Tips to Organize and Print Your Family's Photo Albums

One of my biggest projects during quarantine last spring was to finally get caught up on printing my family’s personal photo albums. And by “caught up”, I mean get started.

I was hugely inspired by Kate L. Photography’s blog post about her annual yearbooks, and I decided to use the same printer (Blurb Books) and album size that she uses. I loved her colorful covers so much that I wanted those bringing cheer to our bookshelves, too, and I am so glad I did! The covers are one of my favorite parts of these albums! A huge thank you to Kate for the inspiration that I needed to finally tackle this project!

I had already printed 3 different albums since Grayson was born in 2018 with his Fresh 48 photos, first year photos in the studio, and some lifestyle images done by a photographer friend, but I still hadn’t done anything with all of the hundreds of other photos that we had taken over the past few years. We had thousands of photos on my phone and my husbands phone, and hundreds more that I had taken on my camera of our day-to-day adventures. I was overwhelmed with where to start, but I knew that I wanted to get those photos organized and printed so that we could start to enjoy reliving those moments again and again.

I wound up organizing my photos from 2018 and cranking out the design for the first book in a few days. When it arrived in the mail and I saw how interested Grayson was in reading the book, turning the pages, and talking about every single photo and every single story, I knew that this was definitely going to be my new priority.

I quickly created 2019’s book, and for the past year we enjoyed the set of books. Grayson literally pulls them off the shelf multiple times a week and will spend an hour looking through the pages and talking about our adventures. It makes my mama heart so happy to see how much he loves these books!

So with 2018 and 2019 in print, of course I made it a priority to capture even more moments of our day to day lives in 2020 with the goal of preserving these stories in our annual photo album. When it came time to create the album, I designed it in two nights and sent it off to print. Easy peasy!

Now, if you’re feeling like I was a year ago and you’re wondering where to even begin with the thousands of photos sitting on your phone and hard drive, I want to help you!

Keep reading for tips on organizing your photos and making this task something you look forward to instead of dread & avoid!

I have compiled some of the things I’ve learned from making my own albums, plus tips I’ve talked with friends about and strategies that they’ve found to work for them. Take what you will, and make it work for you!

1. Start small.

You know that quote that goes something like, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” This is how you want to approach this project. You don’t have to organize all of your photos at once. Start with the most recent ones and work your way backwards. Right now, just focus on last year. Do all of these tasks for one year at a time, and then when you’re done go back to the one before that until you’re all caught up.

2. Choose your favorites first.

If you have a ton of photos on your phone, this part is easy! I’ve only ever owned an iPhone so I don’t know how it works on an Android, but I’m sure it’s similar. Go through and click the heart/favorite button to mark all of your favorite photos. You can scroll back to look at the ones in a particular month/year. While you’re at it, go ahead and delete the screenshots, cast-offs, and any other photos that are just clogging up your phone. Put a reminder on your phone every evening for a week to spend 15 minutes going through and marking your favorites. Before you know it, you’ll have a whole year of favorites saved in an album that is ready to export!

3. Get the photos ready to print.

Now you need to get the photos off of your phone and onto your computer to design the album. Or you can use a printing company that will just let you upload from your phone. I hear that www.chatbooks.com is great for this! I have not personally used them, but I heard you can upload right from your phone.

You can plug your phone into your computer to transfer the photos. You can save them to the cloud or Dropbox and access them that way. You can AirDrop them. However you want to, get those photos onto your computer.

Are you going to edit them? This is a personal preference. I chose to adjust the brightness and color of most of my cell phone photos in Lightroom. I also used that to crop them to whatever crop I felt best suited each portrait. You can get a Lightroom CC subscription for just $9.99 a month, and this would be a great way for you to try out the software if you’re new to it!

When saving your photos, sort them by month to make it easy to plug them into your album. I export in Lightroom and I automatically have them sorted by capture date. This names them in the order the photographs were taken, and it is really easy for me to them put them together in a logical and sequential order when I go to design my book (next step!).

4. Design your album!

Most album companies have free software that lets you drag and drop your photos into templates to easily create your album. I recommend choosing a few of their pre-made layouts that you love and repeating those throughout the book. I tend to do layouts with 2-6 images on each spread, and sometimes I will do a page with 4-9 smaller but related images in a grid.

