Creating Great Photobook Stories

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I just finished a Disney photobook for my mother for Mother’s Day. My nieces and nephew are so darn cute that I could have just slapped all the photos into the book and it would have made a nice book. But part of the challenge of creating great photobooks is figuring out how to tell a story without words in a logical and fluid way. This is the fun creative part that I enjoy.

Ironically, in such a technology driven world my favorite way to figure this out is old fashioned and manual but it works.

  1. Select the Photos. I create an album in Picasa (a free photo organizing program) where I place all my favorite pictures. You can create a folder in your computer and do the same or create an album in iPhoto.
  2. Print Out Photos. To make it easy, I print out contact sheets and then cut out the individual pictures. The images are only 1×1. These are too small to see any real detail but they are easy to work with at this size.
  3. Pick The Cover Photo. Before you start to create the book be sure to pull out any front or back cover photos.
  4. Lay Out the Story. Then I start to layout the story. Literally using the little pictures and laying out each two page spread. I ask myself what is the logical order of this book. For me, it was fairly easy because the first few days of Disney were pretty similar and the pictures were fairly interchangeable. The book had to end with our last day and the birthday party in the princess castle.

Like I mentioned creating a good, fluid story for this particular photobook was pretty easy but it isn’t always. I’ve worked with photobooks that have told family histories, celebrated big accomplishments like anniversaries and graduations, as well as a lot of weddings. But the process outlined above is always the same. Being able to see each two page layout and physically moving the pictures around is key to building a logical story. This process allows for you to check that you have represented all the right moments and all the right people without the technology or worries about page layouts getting in the way. Now I can’t wait for that book to arrive!