One thing I like to recommend, and show off, at the end of my beginning photography class, is books I’ve made out of our images.
I got started making these wonderful souvenirs after my daughter-in-law Chele had a beautiful book of pictures Abby and I shot of their wedding in 2009. She used a publishing company called “MyPublisher.com,” and the product was spectacular.
At a school’s 100th anniversary celebration a couple of years ago, I talked to a teacher who had created some of the displays from over the years. Almost all of them featured yearbooks. I love yearbooks, not just because they are permanent and tangible, but because I owe much of my photographic start to being on staff at high school and college yearbooks.
Photo books, yearbooks, newspapers and magazines also have a decided advantage in that they aren’t vulnerable to a potential phenomenon known as the Digital Dark Age, in which there is a possible disappearance of “historical information in the digital age as a direct result of outdated file formats, software, or hardware that becomes corrupt, scarce, or inaccessible as technologies evolve and data decay.”
I know all these things are true, but I am seeing less and less interest in people buying photo books or even printing their photographs. How often do we take out a stack of 4×6 prints of a new grandchild compared to how often we hand someone a smartphone so they can swipe through those pictures?
Some companies that once offered these printing services have stopped doing so, likely because there isn’t money to be made by selling them. MyPublisher.com no longer even exists.
So, readers, help me figure this out. Did you take pictures with a camera that used CDs or floppy disks, that you now have lost? Do you wish you’d made a book or printed those pictures?
Abby and I love photo books and prints on the walls, but are we the only ones?