Make sure to not try and fit too many photos on each page because you want to be able to see the details in each one without making it feel cramped. I like layouts that have a little white space between the images and at the top & bottom of the page.

Don’t overthink it, and don’t let your perfectionist tendencies take over here. Done is better than perfect right now. If you keep tweaking the layout you will never get around to getting the album printed, and you’re going to get a lot more enjoyment out of it when sitting on the couch flipping through the pages with your little one than you will by spending another night moving photos around on your screen to see how they look a different way.

5. Print it & enjoy!

Once I designed my album I was so proud of it that I wanted to print it right away. But I had heard that Blurb Books ALWAYS has sales so I decided to wait for a sale — which is a good thing because my albums tend to have 110-125 pages!

Sign up for their emails and before you know it, you’ll get a notification about a sale. Simply upload it to print, and you’re done! Then you can start waiting by your mailbox for it to arrive, eager to tear open the box the minute it’s delivered. (Wait, I’m not the only one that does that, am I?!?!)

Psst!!! Use this link to save $30 on your first album! (affiliate link)

6. Create a system to stay organized moving forward.

After you’re all caught up and you’ve printed however many years worth of family photos that you have backlogged, create a system to stay on top of it.

Have only a few minutes a month?
Choose a time once a month to sort through your photos from that month and mark a few favorites. If you do this regularly, it will only take you 10-15 minutes to add a few to your favorites folder each month. Put it on your calendar or set a reminder on your phone, and make sure you do it! Then at the end of the year you simply open up that favorites folder and start designing your album!

Have an hour a month?
Pour a warm cup of tea or a glass of your favorite wine, put on some music, and get to work! Set that reminder on your calendar so this is an evening activity you can look forward to each month. Mark your favorite photos from the month, and upload them into an album design right then and there. As the year goes on you’ll slowly add to your album page layouts, and at the end of the year it will all be done for you and ready to print.

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Save for later!

A Peek at Our Family's Annual Photo Albums

Our annual family photo albums are definitely top on the list of “things I would save in a fire.”

Grayson pulls them off the shelf multiple times a week to flip through the pages, talk about the photos, and relive the memories and adventures we had. He loves sitting on my lap and reading them, and cozying up with Grandma or Dada to look through the pages.

I finally started creating annual photo albums last year during quarantine. I had printed a few albums of Grayson’s first year, but nothing that held all of our cell phone photos and images captured on my nice camera from our daily lives. When the world slowed down last spring, it was the perfect time to me to get caught up, organize my photos, design a few albums, and get them printed.

I am so proud of these albums, and I love seeing how much joy they bring to our lives. I made 2018 and 2019’s albums last year, and it motivated me to continue capturing photographs throughout 2020 (even when we were just staying home and not doing anything that exciting!). By documenting our everyday lives and the little things that make up the year, I love how it all comes together to tell the story of our family and our year. So 2020’s album, while it may not be filled with trips and friends and visits with family, is still chock-full of memories, so many silver linings, lots of laughs, and plenty of love.

I was hugely inspired by Kate L. Photography’s blog post about her annual yearbooks, and I decided to use the same printer (Blurb Books) and album size that she uses. I loved her colorful covers so much that I wanted those bringing cheer to our bookshelves, too, and I am so glad I did! The covers are one of my favorite parts of these albums! A huge thank you to Kate for the inspiration that I needed to finally tackle this project!

I can’t even begin to count how many dozens of times I have walked down the stairs to find Grayson sitting on the couch, carefully turning the pages of an album and talking about the pictures. It melts my heart!

Overwhelmed with how to begin organizing your own photos? Another helpful blog post is coming later this week filled with tips to get you started!

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Save it for later!

Product Showcase - A Lavender Linen Album for a Studio Newborn Session

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Pin this image or any from the post above for design inspiration!

Product feature | Our New Deep Matte Linen Album

I want to share a secret with you.  It's our brand new DEEP MATTE album, and every family that has seen it in person at our gallery reveal appointments has fallen in love with the look and feel of the pages in this heirloom album.

Album details:
10x10 Fine Art Album
Cameo Cut-Out with Photo Cover
Linen color: Tundra
Pages: Deep Matte

Our other albums have a lustre coating on the pages, but this one is toned down with a deep, rich matte finish.  It looks incredible, and it even feels smooth like butter beneath your fingers.  It looks particularly amazing with our newborn sessions, and I personally love it for family session albums as well!

