Making Travel Photobooks

One of the ways I beat my after-travel blues (the kind when you’re at home, bummed that a trip is over!) is by making photobooks of our trips!

A lot of people tell me that they’re too lazy to make photobooks but for me, it’s one of my ultimate stress relievers! I love choosing which photos to use, putting all the captions and arranging everything. You probably think I’m crazy but this is what I usually do on my me-times on Sunday afternoons! Haha!

To me, there’s nothing quite like holding a book filled with your travel photos. I sure don’t have the patience of browsing through 3000+ pictures every time I want to relive a trip!

I enjoy making them so much that I started offering photobook services. Lately though, I try to limit the number of orders I take because I’m busy with a number of other projects, but once in a while, I still take some on.

For this entry, I want to share some commonly asked questions about our travel photobooks. Hope this inspires you also to make your own!

KIND OF BOOKS

For our travel books, I use softcover for all of them. It looks and feels like a magazine. They are not only cheaper to print (cost is a big factor if I want to include a LOT of pages!) but they are also lighter to hold. I’m not very fond of heavy hardbound photobooks so this is perfect for us.

The size I use is 8.5×11 portrait style. Again, magazine style! I guess, unknowingly, that’s the feel I’m going for.

STORAGE / DISPLAY

I had customized acrylic shelves made for a wall in one of our rooms at home to hold all the photobooks and I was so happy with the way it turned out! It will look nicer with more books (I think it’s time for more trips soon!)

DESIGNING AND LAYOUT-ING

Some people think that making books is as easy as just throwing in all the photos on the photobook program but I design books with a lot of careful thought and consideration; I choose only the best shots, post-process all of them and make sure that they’re well laid out.

I use the photobook program of my printer to lay them all out but I edit all my photos in Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop.

TIPS

At the end of the day, how nice the books turn out really depend on the photos that you have. Here are tips I wanna share based on my experience about taking travel photos that will look great on photobooks:

• Have a variety of angles and poses
• Take candid photos
• Take fun, wacky photos (if that’s your style!)
• Take photos of things and places: like signs, flowers or food
• Use both horizontal and vertical orientations (to give you options)
• Ask people to take your photos. Or take shots using a timer and tripod! Trust me, you don’t want a book full of selfies.

As you can see in my photos above, I lay the photos out in such a way that no two similar looking photos are beside each other. Even though the entire page is just about Stonehenge, you get Stonehenge from different perspectives.