One of the promises that I made after I had my daughter (among the many) was that I would no longer let my personal photos collect proverbial dust in the vortex that is my archiving system. Vacation photos, holiday photos, family photos…if they weren’t for clients or as part of a photography project, once I started shooting digital I would rarely make prints. Everything changes when you have kids and for me that included not just how I make memories but what I do with them once I’ve recorded them. To this day my family goes through old albums and I love when my dad posts old photos on Facebook…especially when I’ve never seen them before. Making prints of memories is important!
So I solved the problem of my personal photos taken with my dslr because I started to make books and prints for gallery walls but what about my iPhone? I have over 11,000 pictures on it! (#issues #hoarder) I’ve made prints of those before too but I wanted to make a special photo book just for Lucia.
While most kids play games and watch shows on the iPad my girl likes to go through the camera roll and scroll through old photos – “remember this day, mommy?” is one of her many catch phrases. So I teamed up with my friends at Adorama to make an 8×8 photo book of some of our favorite family memories as recorded by my iPhone and processed on Instagram.
The book
The hardest part for me was selecting the pictures (no surprise). The book itself was so simple to make because the program online is very straightforward and you have full control over the style and design. There are many different templates to choose from for every size book available and in fact for someone like me who is terribly indecisive there are almost too many templates. I narrowed it down to five and then just went with my favorite. After selecting your images and loading them up to the website (a process that is very fast depending on your internet connectivity) you just drag and drop them into the space in your blank book and save as you go. Ta-da! I even cheated a bit and was able to drag a few photos into blank spaces that weren’t meant for images and I was able to play with the size a bit to make photos larger than the space allowed them to be. You can select photos from a number of different sources including Picasa, Flickr, your Adoramapix account and your computer.
I’ve been working with Adorama for personal and professional projects for years so it was no surprise to me that the quality of the book is top notch. The pages are printed on real photographic silver-halide paper with a lustre finish so the colors are bright and saturated with great flesh tones. For photography junkies like me this is a huge deal. They use real archival quality photo paper so it’s fade-resistant and you even have several paper choices. I also really like how thick and sturdy the pages are. Another really important feature for me when I made this book was that the HD glossy paper is fingerprint resistant! Hello? Amazing! I usually prefer matte paper for my prints but I was making this book specifically for my toddler to thumb through, carry with her, and put her hands all over it so this feature was a major draw for me.
Here’s what I did: so simple…
1. Visited Adoramapix.com and chose the perfect book size
Once I decided that I wanted to use my Instagram photos (since she loves them so much) I realized that the 8×8 format was perfect for the square-cropped pictures. Since I’m terrible at editing to make a concise collection I went with a 26-page book. Not too many, not too few. I felt like it was the perfect number of images to keep my toddler’s attention and just enough to capture the feeling of the general “theme” I decided to go with.
2. Chose my images
With so many pictures to choose from I had a very difficult task ahead of me so I just went with favorite images of the last year or so that were strictly of our family. A NYC-themed book of Instagrams is up next but I wanted to make this one for her first.
The front cover gave me the option of choosing four photos. I opted to leave the title off the front and put it only on the spine. You can choose from several different fonts and sizes.
The back cover. I loved that I was able to have one large photo on the back to balance out the four photos I chose for the front.
Thank you to Monica Shulman who inspires photographers and artists through her blog called Ciao, Chessa! . It is a photography and lifestyle blog dedicated to people who appreciate the little details that make life amazing. Since its birth in 2008, her blog has evolved into a place where she talks about art, photography, travel, motherhood, living in New York, and the people and things that inspire her.
Webinar Winners 1
Posted In Webinar
We had an amazing turnout once again to our Family Affair : Top 10 Tips for Fun and Profitable Family Portraits, hosted by NataschaLee of Nataschalee Studios of Colorado. It is one of our most popular webinars to date and we continue to have We had over $2,000 in prizes and wanted to share with you the winners and give a generous thank you to the sponsors of the webinar.