Here is a peek into Barratt Raymond's lifestyle session album.  I love how the rich tones on the pages complement the beautiful and neutral nursery decor for this family's session!

Just like with all of our fine art albums, there are 15 linen cover options to choose from so you'll be able to find the perfect shade to suit your style.  A few of the most classic ones are Tundra (this dark gray shown here), Sand (a beachy beige), and Tusk (a creamy white). 

Lately a few families have been having fun and using a few of our more colorful linens like Summer Breeze (a festive blue), Orchid (the softest lilac), and Peach (just the right shade of a soft peachy blush pink).  Fog is also a new favorite for many families, and the light gray is woven with a silver thread that adds just a hint of sparkle to the cover!

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Curious about our other keepsake products?  We truly believe that you'll enjoy your memories more when they are printed -- check out a few of our options here!

The Wooden Keepsake Box
Heirloom Wooden Wall Art
Accordion Albums
Birth Announcements
Thank You Cards
The Storybook Album

Product feature | Blake's First Birthday: Our Linen Storybook Album

If you haven't figured it out by now, our albums are my absolute FAVORITE keepsake to create from our portrait sessions.

Album details:
8x8 Storybook Album
Linen color: Tundra
Font color: Gold

Whether it's a first birthday,  a Fresh 48, a family session, or a newborn session, there is nothing sweeter than having all of your favorite memories woven across the pages of a beautiful album that you can hold in your hands, turning the pages and reliving a chapter of your family's story.

With this particular session, one of my favorite memories from this family was when they were telling me that their baby girl is obsessed with babies.  She loves all things baby.  They have an album from her newborn session with me, and she likes to start every day flipping through the pages of the book and looking at all of the baby pictures.   Of course, she doesn't realize that she's looking at Baby Blake on the pages of the album, but it's her favorite book and one that I'm sure she's going to have many memories of looking through as she gets older.

That's what our keepsakes are all about.  Creating memories with your family and enjoying them every single day. 

The storybook albums are petite, 8x8 albums with a gorgeous linen cover.  The pages are printed on press paper, and they are so beautiful in person!  Each book is custom designed to hold your favorite images from your portrait session.

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Our beautiful storybook albums have 5 beautiful linen cover options to choose from, so you'll be able to find the perfect shade to suit your style.  A few of the most classic ones are Tundra (this dark gray shown here), Sand (a beachy beige), and Tusk (a creamy white).   

Plus we can write your baby's name & birthdate on the cover, or your family name & the year if it's a family session.  These can be debossed in gold, silver, or rose gold font.
 

Curious about our other keepsake products?  We truly believe that you'll enjoy your memories more when they are printed -- check out a few of our options here!

The Wooden Keepsake Box
Heirloom Wooden Wall Art
Accordion Albums
Birth Announcements
Thank You Cards
The Storybook Album

Product feature - Welcome Home Baby Blair | A Lifestyle Session in Our Linen Storybook Album

Now that we have a little one of our own, our keepsake albums are even more special to me.  I truly love being able to hold all of our favorite memories in my hands, flipping through the pages of a beautifully bound book and feeling the linen cover beneath my fingers as I trace the debossed words on the cover.

These are such beautiful keepsakes, and our albums stole my heart long ago.  Today we're showcasing this beautiful lifestyle newborn session in our Sand linen storybook album.

Album details:
8x8 Storybook Album
Linen color: Sand
Font color: Rose Gold

One of my favorite behind-the-scenes tasks as a business owner is album design.  I truly enjoy weaving together all of your favorite photos across the pages of a book to tell your story, trying different combinations and layouts to get it just right while showcasing your beautiful family.

These albums are perfect for our lifestyle sessions because the sessions are true STORYTELLING sessions.  You might not hang every portrait on the wall, and that's okay!  But the moments are ones that you're not going to want to forget, and it's so special to be able to preserve them and relive them through the pages of your family's album.

There are 5 beautiful linen cover options to choose from so you'll be able to find the perfect shade to suit your style.  A few of the most classic ones are Tundra (a smooth dark gray), Sand (the beachy beige shown here), and Tusk (a creamy white). 

