Album

As I’ve been reading Ali Edward’s blog I feel inspired to make something with all of my digital photographs. Not because I feel I have to, but because I want to view them in a easy and convenient way. I want to bring them out from the computer so that I can look at them with friends and family. But I don’t feel like printing one thousand copies and gluing them into albums, decorating pages etc. This I have done and I’ve ended up with heavy huge binders of paper.

Scrapbooking is something I have mixed feelings about.

I’ve been thinking about the difference between what I see as scrap booking and what it also can be. It can be layout and design, as when Ali makes her albums digitally (though digital scrapbooking many times is not design). I don’t want flowery backgrounds, paper clips or brads in my photos but I like to use fonts, different sizes of my photos and design elements like thin lines, Polaroid frames or tinted photos.

The design approach is so much more appealing to me than die cut flowers and ribbons over my photographs! Look at her shutterfly album AE Everyday Life for example – I would love to paste my photos into this design if only the titles were different. This book is 8×8 inches big (20×20 cm) and with 20 pages (!) the price is starting at $ 40 which I think is rather expensive. If I could do the design myself (yes, it is a lot of work) I could publish a photo book at Lulu.com size 8.5 x 11 (20×27) for $25.95 for 20 pages. Lulu also has some nice layouts to choose from but they are not as designed and cool as Ali’s of course.

I’m looking around in InDesign at the moment, trying to make a zine while learning the program. I think the most difficult thing when doing layout on the computer is that it’s difficult and expensive to print your pages at home to test how it looks. You always see things differently on paper, hence one should test print everything before ordering the real deal. When we did layout back in school we could print a spread from five to fifteen times before it was finished.

I’m playing with several photobook projects in my mind. If time was no problem (and I wasn’t the procrastinating type of gal) I would start right now and just play with my photos.

I really want to create My Favorite Photos – from 2008 or any previous year. A album that could be reproduced each year for several year ahead, done in the same format! I can already see the volumes standing in my bookcase! Though just looking through all my photos and choosing favorites would be a huge job that I won’t start while summer lasts, it could be a fun Rainy Autumn Project?

Photos of Smilla – I have so many photos of my cat that she could have a whole album of her own with some stories in it too.
Dad’s Garden Photos and a book for my brother with photos from 0 to 16 yrs old, scans from my Grandmothers Albums and A Wedding Book for friends that are getting married… etc.

What would you wish for in your photo album design? What would be your first project when you look through your folders of photos to get starting with. I find that thinking about this really really has made me take more photos during the past days. I feel inspired by the thought of arranging them together, writing titles and cropping, editing and playing with photos! Don’t you?