Heading Into High Picture Season

My husband spent many of his young parenting years viewing the world through a camera's viewfinder. I thought he'd have permanent squint after photographing and taping endless recitals and sports events.  Me?  I spent hours with pots of glue and bookbinding machines, inventing all sorts of cockamamie ways to make lasting memories.

Today we look through an LCD preview and do all sorts of fancy tricks to get our photos into preservation form. But one thing doesn't change. We both still shudder through May and June because they are our high picture taking season. There's a lot of pressure for us to preserve those moments.

Think about it. Mother's Day and Father's Day are quickly approaching. Then there's that huge population of graduates from one thing or another. And if they're not graduating then they're getting engaged or married. Even Kodak couldn't have invented anything as good as May and June.  

I don't think there's a photo craft that I haven't played with, but this year I'm leaning towards making hardbound photo books. I've made a few using online services like Snapfish and Kodak Gallery and I've had nice results with minimal effort.

To make a book you choose a design template and title; upload your photos to the website and do a little arranging of photos within the template. You'll get a beautifully produced hardbound book with printed pages that look like a real coffee-table photo book It's a gift that I've never seen go unappreciated!

Two relatively new bookmaking applications have caught my eye for this season, each of a different reason.

MemoryStone offers a twist on the bookmaking process. You get bonafide author-created words along with your photos.  The Mother's Day version begins with a poem that praises Moms who have the courage to "walk around with their heart outside their body." Your photos accompany the prose and create an elegant gift replete with a sewn binding and glossy print pages. I'm not sure the words aren't a bit too mushy for my gang, but we'll see. At at $69 a book I'm not mass producing these, either.

I may prefer the lower cost, more tactile sensation of making a book. Epson's StoryTeller Photo Book Creator is a lot like those make-a-plate kits. Everything you need to create a personalized storybook is included in the box. (Digital camera and printer not included.) The kit includes quality photo paper, the binding materials, a glossy cover and the software that supplies the templates. The kits vary in cost, beginning at $24.00 for a 10 page version book.