Confessions of a self-described photophile

 

I love my camera.  I love my family.  I think my kids are the most beautiful people God ever created.  These delights combined result in lots and lots and LOTS of pictures downloaded to my hard drive.  Sadly, few of these images ever make it outside of the hard drive to be enjoyed in any form.  I gave up paper scrap booking when my FIRST child was still a baby- it was something I enjoyed but it was too cumbersome and time consuming to maintain.  Then in 2006 I discovered publishable digital photo albums that are now widely used and popular.  It is so much easier and efficient and preserves the parts of book making that are most important to me- a place to write about our family memories and enjoy our many pictures- as many as we like!  Still, the discipline of keeping up with creating the albums has escaped me.  The last time I was caught up with our family photo books was in early 2008 after being on bedrest with my third pregnancy.  For shame! 

Last week I finally finished our family memory book for 2008- it contained over 600 pictures and 170+ pages.  Going through the pictures brought back a wide range of emotions- a lot has changed in the last 4 years, some in good ways and some sad.  But that is simply the reality of being human in a fallen world.  More than anything, I am reminded of God’s faithfulness to bring us through all of these things, the blessings that are from Him and His presence in the pain.  And that is what remembrance in a believer’s life should result in- praise and thanksgiving that we belong to Him and nothing that happens in this life will fall outside of His sovereign power.

So the picture albums, they are worth pursuing I think.  My husband whole heartedly agrees.  Here are some things I need to do differently so that I can complete these albums before our last child leaves for college!

-Download the pictures frequently, then go through them right away and keep only the very best images, edit them, and organize them by month and year.  It is discouraging to have to sift through hundreds of pictures just to make a few pages in the memory book.  I don’t need 8 or 23 pictures of the same child in the same pose.  Just pick one and go on!

-Minimize the number of folders for each month to make importing a large number of images into the book more efficient.

I have used the Costco MyPublisher program in years past for our books, but now I am using blurb.com.  If you are the kind of person who enjoys lots of creative control over your layouts and the ability to insert as little or as much text as you like, it is a great option.  I have tried “autofill” and “slurping” from my blog, but I’m just not happy with how those layouts turn out.  I also like that I am designing my book in a local program on my own computer that I can upload when the final product is complete, instead of doing the whole project online.  They frequently have great discount promotions too so I waited for one of those to come along.  I was so happy with how our 2008 book turned out, I am excited to keep going.  Who knows, maybe this is part of nesting!

So here, in case either of my 2 blog readers are interested, is a little glimpse of our latest family book!