’s a new transition to make. I’m not sure what my first day of school photo will look like….but I’ll be there to capture it.

And all photos – traditional, symbolic and portraits – will go in my annual photo book.

I love having a record of these milestones in my kids’ lives. I love capturing cheesy photos and photos that have more emotional weight. I love being able to design a book that combines both types of photos in one place.

If you’re interested in designing a photo book that speaks directly to your photographic style – a design that enhances the photos you have and improves the photos you take – my Intro to Photo Book Design Workshop is now open.

Once your kids head off to school, your routine shifts back to a more ‘regular’ normal. It’s the perfect time to accomplish printing your photos in a book. I’d love to work directly with you this fall, to accomplish your photo book goal.

And if you have a kid(s) heading off to school this year – I hope they have a great year!

Are you looking for inspiration to print your photos? Sign up for my free mini-workshop to receive 4 lessons and insights on why you should print your photos and how you can make it a reality.

ARE YOU DOCUMENTING YOUR SUMMER?

Here we are, halfway through summer! It’s hard to believe!!!

Whether you are participating in the 100 Days of Summer (taking a photo everyday this summer) or are capturing the fun activities you are doing with your kids while they are out of school, it’s always a great idea to print your photos.

Printing your summer photos in a photo book is a fantastic and manageable project to describe your summer in a way you’ll always remember.

If you own Lightroom but have never used the LR Book Module, check out this video tutorial to find out how easy it can be to make a Blurb photo book.

The steps are simple:

1. Tag your summer photos – use something like “100DAYS” or “2016summer”.
2. Create a smart collection using this tag.
3. Add any captions describing the photos.
4. With the smart collection selected, move into the Book Module.
5. Autofill the pages with a layout you want for a majority of the pages.
6. Edit layouts as needed to fit the content of the photos.
7. Add captions to the photos.
8. Review and print.

Now watch it all come together:

100 Days of Summer Tutorial from Stacey Wiseman on Vimeo.

Questions? Leave in the comments below!

Here’s to printing your summer photos!!!