my iphone is a sinkhole swallowing tens of thousands of photos into a digital swamp of forgotten and untraceable memories.
Every year I take countless pictures (mainly of my undeniably adorable children). Each photo is a precious moment that, when captured by my iPhone’s camera, I’m sure I’ll treasure forever. but I don’t rarely review these digital photos.
You are reading: Photo books for kids
luckily, I have a solution.
For each of the last six years, I’ve made a photo book (yes, an actual physical book) with 100-200 photos of my kids from the previous year. these photo albums are on a shelf 5 feet from my desk. from time to time I take one off the shelf, examine it, remember it and smile. I can’t overstate how much more accessible these memories feel in a book that I can physically reach out and touch compared to accessing them in an illusory entity called an “icloud.”
These books are powerful and meaningful. these beloved memories of my children are no longer lost in a sea of photos too vast for me to explore seriously. They are right here in my hand. I turn the page and see more. there is something about the tactile feel and real-life permanence of a book. I relive the memories as I browse.
Of course, this is not a new idea. For generations, photo albums, packed with real printed photos protected by plastic sleeves, were commonplace for millions of American families. after my father and i took a trip to japan in 2004, i printed a bunch of photos at the local pharmacy and put them in a photo album that i gave him as a gift, a gesture that now seems almost paleolithic. but it is not necessary.
Nowadays, making photo albums using online services is relatively easy and inexpensive. It takes a bit of time, but trust me, you can do it. anyone can.
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wirecutter has spent years testing photo book services. I have always used shutterfly, which was the choice of wire cutters for several years, and found it intuitive to use. but our selections have evolved and we now recommend mixbook. our experts say: “mixbook offers the best photobook creation experience, modern layout options, and vibrant, color-accurate photo quality. the service also offers excellent customer service and an impressively powerful app.” and walmart is our budget choice. I plan to try both in the future.
The “elle and miles 2021” book I made on shutterfly feels like a great value: less than $75 for an 11-by-14-inch hardcover book, including shipping. Sentimental value to dollars spent ratio is among the highest of anything I own. (Bonus: These are great and relatively affordable gifts for grandparents!)
so how does it work? when I did my 2021 book, I didn’t go through all 10,703 photos of the year for the top 100. instead i went to my desktop (where all my iphone photos are automatically downloaded via icloud) and reviewed the photos on the big screen. I wasn’t looking for perfection or exhaustiveness, just a good selection that more or less represented the year.
I limit myself to 24 pages of photos, a two-page spread for each month of the year. books can be shorter or longer (although extra pages cost more), but I find a two-page spread for each month to be a good limit. there is power in finitude. some pages will get just one big photo. others, I will put 20 thumbnails.
While reviewing the photos on my pc, I batch upload them to shutterfly one month at a time. so I find 30 pretty good photos from, say, January, and sort through them in about five minutes. I drag and drop them onto the shutterfly site and hit upload, knowing that not all of them will appear in the book. then I choose (almost at random) one of shutterfly’s existing layout templates. for January I choose a 4 by 3 grid for one page and a giant dot for the opposite page. from my short list of 30 photos, I drag and drop 13 onto the pages, one into each slot. it’s more than simple.
here is the layout in the book:
then I repeat this for the other 11 months. the whole exercise takes two or three sessions of maybe an hour each. the resulting book is something I will revisit and treasure for decades to come.
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A related tip: On the first few pages of each annual photo book, I write a little detailed list for each of my children (not part of the standard shutterfly template, but I add mine slightly) text box with format) with this rubric:
“in 2021, she…
… I learned to ___.
… loved ___.
…I didn’t much care for ___”.
I list 10 or 20 things on each line. it took me and my wife just a few minutes to put it together. and while in 2019 i’m sure we thought we’d always remember that our son loved broccoli and getting his toenails painted, and that our daughter learned how to write her name and tell alexa what to do, i assure you that a a mere three years later I would have forgotten these details and/or when they happened without committing them to print. I hope and trust that when I look at these books in the future, whether it be three or 30 years from now, they will remind me of the old days and make me smile.
This article was edited by Erica Ogg and Jason Chen.
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