Five Reasons Why You Will Love Yearly Family Photo Books

This morning on the way to school, my daughter asked from the backseat…

“Mom, where are the photos of Lexi?” Lexi was our beloved 13 year old yellow lab who crossed Rainbow Bridge last fall.

I looked in the rearview mirror and was speechless for a second. Why was she asking this? What prompted it? We weren’t talking about Lexi or any of our other dogs. It truly came out of nowhere.

In that moment, I was SO glad I had this answer: “They’re in all of our books in the family room. Do you want me to set them out for you to look at when you get home this afternoon?”

Of course she loved that idea, and I thought…

Well if this doesn’t perfectly demonstrate why I believe so strongly that everyone needs yearly family photo books!

Here are five reasons I love creating yearbook photo albums for you:

1. IT SAVES YOU TIME
   This is the kind of project everybody wants to make time for but never seem to be able to. The actual time investment for finding all of your photos, selecting your favorites, and sitting down to design the book could easily be upwards of 8-10 hours or more.
2. IT SAVES YOU FROM BEING OVERWHELMED
   Let’s think about just the quantity of photos for a second – in a given year you might have 3000, 6000 or even 10k+ photos to sort through to find your 2-300 favorites to summarize your year! That fact alone is enough to make even the most ambitious say “never mind.” With my “Send All Photos” upgrade, you can literally send them all! As a professional photographer, I’m skilled at culling through large quantities of photos in a short period of time to flag for only the very best. Another upgrade my clients are loving? Organization! Have your photos sent back to you in folders organized by month. Now, think too about choosing a book style. There are endless options but with my process, I’ve narrowed it down to two that I personally love and use that each offer a variety of features to suit any budget.
3. IT SAVES YOUR SANITY
   Album design is a skill. Choosing the correct layout, making sure your photos are arranged in a way that truly tells a story, and navigating confusing software is not something most people know how to do. This can easily be the hangup that drives even the most tech savvy away. This is a skill that I have sharpened over the years and love that it allows me to present a beautiful starting point (a pre-design) for my clients and yearbook families. From there, it’s much more manageable to make swaps and changes (ie. add these photos, remove that one, swap these two) via convenient online software.
4. ALBUMS ARE READILY ACCESSED & ENJOYED
   Maybe you have peace of mind that your photos back up to the cloud. Maybe it feels like enough to know all of your photos are on your phone. But can your kids access those photos whenever they want? Do they know how to navigate to the cloud and sort through dates? How are your kids getting to enjoy their adventures and milestones, both big and small? How will you vividly recall the years past yourself? Yearly photo books can be pulled off the shelf at any moment. They’re always ready for you to hunker down on the couch to re-live all of the best memories.
5. IT HELPS YOU APPRECIATE ALL THE GOOD
   The main reason I love having a collection of yearly family photo books? Family photo albums take the messiness and chaos of day-to-day life and tie it all up as a beautiful little treasure where you can take a step back and see the big picture of how many little flecks of gold there truly are. When you are in the daily grind of parenting, marriage, work, and managing a home, those little flecks of gold are priceless. That 30,000 foot view offers the best perspective when you need a reminder of how far you’ve come and how much goodness there is in life.

Can you design your own family photo albums each year? Absolutely! But as we all know, there’s always a cost to DIY. For many of us, the cost of DIYing printing our photos in any capacity is never actually getting around to it. And that’s a terrible price to pay when you know that in 10, 20, or 40 years these photos will be all you have to re-live the most precious people, places, and seasons of your life.

If this is something you are tired of kicking down your to-do list for that magical “someday” that you’ll have time, I’d love to design your first yearbook! Purchase your own yearbook design here or reach out to Britt directly with any questions.