Photo Books | Preserving Our Family Memories

I'm excited to share a glimpse of what has been a time consuming (yet very fun and rewarding)  undertaking this summer, catching up on 3 years worth of family photos!  After seeing friends, Linsey (her new blog here) and Jenny, create gorgeous photo books to preserve their family memories, I was inspired to do the same.  Old high school yearbook editing skills, don't fail me now!  

In the past, I would print 4x6 photos and tuck them in leather bound photo albums, which has worked perfectly well, up to a point.  Photo albums don't tell a story the way a photo book (or blog post) does, also they are made up of all 4x6 sized photos (other than those few I would enlarge for frames each year).  The photo book both tells a story and allows for favorite images to be enlarged without the need to frame them.  Sort of the best of all worlds.  I have long been impressed with Mpix quality for reprints, so after hearing Jenny's positive experience with their photo books I decided to give them a try.  I was hoping for a dark navy linen bound book but it wasn't an option (please add it to the mix Mpix, if you are reading! :)), but the charcoal linen is really nice too.  The colors of the photos and the quality of the books are incredible.  As is their customer service and turn around time!!  I had four books made.  The 11x8 1/2 landscape size is my favorite because I take more landscape oriented pictures than portrait and I preferred the way I could layout my photos in that sized book best.

^^ A foggy morning on the beach in Cape Cod last summer.  The colors are absolutely perfect and take me right back to that very happy morning.^^

^^ I started and ended each book with a full page picture.  I especially like this one for all its imperfections.  It was an outtake from a Christmas card photo session with my Dad a couple years ago.  It captures the reality of that morning, with the boys silly antics and challenge of getting that one shot where we are all looking at the camera with our eyes open. ^^

^^ My tan, happy boys just a few years ago, from our summer trip to Michigan.  I really like the large images best in the books. ^^

^^ The double page panoramic pics are fun too.  I discovered this option when working on my second book and incorporated a few in each of the books thereafter. ^^

^^ I found myself including more scenery shots in the photo book than I ever would have in prints for a photo album.  It is a good reminder to point my camera away from just my family when I'm photographing our everyday life or adventures.  It's these shots that help add details to the memories. ^^

^^ I love this spread from last Christmas and winter.   All that snow was so magical. ^^

^^ Sometimes I used the preset templates in Mpix but most of the time I re-sized and moved images around to create my own.  With each book I got a little better and faster at figuring out what looked best together.^^

^^ Charlie's 5th Birthday, some of my favorite pictures!^^

^^ Our Chicago visit 3 years ago.  Photos taken at dusk are always the prettiest.^^

^^ Occasionally, I apply filters to my photos when editing.  Typically it is when I've messed up the manual settings on my camera and I'm trying to adjust or correct my mistakes.  I'm always a bit leery as to how they will look when printed versus on my computer screen.   In the case of the photo books they were gorgeous.  I use PicMonkey (I vow to learn Photoshop one day!) to add filters.   The above image is a favorite from apple picking last fall, I applied the "dusk" filter when editing.^^

^^Anniversary celebration at the Castle House Inn in Newport, Rhode Island.^^

^^I could just keep going and going, because I love each spread for different reasons, but I'll stop here.  Charlie's 4th birthday.^^

I just started our 2014 book.  It feels great to be all caught up!  Each book has a max of 50 pages. So far I haven't been able to narrow down the pictures enough to fit in a complete year in one book, which is ok because I typically didn't with photo albums either.  Thanks for taking a look! :)