Book

Is the Old-Fashion Photo Album Dead?

Is the Old-Fashion Photo Album Dead?

Kevin
Photo Album

Statistics tell us that 80% of all Americans use a smart phone. That number rises to 83% in some European countries. As we carry not only digital camera-phones but also digital photo storage in our pockets, are photo prints dead? Are old-fashion photo albums a thing of the past?

Framed photo prints are still valued, either for wall display or atop a desk. However, the once ubiquitous notion of a family photo album seems to have faded. From 2007 to 2017, people relied more upon photos stored in their smart-phones. This led to a common problem of filling up that storage to maximum capacity, requiring the time-consuming and painful task of choosing which photos to delete, to make room for new photos.

Since 2015, the available options for cloud-based storage have increased and largely eliminated the problem of insufficient storage for too many photos. This facilitates another problem – failure to delete useless photos and keep only the good ones. Yet another problem has arisen. While some amount of storage is free, larger amounts of storage incurs a fee and and if you cease to pay that fee for any reason (accidental or temporary financial stress), all of your photos may be forfeited. It is similar to renting a storage closet; if you do not pay the monthly fee for any reason, the storage company will get rid of all your stored items regardless how valuable they might be.

What about the old-fashioned album of photo prints? While albums are clearly still valued in the context of wedding photographs, what about the iconic album of family photos? Once upon a time, every family had such an album.

Albums do still have value but not as much as twenty years ago. The physical size limitations require us to curate our photos; that’s a good thing. From a total of 2000 photographs of varying quality, we might cull 100 photos of high quality or highest emotional value. That result is both more meaningful and more practical to share with other people.

Gathering my parents’ old photo albums, I recently selected the most meaninful and scanned these to digital form. (Some of these images are older than me.) I asked my sister for any additional digital photos from her family collection (images very different from my mom’s collection). Then printing these photos at 4×6“, I gathered them into an album and gave it to my dad on Father’s Day. This album is both meaninful and practical, as it gathers significant images from multiple sources and presents them in an obvious form that requires neither electrical power nor any technology to view them.

A blank photo album, awaiting your photo prints, is difficult to find in local retail stores. I tried three local stores and found that two of the stores each offered only one album product for purchase. So, if you are looking to purchase and empty album, your best bet is to shop online. Alternatively, the best local retail option is probably a photo/camera store.

Obviously, accessing photos from a mobile device is great because you can access your photos without carrying around extra baggage. (And, if your photos are stored in the cloud, you may be able to access your photos from any device at all.) A physical print album is not going to replace your digital photo viewing; it is merely complimentary – an alternative way of seeing and sharing photos.  Sometimes a physical print album feels better.  Furthermore, we know that many people prefer to read print books instead of eBooks.

A digital photo frame is another option. These electronic gadgets ( which have been available for at least 15 years) can have advantages over low-tech albums and high-tech smart devices. For viewing, the user interface is as simple as : turn it on and watch the slide show. For photographs, some devices include wi-fi capability and can pull images from online sources. This may allow distant family members to upload new images remotely – for example, family members can upload photos of grandchildren which then display on grandparents’ digital photo display. While you can certainly do this with computers and mobile smart devices, the digital photo frame may me an easier, more friendly mechanism, particularly for people who don’t like the complexity of computer interfaces.

In the final tally, viewing family photographs on computers and mobile smart devices has certainly taken center stage. The appeal of printed photo albums has declined dramatically. The venerable photo album is not entirely dead and likely it never will be.

Book Marketing – Using a QR Code

Kevin

I recently published an eBook, a travel guide.  You can see it  here: on Amazon.com.

If you write a travel guide to any place, the smart play is to sell a print book in a gift shop at that place.  But my book is an eBook and not available in print (yet).  If I can’t sell it in gift shops, then how to market the eBook to local tourists?

If you write an eBook, a purely digital thing, the smart way to advertise it is digitally; click this link – buy it now. Yet, because my book is a visitor guide, a very local subject, I have not found a website venue that is both very good and local.

My idea is to distribute some “rack cards” where local tourist literature is displayed. It’s not ideal because it’s difficult to convert a piece of paper into a digital sale.  This is exactly the purpose of QR Codes.  A QR code is like a web link, a URL, but for cameras.