Plus we can deboss your baby's name & birthdate on the cover, or your family name & the year for a family session!  The debossing options are silver, gold, and rose gold -- the album in this blog post is done in rose gold, which is one of my favorite combinations with the sand linen.

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Curious about our other keepsake products?  We truly believe that you'll enjoy your memories more when they are printed -- check out a few of our options here!

The Wooden Keepsake Box
Heirloom Wooden Wall Art
Accordion Albums
Birth Announcements
Thank You Cards
The Storybook Album

A Keepsake Book for Baby Nora - Showcasing our 10x10 Linen Fine Art Album

Our fine art albums are my ALL TIME FAVORITE KEEPSAKE that we can create from our portrait sessions.  Newborn sessions, birthday sessions, family sessions, and maternity sessions -- these are such beautiful ways to display your images and to enjoy them for many, many years to come.

Personally, my home has a stack of these albums that I've designed and printed for our own personal photographs, and every year the  pile grows a little taller.  I print the same albums for my own family that I do for yours because I love them so much. 

Enjoy a peek at sweet little Nora's newborn session in our linen album!  The thick pages and sparkly linen cover were the perfect combination for this baby girl.
 

Album details:
10x10 Fine Art Album
Cameo cover with photo cut-out
Linen color: Oyster (with just a hint of sparkle!)

I truly love creating beautiful heirloom products for the families that I work with.  I want you to see & enjoy your images every single day, and I love helping families realize that printed memories are so much more powerful than little JPEGs lost on a hard drive somewhere.  
 

Check out a few of our other Signature Products that are available with all of our sessions!

Our Mini Accordion Album
Our Custom Image Cover Album
Our Keepsake Wooden Box

Your New Favorite Storybook - A Peek into our Newborn Albums - Saratoga Springs NY Newborn Photographer

Did you see last month's album blog post?  Click to see why these fine art albums are my absolute favorite keepsake that we offer with our sessions, and check out this beautiful baby girl's album, too!
 

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Today I'm excited to share another fine art album from one of our recent newborn sessions.  Declan James came to our Saratoga Springs studio and we did a classic neutral session with a few nautical elements incorporated into his portraits.  This sweet little boy loved being swaddled, and we captured so many gorgeous images of him with his proud parents. 

These albums tell such a beautiful story, and they are truly a special way to celebrate your baby's arrival.  I love how we weave all of his portraits together in an album that they will pass down to him one day when he's older!

While I love a sleepy newborn all curled up in a little pose, there's nothing I adore more than parent shots.  Look at the awe and pride on these new parents' faces as they hold their baby boy!  It's truly magical to witness.

Oh, sweet boy.  You're going to melt so many hearts with those soulful eyes of yours!

Did you know that the best time to book your newborn session is in the second trimester?  Read more about our newborn sessions here, and contact us today to start planning your baby's portrait session!  
 

A Fine Art Album for Newborn Quinn Madlina | Saratoga Springs NY Newborn Photographer

Imagine curling up on the couch with your little one, pulling out their favorite book, and telling them the story of when they came into your family. 

Imagine their tiny little fingers turning the pages and pointing out "mama," "dada", and "baby", hovering over a sleeping newborn photo of your tiny little baby all wrapped up and cozy.  

Imagine passing this album down to them 30 years from now when they have children of their own, showing them just how small and how loved they were, and giving them a glimpse into your life as a new parent as they are about to embark on their own journey into parenthood.

That's why we create our Fine Art Albums.  That's why they are my FAVORITE heirloom product for families to enjoy from our sessions.  That's why I have a growing collection of them in my own home -- they are gorgeous keepsakes that will quickly become your most treasured posessions, telling your family's beautiful story through images.

The very first time I spoke on the phone with Quinn's mother, she told me right away, "We're album people.  We're definitely going to want to create an album after her newborn session."  They have albums from all of their family milestones, filling their shelves with memories.  So of course we created the most beautiful album of all to celebrate their baby girl's arrival.

The pages are printed on photo paper and are truly breathtaking -- you have to see them in person, and the quality will blow you away! 

I also give my clients durable and kid-friendly products that will fit their lifestyle.  Don't worry about keeping it in a box to keep it perfect.  The lustre coating on the pages protects against tiny fingerprints, and if your baby drools on it you can just wipe it off with a cloth without worrying about damage.  This heirloom will hold up over the years and it will stay looking as beautiful as ever as your child grows.

