How many of you have promised to do something with your photos as soon as you return from
vacation? How many of you still have a few hunderd photos on your phone, or in a file on your computer
in the file you have mentally named someday? I have two tips for you today that will help you turn them
into something you can be proud of – sometthing that you can enoy and something that will allow you to
sharee the intended photo friends and not boring them to tears as you scroll through the hundreds of
pictures which you were sure included the one you wanted to show them, but it never appears.
The first tip is, They will not sort themselves no matter how long you leave them. They just stay
in a file. Trust me, I have done the research on this one.
Tip two, get familiar with the platform ou want to use before you are going to need the finished
book. This can also save you a lot of money. I work with Book Bub and they are great for sales where
theu give you up to 50% the price of printing a book, but the catch is the sales are usually only 3 days
long and you don’t have time to prepare your book before the deadline.
This year when I came back from Mexico I was faced with two weeks of islation due to the
Covid 19 outbreak coupled with the fact that my clients had decided to put their books on hold because of
the Covcid 19 outbreak I had nothing but time.
Just like you I had intended to get to those photos in my computer and do something with them,
but this year I did. I chose a format sorted my pics and came up with a 24 page 8 x10 book of street
photography from the time I spent in Mexico. I had the layout ready for the time they would send me the
email about the sale and all I had to do was hit send and the pdf was off to them and printing.
Working with out the pressure of a sale offer expiring gave me time to actually sort the pics and
decide which ones I wanted in the book. It also gave me an opportunity to try some of the things this new
format offered. The book is really a test, I tried to manipulate borders and margins on the page, I bled
some pictures over onto another pace and tried some things with the cover that resulted in a less than
perfect book. It is not displayed on my coffee table but the product cost me less than $30 and I am
familiar with the format and know what I can do when I really want to produce a keepsake book.
Tip 2.5 I used the pics that I was selecting to have some fun on my Facebook page, I would post
6 of them everyday and ask people to vote for their favorite, then just like on Jeopardy we had the finals
on Friday and you got to vote again. Everyone who send me their email got a pdf of the book emailed to
them.
I used the process to pic the winning photos and those are the ones I entered in a Street
Photography Contest. (Still waiting the results).
Learn how to use the platforms you want to work with at a time of little pressure and have some
fun with the learning process.