Instructions: the family holiday photo book
A photo book of the first family holiday is always something special. Guest blogger Julia Marre explains how simple it is to produce such a photo book.
Your very first holiday as a family of three is always something very special. So special that it deserves an enchanting photo book. It would be a real shame for those memories to lie forgotten on hard drives. But what do you need to pay attention to when taking the photographs in the first place? And what is important when designing the album? With these ideas and motifs, your ifolor photo book of the three of you on your first holiday together is bound to become the most frequently read book in your cupboard.
Four tips that will give you unique holiday photos:
Young parents know the situation: before your honeymoon, there is still a great variety of photographs – from dusk to the sightseeing tour to the funny selfie. But since the birth of your first child, photographs are almost always of the baby. Your hard drives contain snapshots of the child in every conceivable situation. With these four tips for family photography, you will be able to keep hold of unforgettable memories:
Pay attention to the details
Have an eye for details: a child’s naked toes on the beach, a mussel in tiny hands, muddy children’s shoes in front of the holiday apartment, the cuddly toy in the cable car – detail shots tell far more holiday stories than photos of the sights.
Change the vantage point
A question of perspective: try photographing your child from above while standing, but also have a go while lying on a towel in order to get really close to a small child’s perspective. Squat down, because this will give you good pictures at eye-level – it’s worth it!
The somewhat different selfie
How about a shadow selfie? With smart phone cameras it is, of course, easy to take family selfies all the time and everywhere. But a beautiful holiday album consists of more than just arranged group portraits with your child waving into the camera. Give spontaneity a chance and capture the moment. You are bound to have enough posed photos to choose from in any case. If it has to be a self-portrait, then why not try something a little different: a shadow-selfie that only shows the shadows of the three of you on a hiking trail or on the beach.
Series are a hit!
There is nothing more lifelike than photo series. Record how your offspring licks an ice cream for the first time, how a wave laps at his little legs or he chases a dove in a pedestrian area. It is best to make sure that your vantage point stays the same during these serial motifs. Picture series are like flip books: beautifully lively – and easy to fit into a layout when designing the album.
And this is how your pictures become a unique photo book:
You don’t have to take a special course to be an art director to be able to design an attractive photo book. But a few tricks from the layout box are bound to help you in the selection and design:
Only take the best photos
In the era of massive digital memories there are not just 36 holiday photos any more, but hundreds. Unfortunately. So try to be honest when choosing pictures and decide based on your gut reaction: which photos do you like the very most? Feel free to reject plenty of pictures, and concentrate on meaningful, eye-catching shots that are dear to your heart. This will make it much easier for you to design a photo book.
It’s all in the layout
The print media show you how, you can imitate them: on each page that you fill with pictures, one motif should dominate the whole area. Which picture is so successful that it deserves to be the biggest on its page? Experiment to see how motifs look in different sizes. For example, arrange serial motifs next to each other in a row and only in passport-photo format. Make the best picture of the series very large. Switch between portrait and landscape formats. And also feel free to trim some of your photos: a square image section looks as surprising as a very narrow landscape format, if the motif lends itself to this.
Variety makes for excitement!
Make your photo album varied. A photo book does not always have to follow your holiday’s chronological sequence of days. Combine different motifs: a portrait of your child will receive more attention if it is not arranged in the middle of five other portraits. Mix the motifs: place a still life of a beautiful house facade next to the picture of your child, a picture of seagulls on the beach or a panoramic landscape photo. This diversity will do your album a lot of good.
Discover the many possibilities
Try out the different ifolor photo books: thanks to its special Leporello binding, the photo book Premium photo paper makes it possible for you to print panoramic photos over two adjacent pages – on high-quality 400g photo paper. This way, your holiday photos will be shown to particular advantage at every point! The photo book Deluxe with its high-gloss-enhanced inner pages is suitable for when you want to have room for a large quantity of pictures (up to 132 pages). Like the photo book Premium photo paper and it is also available in the oversize format DIN A3.
About the author
Julia Marre is a culture and entertainment editor with a weakness for photography and design. She produces the blog Kommando Karottenbrei. For ifolor, she tinkers with photo products and writes about these DIY projects and self-made gifts.
© Julia Marre