Photographs aren’t photographs if they are sitting in a drawer. – National Geographic
One of my favorite things to do as a photo organizer is to make photo books. I had been making photo books for my own family’s vacations and events for many years prior to doing it for others. I heard a phrase once that touched me; that we should be building a ‘library of memories’. My own family’s library of memories includes vacations, holidays, softball seasons, cousin memories of their years at Kamp Krause (grandma’s house) and family recipes. Photo books are a great way to preserve family memories.
Talking to people, the general consensus is that our kids don’t want photo albums and scrapbooks. I can’t argue that point. Kids don’t want the big, bulky, heavy, old fashioned photo albums and scrapbooks. But I have seen with my own eyes, that kids and families will sit and look at a photo book. But what’s the difference between a photo album and photo book? I’ll explain below.
Not to make this more confusing, there are printed, luxury photo albums, which generally are a higher end printed photo ‘book’. Think of a professional wedding album. For this discussion though, a photo album is where a physical photo is placed in a plastic sleeve. A photo book is a printed product of digitized photos.
The photo album is what most of us probably grew up with. We took pictures, had them printed, hopefully made a note on the back, then placed the actual photograph in the plastic sleeves of an album. If the plastic sleeves were acid free, your memories are generally safe. Another type of photo album we used were the old sticky or magnetic albums. In that type you would place your photo on the sticky page and fold the plastic cover over the photos. Those sticky albums are slowly destroying the photos by creating a chemical sandwich. But that’s another blog post. Photo albums are less expensive than printed photo books.
Photo books are digitized, custom products. I had a client once ask me about the cost of a photo book. I said that I wasn’t trying to be evasive, but the cost depends on so much. The company used, size of the book, number of pages, type of paper, type of cover, etc. Styles and quality differ greatly by company. So yes, generally photo books are more expensive. Another benefit of photo books is that you can take pictures of tangible items to use in your book. Let’s say you are making a book of your child’s art projects. You can’t slip a kid’s pottery project in a 4×6 plastic sleeve.
Bottom line, photo albums are less expensive and are a way to hold actual photos instead of in a box, envelope or bag. Photo books are more expensive, but take up less space. And if you include the stories behind the photos, they may become family treasures.
Do you have an idea for a photo book, but not sure how to get started? I’m here to help.