I have never been a fan of QR codes because, until recently, I did not have a “smart” phone capable of recognizing QR codes.  But I am warming up to QR codes now.  For a subset of the tourist population, a QR code on my printed card will allow people to quickly find my eBook, look at the preview pages, and maybe purchase it.

How does a person get a QR code?  Apparently anybody can generate a QR code for just about anything.  It’s free.  Although you can pay for a subscription that provides interesting features, such as tracking the number of people who actually use your code, this is not required.

Here are just a few of the many websites that can generate QR codes for free:
beqrious.com
goqr.me
unitag.io

Some QR sites (e.g. http://www.visualead.com) require you to sign-in or sign-up before you are allowed to download the resulting graphic file of your QR code.

Who actually uses QR codes?  Here is some interesting data at QRstuff.com
q1-2014-qr-code-trends

Somewhere I have seen a QR code displayed on a website.  What’s the point to that?   It’s just … I mean … technology … it’s stupid, right?

Vinalhaven Book

Kevin

My new book is now available as a Kindle ebook via the Amazon on-line store.  Readable on any device (iOS, Mac, Android, Windows) using the Kindle app (free).

Link to the book on Amazon.com (US):
See Vinalhaven Island Visitor Guide … at Amazon.com

This is Maine, not Miami.  On Vinalhaven, you won’t find loud night clubs or crowded marinas jammed with pleasure boats. You will find miles of walking trails and superb waters for paddling kayaks.

The book includes roughly 22 color photographs.  The only “manipulated” image is on the cover, shown here.  I nudged the foreground boat just a tiny little bit in order to make more room for the title box.

Honestly, I had thought this would be finalized a month or two ago, but … life happens.  And then there were a few final edits, including a couple tweaks to the island map.  An interactive map would be nice, but current e-reader devices don’t support that functionality (yet).

 

 

Giving (maybe seems a little crazy?)

Kevin

This morning, I gave away ten copies of my book Wildflowers of RiverPark.  When I completed this book, a bit more than two months ago, I gave away a dozen copies.  All totaled, this is more than $300 out of my pocket.  But from the start of this project, I knew this cost would be on me and I chose to do it.

The first give-away was done by limited email invitation to a group of individuals, before leaving my employment at this business park.  The response was strong; I had far more requests for the book than actual copies available.  One friend refused a free copy and insisted on purchasing it!  

This morning’s give away was deposited on coffee tables in lobbies.  One of the companies in the park did not have a visitors’ entrance; the only way in was through a locked employees’ entrance.  That probably means that there is no lobby or waiting room.

I gave one copy to a dental office across the street from the park.  After explaining, to the receptionist, what the book was and that I was giving it for free, she was very appreciative.  “Just leave it here on the table?” I asked.  But a man sitting in the waiting room had overheard the conversation, stopped me, and reached out his hand.  He wanted to read it immediately.  (Perhaps he had already read all the magazines that were there.)

In small part, this is marketing.  Somebody will see the book, visit my website, and that will plant the seed of some business opportunity in the future.  In large part, this book was inside me and it had to come out.  Sometimes we do what we do, for reasons that are intangible and difficult to articulate.  And the smile on a person’s face when you give them a free book … is definitely rewarding.

Book: Wildflowers of RiverPark

Kevin

Although I have mentioned my book project regarding local wildflowers, apparently I neglected to annouce that it was done. 
It is available from Blurb, here: Wildflowers of RiverPark. 

For more information, go to the navigation panel for this blog and click on “Book”.  That will show you all my blog posts about books.

There are a couple of minor errors in the book.  Specifically, my notes regarding the Eastern Redbud tree state that this tree does not produce legume seed pods.  Actually, it does.

Interest in RiverPark is extremely local, people who work at this buisiness park.  However, during one of my evening photo sessions at the park, I did encounter a couple people who walk around the park, but do not work there.

For all the people who are employed at RiverPark
who get out and walk around the park.
(You know who you are.)

Flowers are listed first according to color. Each section of the book has the color marked at the top right corner. (White isn’t clearly marked because the page background is typically white.) If you want to look up a particular flower, you can quickly locate the appropriate color-coded section.

