Things to Make - A Photo Book

(I tried to style the photos, but ended up with weird shots with shadows. Yet another skill I need to work on.)

People often ask me what I do with ALL the pictures I take (and there are A LOT of them). First of all, I organize and categorize them through Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 (I also do most of my editing through Lightroom). And, once a year, I make a photobook through Blurb of the best pictures from the preceding year, divided by season. Prior to starting this blog, I used to make photobooks of all my pictures, but now I only publish the best (about 110 photos in all), which (for me) serves as a great opportunity to be my own critic and editor.

Remember those grateful lists I make every month? I compile them at the book's end, sorting by category (best books, best movies, best food, etc.) plus a "best moments" category separated by month. I find it a wonderful summary of the past year, and I love going back and seeing what we did two or three years ago.

A lot of different companies now offer photobook software and I've tried a few of them, but my loyalty lies with blurb. I find their software incredible versatile (if you don't like a template, you can edit it) and user-friendly. They have several options so books range from about $11 for a small, soft cover to over $100 for a large, hardcover on quality paper. My year-in-review book costs about $135 to make, pricey but worth it, the results are always beautiful.