My talented and hilarious friend Emily, from Emily D Photography, is guest posting for me today. Over the many years that I’ve known her, Emily has taken my head shots and various family photos. She recently has helped me create the most precious and priceless gift for John for Father’s Day; a decade photo book. He literally said it was the best gift he could ever receive. For family photos Austin, consider Angela Doran Photography for a similarly high-quality and personalized experience.
Before I give away too much, read on…
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First off – thank you so much to Maya for her support. She has been so generous with her community and I’m excited to talk to you about telling your family’s story. Last year I launched a photobook making arm to my business and most recently launched a course.
I should probably begin with a proper introduction – my name is Emily and I own Emily D Photography. I’ve been photographing families and small businesses for almost a decade – my style of photography is simple. My goal for every photography session is to find the light and love that exists within you, within your family or within your business. That is what I bring to these photo books as well. They are designed to be simple and to tell the story of your family – they are designed to be a perfect reflection of you.
The photographer in me learned in school that digital files are like any other piece of technology – it ages over time and becomes more and more annoying to use as time goes on. Think of a digital photo as a VHS tape – you could certainly plug your VCR into your TV but the new smart TV’s would require a different plug to connect it and the picture would be pretty crummy. Like a VHS tape your images need help to print in todays “day and age”.
Again, it’s not that you can’t access them. The point is, as years go on, it becomes more and more insurmountable and annoying to do so.
It is for this reason alone that I created a suite of photobook products for the non diyer’s and for the diyer’s amongst us. The course is aptly called, From Chaos to Keepsake. These products and course were designed to get your photos off your devices and into your hands.
I have been teaching women for years how to print their photos and have them realize that the amount of time they worried about it, they could have just made the books.
When I dropped off Maya’s book a few weeks ago, she shared that she’s three years behind in choosing photos for her cottage collage wall. She found it overwhelming. I set a timer and challenged her to just do it. It took us more time to find her photos than it did for us to cull them. She was sweetly distracted by her three rambunctious boys and sneakily checking the oven to send me home with homemade challah bread but with all of that – we had her first month culled and ready to print in TEN minutes.
Let me break that down for you. She has had an important task on her list for three years that took her ten minutes. A task she is desperate to complete. The reason why Maya, and maybe you, aren’t completing this task is because the technology overwhelms you or you don’t know what the story is you’re trying to tell. As a mother I understand this dilemma. As a photographer, I know the steps to printing your photos and I love to teach it.
To be fair, why would any of us be expected to articulate our life story when we haven’t been taught how to. Before I went to school my only teacher was my Mom who took a roll of film, dropped it off at the grocery store, pitched the images that weren’t suitable and then took the good photos and placed them into a photobook. Now the story of our lives is told in ten photo books that sit under our coffee table to this day.
The elements of creating your story from digital photographs is easy, once you learn how to do it.
Today I want to talk to you about how Maya and I created her book. She wanted to create a book that celebrated her sweet hub over the past decade. We made a book that read – Super Dad est 2010 and this is how we did it. Maya chose my premium quality product and I told her to choose one hundred photos from the past decade. When my clients struggle with this step I send them a one-pager on how to cull their images – it generally takes about twenty minutes to do that if you follow those instructions. From there I edited her photos, designed the book and sent it to print.
You might be thinking – Emily you’re over simplifying it. But, here’s the thing – I’m not. Making photo books is something you’ve been putting off for so long that the problem has become insurmountable but the reality is every photo book is made by following the same steps – come up with a story, find your photos, choose the ones you want to use and lay out the book. I’d love to help you either by making them for you, like I did with Maya, or teaching you how in my course that starts in two weeks. Sign up here.
I’ve created a free 20 minute guide to creating your first photo book. If you sign up for my newsletter, which can be found here, you can gain access to it.
Thank you so much to Maya. I hope you enjoy your book as much as I did making it.
Great input and good ideas