You might have already noticed that I have a thing for cameras and taking photos in general – I think it’s just a wonderful invention that’s taken so much for granted now without anyone ever stopping and thinking “oh, what a blooming miracle that we can actually create a motion capture on a piece of paper without even breaking a sweat”. We’ve gone from being incredibly precious about the photos we take (in the late 19th century, early 1910’s, people took cabinet photos – little card portrait photos, like this one, which were very expensive and they took such good care of them that you can still find these 150+ year old photos in flea markets!) to taking 527384320 photos on our phones each day without ever even granting them a second glance. Just admit it – how often have you set down, pulled out your trusty external hard drive and browsed your holiday photos from 2010? I thought so. And it’s such a shame. Especially when everyone’s all about that “we shouldn’t buy things, we should create memories” philosophy, yet we now seem to be creating so many memories and completely burying them in our Instagram archives. So let’s make a photo book!
There are a million and one ways companies offer you to keep your memories boxed up neatly on a shelf ready for a second viewing – be it a photo album, a box full of photos, or an elaborate scrapbook with all your precious train tickets from Sri Lanka and friendship bracelets from Bali. I’ve tried them all and I really do think that a photo book is the one.
5 reasons to pick a photo book over anything else
It’s just plain beautiful (the mighty coffee book standard kind of beautiful)
Okay, you have to find a company that does photo books well, that’s very true. I’ve seen some photo books made by your average photo lab (sorry Boots) and they are just not all that nice. The print tends to be of a shoddy quality, all blur and smudge. And they layouts – oh the layouts – can be the death of a photo book. I personally trust Cheerz with majority of my photo prints including photo books. I’ve already praised them HERE and HERE. And I’ll continue doing so. We’ve had our Maltese holiday made into a photo book by them and it has turned out truly beautiful. It’s the kind of a photo book you’re not ashamed to show to people who come around for a cuppa. You can even leave it on your coffee table and flick through when there’s a commercial on in the middle of your favourite TV show. Even the cover is dead pretty – you can pick a colour for the cover, a cover photo, even have the name of the album printed on the spine of the book.
It’s time saving
I know that scrapbook as gorgeous and they are so much fun to create! But they take SO. MUCH. TIME. If you are super crafty and have the time and patience to create a beautiful scrapbook then go for it, but I find that scrapbooks have multiple set backs for me. They are messy – there are tickets and maps poking out of each page, the glue can become non sticky and photos start falling out, you have to create very careful layouts and once you glue something somewhere there is no adding to it, you don’t know how many pages you should prepare to start with, you need little bits and bobs to decorate and ideally something clever to write below each and every photo. You don’t have to do that with a photo book – the way it works with Cheerz is that they give you various layouts available and you can either upload all your photos and then have them laid out automatically or you can send a little more time laying them out yourself. If you don’t have the time then the whole album will take you one click, that’s it.
There’s zero faff (and it’s completely fool proof)
You don’t have to wait for your photos to be developed and then spend time sorting them out into an album or a scrapbook. Photo books are super automated yet they are just as gorgeous as any other photo display idea. And you don’t have to worry that you stick a photo to a wrong page or leave something out – you can have your photo book uploaded for months without it going anywhere, you can juggle the photos in it until you’re 100% happy. Easy, right?
You can still be super creative with it
A photo book isn’t necessarily just a 34823423 book of digital photos. You can still get dead creative with them! We have added a few of black and white photos as well as some analogue shots from our analogue cameras. It’s easy – when you go to have your analogue film developed, just ask the lab to digitalise the photos for you, you can then have them copied on a flash drive or a CD. You can even go a step further and scan your train tickets and other mementos from your holiday and add them just like you’d add a regular photo. Or perhaps a map? Literally anything that crosses your mind! Oh, and the photo books from Cheerz come in various sizes and shapes!
It can become your tradition
Photo books have created somewhat an aura around them that they are only supposed to be made with baby photos or perhaps your wedding day photos. But why should that one day in your life receive so much priority over any other amazing memories you create? We have decided to create a photo book from each big holiday we go on and maybe have one made each Christmas for all the small trips we go on throughout the year. Photos just seem to be such a precious gift to find under the Christmas tree! It might be a little sentimental, but when you already take all those stunning photos, why wouldn’t you give a little time to them after you’ve come back from your holiday too. I will keep updating you on all the photo books we’ll make because I’m so excited for them! They are just the perfect way to keep our memories!
You can find their photo books HERE but they also offer lots of other cool things from scrapbooks (HERE) to photo boxes (HERE) and even just regular photo prints (HERE).
How do YOU keep your holiday memories? Do you also have a soft spot for photo books?