Within any section, pertaining to a color, plants are listed more or less alphabetically by the common name (rather than the scientific name). However, the alphabetic rule is not strictly applied. Two different species having a similar appearance may be shown on the same page.

Total disclosure:  If anybody buys a copy of this book, $20 goes to Blurb (the printer) and $5 goes to me.  The printing fee charged by Blurb is not negotiable (though they do sometimes offer discount coupons).  I tacked on just $5 for myself because I could not imagine anyone paying more than $25 for a small book that is just 7 inches square and 80 pages.   . . .  Checking Blurb just now, it seems their prices have increased by $3, meaning the book is now $27.95.  

Deeper Into Custom Books

Kevin

Typically, to create a print-on-demand custom photo-book, you download easy-to-use free software from the vendor/printer, layout your book pages, then upload the result for printing.  But, alternatively, some vendors allow you to use other page-layout software.  For my latest book, I used Adobe InDesign.

Having used the free software from three different vendors, I found them all quite similar and mostly intuitive to learn.  On the other hand, Adobe InDesign is just a bit more complicated to learn, but much more flexible.  If you can imagine it, you can do it.  For example, a frame can be virtually any shape at all (a frame is a container for text or images).  I used this flexibility several times throughout my book.

Adobe InDesign

There is one important difficulty to be aware of.  The printing equipment used to print your book is almost certainly based upon CMYK inks, not RGB.  All images must be converted to CMYK.  When you use free software (downloaded from your PoD vendor), this conversion is done automatically for you.  But when using other layout software, such as InDesign, you are responsible for doing conversion to CMYK.

Converting images from RGB to CMYK can be ugly.  The conversion will necessarily shift some colors.  And because CMYK is a smaller color space than RGB, some colors simply cannot be represented in CMYK. 

In the case of my recent book, Wildflowers of RiverPark, I converted each image to CMYK using Adobe Photoshop.  In general, rich green colors did not convert well to CMYK; no matter which conversion method I used, greens became horribly muted.  With practice, I learned how to compensate for this.  I was able to create a custom action to help this process, but it was still annoying and time consuming.  Furthermore, one image in particular features vivid purple-magenta (flower is Deptford Pink) that could not be represented in CMYK.

In doing the conversions myself, and using the soft-proof feature in Photoshop, I gained one important benefit.  The colors in the printed book are very accurate.  If you rely upon your PoD vendor to automatically convert your images, you may get some unexpected color shift in your final printed book.

Specifically using InDesign provides another small benefit: InDesign works well with Adobe Bridge and Photoshop.  From InDesign, create an emtpy frame, then hop over to Adobe Bridge, click on an image and choose: Place into InDesign.  The image is inserted into the frame you created.  After the image has been added to your book, making changes to the image is simple.  Right click on the image and choose: “Edit Original” to edit the image in Photoshop.  When you save your Photoshop changes, InDesign automatically picks up your changes and updates your InDesign document.

Wildflower Book Project

Kevin

Last year, I shared the beginnings of a project with you,  a book documenting the wilflowers that grow at a local buisiness park.  Since I there is not much opportunity to create new wildflower images between November and March, I had planned to begin the book layout in December.  Now February, I am finally piecing together the book layout.

In the past, I have used book layout software provided by the book printer (Mpix, Blurb, PhotoBook America).  This time, I am using Adobe InDesign.  This being the first project of any significant size for which I have used InDesign, I have found that the learning curve was not particularly difficult.  I quite like InDesign.

Pokeweed

Here are a couple images that I am including in the book.

The first is a relatively common weed, but I find it very interesting because it looks like small green peppers.  I really like this image because it shows two slightly different stages and because the background is very soft, not distracting from the foregound subject.

Common Verbena
 
Click on either image for a larger view.
 
 
 
 
The second image is Common Verbena (which is not particularly common in my experience).  The flowers begin at the bottom of the flower spike and progressively bloom toward the top of the flower spike.  I really like this image because of the somewhat unusual background, which I think is not readily obvious.  There is a pool of water, with trees reflecting in it, and a grassy embankment.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Colorado Wildflowers book

Kevin

Here is the new wildflower book (the images are from 2007, but I just created the book this month).   The link below provides a preview of the book.   It is a thin little book with 36 wildflower images.  (Yes, you can purchase copies here via this link.)

