Our approach to printing photos

I often talk about how important it is to print your photos, so I wanted to share how we do that in our home! Sharing on social media is always fun, and I love having a great background for my phone or computer, but printing your photos is the best way (in my opinion) to really enjoy them. It makes me so unbelievably happy to have our walls covered in photos. We have albums, photo books, prints and canvases all throughout the house.

ALBUMS

All of our albums live in the entertainment center in our living room for quick access. For the important moments, like our engagement, wedding, Wynn’s birth and his newborn session, I design and order 10×10 lay flat albums with thick pages. We actually used our engagement album as a guestbook at our wedding! These are heirloom quality albums made to last generations.

Photos in albums by Mike + Julie | Storytellers

A lay flat album would not work well for a yearbook however. The cost would be astronomical and I wouldn’t be able to get nearly enough photos in one. This is where Blurb books comes in. My favorite photographer and educator, Katelyn James, shared this idea in her stories a couple years ago. It is actually still highlighted on her Instagram if you want to see it!

Towards the end of the year, and beginning of the next one I design a 12×12 Blurb book as our yearbook. Birthdays, everyday moments, time spent with family – all the memories I want to keep and have taken photos of get to serve a purpose other than living on my hard drive. These albums are huge and contain hundreds of pictures, but they are so precious to me. I have an album for 2018 and one for 2019, but guys 2020 might be two volumes with the amount of photos I am taking of Wynn!

I also use this for travel albums – like our honeymoon in Italy and our trip to Seattle. Putting all of those photos into the yearbook would make it impossible to order. Check out Wednesday’s post with tips to take photos at home if you’d like to take better photos of your everyday life, and maybe make an album of your own!

2018 cover: Staci Ann Moore Photography. 2019 cover: Lacey Rene Studios

PHOTOBOOKS

I also believe in printing our phone photos! For any of the iPhone photos Justin and I take and want to keep we post to a family Instagram account that is linked with Chatbooks. We have a subscription to a series I’ve titled “Bredehoeft Family” and for every 60 images posted to Instagram we get a new book and 5 bonus prints for $17. We can pick the prints from the book or Chatbooks will randomly pick them for us. I also choose a DSLR photo for the cover of each book. This is another idea I got from Katelyn James. I LOVE having these everyday moments printed and not just on my phone.

And another photo book we’ve order was for Wynn! Wynn’s first photo book was a baby board book from Artifact Uprising with pictures of our immediate family members in it and their names. We try to look at it every night before bed and go through everyone so he can learn their faces. 🙂

PRINTING PHOTOS AND SELECTING CANVASES

We do love to print photos for the walls and as decoration throughout our home in addition to all the books and albums. Justin built some photo shelves that are hanging in our living room. They are mostly full of travel photos. We have a wall gallery of images from our wedding printed on canvases. There are photos from Wynn’s birth in his nursery. We have a 16×20 family photo hanging up, and a bunch of 5x7s framed and on the bookshelf. And I have some more frames in my IKEA cart to hang up some 8x10s from our maternity/anniversary session this past October.

 

Photos by Mike + Julie | Storytellers

Photo by Belle’s Creek Photography

If you’d like help designing a canvas wall gallery or ordering prints, please let me know! And for frames, I love the RIBBA frames from IKEA. They are super affordable, and you can get them in a variety of sizes. Printing your photos should be fun! Just reach out if you have any questions or if I can help you get started. 🙂

No matter what method appeals to you, I hope this has helped motivate you to get your photos printed. And please don’t feel like you have to do everything I’ve outlined here to properly document your family. Photos are such an integral part of who I am, and that is why we have everything documented so heavily. Do not let any of this stress you out. If you don’t enjoy it, don’t do it.

Want to get in touch?

Hopefully this will motivate you to start printing photos! If you’d like to book your session or wedding, you can contact me at kelsey(at)kelseyalumbaugh(dot)com. Check out my Instagram @kelseyalumbaugh ! And like me on Facebook to see the latest blog posts. 🙂 If you’re curious about the investment, you can check that info out here, but please feel free to reach out so we can better address your photography needs.