2012 Family Yearbook

Guess what showed up on my door step last week??  It’s our 2012 Family Yearbook!  Ever since I saw the Petersik’s awesome family yearbook at Young House Love I fell in love and knew that it was the perfect solution for all of those pictures I take every year.  Oh and for the record I took a couple thousand this year (yikes…I know) but then I spent hours sorting through them all and then editing the best ones.  I can’t even image how many hours I have spent in the past year editing!!  Wayyyy too many!

2012 Family Yearbook from MyPublisher by jRoxDesigns

I know some people love to make scrapbooks with all of their photos and mementoes from the year and those people deserve some serious love!  I have tried…trust me, they just never turned out how I planned.  I think that is the reason I fell in love with the idea of digital photo books. There are so many companies out there now I just wasn’t sure where to go.  I read a lot of reviews on tons of different publishing companies but for what I wanted everything kept pointing me back to MyPublisher.

MyPublisher

What amazed me was that tons of their customers (just like YHL) were more than willing to share their amazing projects, how easy the software was and what a great experience it was to work with the company.  Now that’s what I like to hear!  MyPublisher runs specials all the time so you can catch some pretty awesome deals.  The only setback I found was that they have a 100 page limit on their photo books – yes I know to most people that is a lot but do you remember how many pictures I told you I take a year?

2012 Family Yearbook from MyPublisher by jRoxDesigns

It was SO easy to make my book.  I was planning on spending DAYS working on it…it took crazy perfectionist me only 3 hours!  I’m telling you all I did was download the software, pick out my photos(which it synced with iPhoto!), chose a theme and pushed the amazing “auto build” button and TA-DA!!!  I went back through and added some pages and changed a couple of the layouts but overall I didn’t have to do much work at all!

2012 Family Yearbook from MyPublisher by jRoxDesigns

My favorite feature was how easy it was to change the photo layouts.  For example I had 5 shots of the kids at Halloween with the pumpkins.  I went to the page layout and selected “5 photos” and then was given a whole handful of different options.  That way I could select which combination of portrait and landscape layouts would work best with what I had.  It is amazing!  Did I mention how easy it was?  Oh and by the way I am not being paid or given any perks from MyPublisher, I’m just saying I love my book that much!

2012 Family Yearbook from MyPublisher by jRoxDesigns

The colors turned out absolutely beautiful!  I’ve ordered other printed products where they come back and you are scratching your head wondering how they looked so good on your computer screen and now the final product looks like…well you know what I mean!  Another awesome feature…they have layouts that are square for your Instagram photos!  Yeahhh!!  As you can see below I had maybe a couple or so Instagram photos that I added in!

2012 Family Yearbook from MyPublisher by jRoxDesigns

Since I got our book I’ve been going through all of our old photos and doing a little house keeping in hopes that I can order a couple more photo books sometime in the future!  I’ve definitely been a slacker when it comes to finding a good way to showcase all the photos I take.  I think life just got a lot easier!!!

How do you keep track of all of your families memories??

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Disclaimer:  I have not been compensated in any way from MyPublisher for this post.  I just LOVE my book that much and wanted to share my great experience with you!

Click – The Magazine for The Modern Photograp[her]

I am still super new to photography but I am loving my journey so far.  I tried to take as many pictures as I could when Jake was little but it wasn’t until Emma Grace was born that it really hit me…you can’t get those memories back.  The best thing you can do is capture and savor ever last one of those special moments!  I’ve been reading every book I can get my hands on and reading tons of photography blogs.  One of my favorite book so far has been by Katie Evans “The Key To Taking Pictures Like A Professional Photographer” which I talked about here.  Her newest book “The Key To Natural Posing” just came out and I can’t wait to read it!

A couple of weeks back I got an email from Erin at Texas Chicks Blogs & Pics about a new bimonthly magazine that was created for female photographers who love some eye candy – moms, hobbyist and professionals alike.  I am so excited because this magazine is going to be great!  Check out what Erin has to say about the new publication:

The magazine will be printed on gorgeous matte paper and perfect-bound. (No worries, iPad lovers, it’ll be available digitally and as an app as well!) CLICK will feature profiles of amazing women photographers, insight and advice on new gear and products, real-world education, and loads of inspiring and exciting editorial sure to make you fall in love with photography all over again!

CLICK’s creative team includes Cameron Bishopp, former chief editor for Professional Photographer magazine and Lisa Thé, previously art director for Martha Stewart Weddings & Outside magazines.

So this afternoon I ordered my subscription and can’t wait for the premier issue which will be arriving in several weeks!  Whoho!

In the mean time I’ll keep stopping by my favorite photography blogs for some awesome inspiration!  These girls are so talented and you should stop by to say hello too!

Photography Books by Katie Evans :: Inspiration Wednesday

I’ve been trying to read more photography books lately and had plenty of time to get in some good quality reading at the beach last week.  My favorite book so far is “The Key To Taking Pictures Like A Professional Photographer” by Katie Evans.  Katie has a fabulous blog where she documents her life through photos as well as helping out newbies like me learn the ropes of photography.  She offers great tips and tricks as well as full on tutorials for shooting and photo editing.  So I took the plunge and bought her book and I have to say it is worth every penny.

She covers everything from exposure, camera settings, lighting, composition and even editing.  I think the hardest part for me starting off was really understanding the relationship between aperture and shutter speed.  Leave it to Katie that she has the BEST diagram to explain the relationship and it finally clicked for me!  She makes photography easy to understand.  Even the hubby had a great time reading it last week.

So I was thrilled to find out today that Katie has started pre-sale of her new e-book that will be released on August 31st.

The book will go into detail about how to interact with each subject/group, where to place and what to say to your subjects as well as how to achieve natural un-posed poses!  Whoohoo!

Now that I have learned so much from her first book I can finally take my photos to the next level.

You can get your own copy of Katie’s 1st book “The Key To Taking Pictures Like A Professional Photographer” and reserve your copy of “The Key To Natural Posing”  here.  Trust me you will love it!