This book is PoD (publish on demand) via Blurb.  Specifically, Blurb refers to this 6×9 format as a “trade” book.    The paper thickness is “text” weight rather than the heavier paper typically used for photo books.   Until this year, Blurb offered the trade format only for black&white books, but they now offer color. 

This particular book is 40 pages, meaning 20 double-sided papers.  Why?  Because Blurb pricing is based on 20-page increments.  A book with 22 pages cost the same as 40 pages, but a book with 42 pages would cost a bit more.

 

Custom PhotoBook

Kevin

My most recent book was created with Photobook.  Photobook has several branches all over the world; I used Photobook America, located in Toronto.  Time to print with Photobook was significantly longer than past experience with Blurb and MPIX.  Perhaps related to two factors.  This latest book has a silk cover with a photo inset into a center window.  And I ordered multiple copies.  Blurb will print a book with full-bleed photo cover in just a few days. And  have seen MPIX (outsourced to DigiLabs) create books literally overnight.

At the time I printed with Photobook, both Photobook and Blurb had recently begun offering a new premium paper option called “luster”.  I tried it.  But honestly, looking at four books printed over a time span of 18 months, printed by three different companies …  I don’t see a significant difference in image quality.  They all have a slight sheen to the surface. Maximum black density is similar.  Image quality is entirely comparable.  As near as I can tell “premium” paper options provide only two differences: thickness and opacity.  All three companies print with an HP Indigo digital press. 

Photobook’s downloadable software is called Photobook Designer.  I found it easy to use; very comparable to Blurb BookSmart and (MPIX/DigiLabs) My Photo Books.  However, there was one problem.  For my title page, I created a graphic image with transparent areas, saved as a PNG file. The Photobook Designer software recognized PNG files with no problem.  The preview (prior to upload) looked great.  But when the book was printed, the title-page graphic was unrecognizable.  (I also used a PNG on the final page of the book and this printed just fine.)

I contacted Photobook support twice via email, including a screen-capture from the book preview (what it should look like), but received no responses; apparently their support systems were down for more than a week.  Upon calling via telephone, someone readily worked to assist me with the problem.  The book is actually printed from a PDF and they shared this PDF with me; my title page graphic was mutulated.  The problem was not the press.  The problem was not on my end. Something went wrong in upload or translation to PDF.  But because their web site states only support for JPG and TIFF, they suggested that PNG files are not guaranteed.  Photobook would not reprint the books at zero cost to me.  They did reprint the books at a deeply discounted price, after I replaced the PNG with a JPG.  (This was not a trivial replacement. I originally used PNG because it supports transparency; JPEG does not.)

This latest book was simply a personal collection of favorite images from the past year.  A couple of the images are shown here.  Click on the image for a larger view.

For more information about comapanies that help you create custom photobooks,
I recommend PhotoBookGirl.com.  (I am not affiliated with PhotoBookGirl; but I find
it is a good source of information.)

Custom Photo Book

admin

Years ago, I collected a series of photographs into a photo book, just a few copies for family. I printed the images myself on double-sided photo paper using a photo-quality inkjet printer. The book covers I made by hand from heavy weight board and book cloth from a local arts supply house. It was a very personal gift and I would have made more if it were not so labor intensive.

Today, making a custom photo book is much easier. Several online photo services provide the ability to layout the book and upload it for printing. I chose MPIX, having compared their product to a competitors product. The resulting book looks terrific. But what really amazed me was how fast MPIX produced my book. It was in my hands just 24 hours after I uploaded it! They printed the book and bound it within a few hours and shipped it the same day.

Creating your own custom photo book is so simple anyone can do it. There are varying options such as size, choice of paper, hardcover vs softcover. My book project included 20 images, 10×10 inch pages and a black hard cover with soft suede-like feel, for just $30. Adding a couple lines text to the cover cost an additional $7, which seems like a lot of money when you consider that this is almost %25 the cost of the book it is printed on. Alternatively, a hard cover with photo on it is $50 total for the book. Soft cover with photograph on it is less expensive.
.