Imagenomic / Portraiture Pro Plug In Suite : Kimmer Cecci Saini
Gallereee 1 yr membership: Nancy Van Drunen
Lovebugs Photography Gift Certificate toward website : Nichole Schmiedeskamp
Paint the Moon Actions Luminosity Collection : Sandy K. Cook
Clickn Moms 1 yr Membership + Magazine : Christy White
Clickn Moms 1 yr Membership + Magazine : Jennifer L Umbach
jinky art Delightful Actions : Jennifer Moskal
jinky art Sweet Set : David Hagar
Triple Scoop 1 Song Certificate: Kelly Beecher
Triple Scoop 1 Song Certificate : Jose Luis Acevedo
Triple Scoop 1 Song Certificate: Jennifer Moskal
Artifact Uprising Pine Beetle Box : Bill Tuggle
Kubota $50 : Murat Arslan
Kubota $50 : Mike Lancaster
Lavalu $100 Credit: Cia de Lawrence
Lavalu $100 Credit : Jose Luis Acevedo
Photo Vision 1 Year Membership : Danny Lai
Photo Vision 1 Year Membership : Timea Kovacs
Photobacks Premium Package : Kurt Petrich
Photobacks Premium Package : Angie Kaurich Neubauer
Red Boot Rounded White Album Template : Bob Oswald
Adorama Pix 10 x 10 – 26 page Photo Book : Mildred Martinez
Again, thank you to everyone who participated.
A Family Affair: Top 10 Tips for Amazing and Profitable Family PortraitsFree Webinar: Sunday, April 7, 9pm ESTOver $2,000 in door prizes generously donated by:
I’ve pondered on writing this blog post for Adoramapix. I finally decided that as part of my grieving process it was important for me to let the words and the images spill out and for me to share my experience with members.
Last week, my 82-year-old father passed away. I live in Canada and received the call on a Sunday that it was urgent that I come to LaCrosse, Wisconsin, as my father was dying. As you can imagine, it was a long trip to Wisconsin in winter as images from my father and I filled my head. I remember the time we danced in the basement to Lawrence Welk or the times we went swimming in the summers.
I knew this week would be his last week of life. I knew I wanted to document it in a way that I would remember how I felt, what was going through my mind and most importantly, I wanted this last thread to connect me to him. So I used my iphone to document my grief.
I arrived in time to make it by his bedside. I was the last plane in before 10 inches of snow hit the area and the airport was shut down. I knew my father was waiting for me to arrive, he was hanging on and would not go anywhere without me, my siblings and my mother by his side.
Two days went by, as my family and I were with him, he squeezed our hands letting us know he understood what was happening. We made him laugh in those last 48 hours with tales from growing up. It was a bittersweet moment as I laughed through the tears and watched my mother hang on to him through the stories.
He passed away with dignity. I held his hand as he passed from this life to the next. We headed back to our Iowa farm as we entered the next phase of grief and death and I saw the most beautiful sunset surround our 160 acre farm. We now needed to plan his funeral.
As the sun rose the next morning, I was in charge of all things media related. This included writing his obituary and gathering his pictures. I hammered out 82 years of life into 4 paragraphs. It didn’t seem right as my father was so much more than this. He was a midwest farmer and teacher who was captain of his high school football team, raised a family, loved sports, served in the military, served his community and flew the American Flag every day. He was so much more than those 4 paragraphs.
I started to gather the pictures. The pictures were the most tangible things I had that connected me to him. I laughed at his pictures of him as a child running with horses. I saw what a handsome man he was in high school and university. I saw the young husband looking dashing on his honeymoon with his wife. I saw the proud father of his first born, then his second, then his third, then me. I saw the pride as he worked at his school. I saw the pride he had when he worked in the fields. A rush of memories came flooding back.
Nothing could have prepared me for seeing my father laid to rest. It’s not something one can prepare for or even fathom. I only had my iphone on me to snap a picture of the American Flag being presented to my mother. It was such an emotional time, I was glad I could capture it quietly.
I guess the reason I wrote this post is two fold really. I wanted to first and foremost grieve. I wanted to tell someone my father’s story. Secondly, I wanted people to understand how important it is to get images off your hard drives, your phones, your cds and dvds. You never know how important an image is until you lose someone important to you. Most times the photograph is all you have left of them. I have over 200 images I will be printing through Adoramapix. I am ordering regular prints and metal prints as well as putting together a photo book. I am helping my brothers and sister grieve and my mother. I am making sure my children remember their PaPa with these images. Most importantly, I have something tangible to hold on to with my father’s memory attached to it. A print is more than paper and ink, it’s memories, it’s sadness, it’s happiness, it’s love. It’s all these emotions and so much more. Because in the end, this life is temporary but we can preserve glimpses of a beautiful life through pictures and photo books.
-Libby
Adoramapix Sales 0
Posted In Uncategorized
This is just our annual reminder about Adoramapix sales. We often will alert members of a sale through email, facebook, twitter and google plus. Our sales are not retroactive. In other words, if an order is place before a sale, it is not eligible for the discount. Also, we are not able to extend our sale beyond a certain point. We value our members and their feedback. Please feel free to leave comments here or you can always email me directly at libby@adoramapix.com if you have further questions/concerns. Thank you.