My favorite thing about our albums is that we weave together all of your session images to tell a story, YOUR STORY.  Just look at the excitement on these new parents' faces!  That's what you want to remember years from now as your baby grows up and doesn't fit so perfectly curled up in your hands.  

Check out a few of our other favorite albums on the blog!
 

When a Photographer Forgets to Print Her Own Photos.... Or, happy second anniversary!

I debated for awhile on the title of this post.  I wasn't sure if I should make it more about celebrating our second wedding anniversary, or keep it photography-related and tell you how it took me almost TWO YEARS to design & print our wedding album.

So I chose to do both.

You see, I'm just like you and every other person who has countless files of digital images from their own lives.  Tiny JPEGs sitting in a folder on their hard drive, rarely seen and never enjoyed.  And just like you, I had no time to print them.  

But wait, you're a photographer!  Your job is to print photos!

That's true.  I spend my weeks designing albums for other families, ordering boxes & boxes of prints from my photo lab, wrapping up custom birth announcements, and receiving more photo shipments in the mail than I can possibly count.  The UPS guy knows me by name, and I recognize the sound of the delivery truck pulling into my driveway like a dog recognizes their owner's car coming down the street.  

Yet it took me more than a year and a half to finally sit down and design our wedding album after our perfect wedding day in 2015.  Why?  Time.  Indecision.  Distractions.  Procrastination.  Not wanting to begin the task of narrowing down the hundreds and hundreds of photos in our gallery to choose a few favorites to feature in our album.  You know, all the same reasons it takes you forever to print your own photos, right?  

But I finally did it.  And now we have a leather-bound keepsake of our beautiful day surrounded by our closest family & friends on a brick patio with twinkly lights and rustling leaves overhead.  It is so perfect, and as Jeff & I celebrate our second wedding anniversary today, you can bet we'll be flipping through the pages of our wedding album to relive the day we said "I do."  

A huge thank you to Hope Taylor Photography for capturing our day so beautifully.  P.S.  I know you didn't offer albums to your clients two years ago, but I'm so happy that you do now because this is definitely a task that all newlyweds should leave to their photographer so that they can enjoy their heirloom albums right away!  

Print your photos, friends!  #printsnotpixels

Studio Newborn Session in our Fine Art Album: Boston Newborn Photographer

Every family has a story, and every story is a reason to celebrate.  

I was so honored to be invited to capture Blake Vivian's first days with her family.  They are the absolute sweetest, and I loved our studio newborn session together at the Attleboro studio.  

My most favorite keepsake from their session is this album.  I can just picture Blake at age 2, sitting with her daddy on the couch and pointing out "mama", "dada", and "baby Blake".  I imagine her at age 6, curled up on the couch with her mom and asking her to tell her "just one more time" about the day she came home from the hospital with her parents, and what she was like as a baby.  I like to imagine her 30 years from now, looking through the album to find similarities between herself as a newborn and her own little baby in her arms.

This is why I treasure my job and the moments with these families.  I feel so lucky to be invited into their lives to capture these moments and create heirlooms for them to enjoy throughout their lifetimes.

Enjoy a little peek into a few of my favorite pages of Blake's fine art album -- the colors from her session make my heart do a little happy dance every time I look at them all together!

A Cake Smash Session in our Fine Art Album

Have I mentioned before how much I LOVE our beautiful fine art albums?  They are absolutely my favorite product to create from our sessions.  We fill the pages of your album with so many gorgeous memories, all woven together to tell your family's beautiful story in a keepsake that you'll pass down to your children one day.  

This fun cake smash album went home with Miles' family this weekend, and I just know that they're going to love reliving their son's first birthday through the pages of their album.  Take a peek at their album below!

Their family photos are fun & playful, and their baby boy went to town on his chocolate chip cookies.  I have never seen a baby so excited about his cookies before, and I love that we went non-traditional by bringing in some cookies for his first birthday session!  While he wasn't the biggest fan of his Cookie Monster cake smash, we ended the session with lots of smiles in our vintage bathtub filled with soap bubbles that were perfect for splashing!

Did you love this session post?

Check out another of our custom albums from a recent lifestyle newborn session!  
You will ADORE the blues in this beach-inspired nursery!