photo album homework

9 Best Photo Book Maker Websites

Print your favorite photos and don't let them go to waste.

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Best Overall Photo Book Maker

Shutterfly photo books.

Best Value Custom Photo Book Maker

Walmart photo custom photo books.

Most Aesthetic Photo Book Maker

Artifact uprising photo books.

Best Themed Photo Book Maker

Mixbook photo books.

Best Photo Book Maker for Beginners

Printique photo books.

Best Photo Book Maker for Amazon Prime Members

Amazon prints.

Best Photo Book Maker for Young Kids

Pinhole press photo books.

Best Photo Book Maker for Google Photos Users

Google photo books.

Best Photo Book Maker for Families

Chatbooks custom photo books & albums.

The product analysts and experts in the Good Housekeeping Institute Media & Tech Lab continuously test everything from photo book maker websites to the best wedding photo albums , printers and much more. When making our selections, we reviewed each product for factors like ease of use and intuitiveness of the website and app, if applicable, photo quality, speed of delivery and extra features like templates, cover options and style. These are the best photo book maker websites of 2024, according to our pros.

Shutterfly offers basic photo books at an affordable price. You can choose from a wide selection of themes, like birthday, travel or wedding, or neutral styles , such as modern or rustic. You can also create your own book and choose the book size, cover style and page style, then embellish it with Shutterfly's extensive library of stickers and ribbons to make your book extra special. We appreciate how easily users can edit within their chosen template and the brand's high-quality photo book paper, making Shutterfly a top pick.

You can also opt for one of its 6" x 6" Instant Books , which let you add photos from your phone, tablet or computer in minutes. These mini photo books have only 20 pages, but they're a great place to store goofy candids or Instagram posts you never want to forget. The possibilities are essentially limitless, though the vast array of options could be overwhelming for those getting started.

If you don't want the pressure of deciding on a layout, the brand offers a convenient Make My Book option, in which Shutterfly's professional designers curate your photos and design the book for free. Plus, you'll still have the opportunity to put finishing touches on it before it gets printed. Whether you opt for 50 or 800 photos (the maximum), you'll receive an email notification within 24 hours that your book is complete.

Crunched for time? Design your photo book online and pick up select styles at a Walmart store near you in as little as one hour. Photo books picked up in one hour can have 15 single-sided pages and a linen cover, while same-day pickups (ready in a few hours) can have up to 20 double-sided pages and the option of a hardcover.

On top of the speedy turnaround, Walmart has a great selection of styles : You can choose everything from the photo size and layout to the type of cover, including hardcover glossy or matte, linen, leather and lay-flat glossy or matte. If you need help narrowing down the choices, there's also the option to shop by occasion, whether you're looking for a one-year anniversary or 15th-year anniversary gift .

Despite the fast shipping and variety, our expert tester, Rachel Rothman , former chief technologist and executive technical director at the Good Housekeeping Institute, did note that the quality is not as high as the options offered by other photo book makers on this list — but that may be expected considering the bargain price tag. Regardless, these photo books still make a superb present that can cost under $10 without compromising on sentimentality.

No matter the occasion, you can't go wrong with one of Artifact Uprising's high-quality photo books. There are numerous design options, including preset books to celebrate the birth of a new baby or commemorating a marriage. You can choose from lay-flat albums, books with photo strips and even softcover Instagram Friendly Books for the influencer in your life. The company even has an iPhone app that lets you create a photo book right from your smartphone. However, Rothman found the app to be glitchy at times and noted there's room for improvement with the software. Still, the books come out on top for elegance and simplicity .

One online reviewer wrote, "The fabric cover is beautiful. The photos are amazing quality and look amazing even though the photos were taken on film and therefore are a bit grainy." The overall 4.6-star rating (out of 5) backs up that review. Quality and elevated designs come with a higher price tag, but there are options for $20 or less if you're shopping on a budget.

If you have a special project and a little more money to spend, Artifact Uprising offers Design Services , which allow you to work one-on-one with an expert to bring your special moments to life. Just note that the design fee is rather steep at $119 and requires an additional $100 album deposit.

When Mixbook says it has "custom photo books for every occasion," it really means it. There are 374 different themed templates to choose from, including everything f rom travel and sports to weddings and recipes. But that doesn't mean you have to give up creative control. You can still customize the look to your liking, from fun backgrounds to stickers to text using the Editor tool. Plus, there are plenty of paper varieties, from semigloss to ultra-thick matte.

Rothman appreciated the nice balance between good photo editing and price, but she did experience issues with the lay-flat option, in which the photos bled into the crease. You can also use the iPhone app to organize your photos with a tool that the brand calls "Automagic": Simply choose the images you want and select a theme. The goal of Automagic is to help arrange your camera roll so your photos are in order when it comes time to add them to your photo book.

If you're not sure where to start, our pros love Printique because it's super easy to use. You can select one of the many predesigned layouts or create an entire photo book from scratch. Choose among portrait, landscape and square orientations, as well as hardcover and softcover options. You can even store your memories in a genuine leather or vegan leather book or pick from five different fabric colors. Although you can't choose the color for a hard- or softcover photo book, you can still customize the shape, size and paper type.

Looking for something more advanced? There'sa tool for professional photographers to design and create their own photo books. But if you want to keep things simple, consider starting with one of Printique's 4" x 4" Mini Softcover photo books , which have a maximum of 40 pages and come in three sizes.

Is Amazon Photos already your preferred destination for uploading photos? Then creating a photo book through its interface is an easy solution. Similar to other photo book makers, you can create by occasion and size, or choose its 8" x 8" Premium Photo Book for a versatile option that has a laminated cover and lay-flat binding. There's also an option with standard binding at a lower cost, and all Amazon Prime members get free shipping . (Everyone else is eligible for free shipping with a minimum order of $15.)

In addition to photo books, you can shop large prints, calendars, cards and metal tabletops. There are fewer size and style options than most services when it comes to photo books, but the other photo product choices make up for the lack of available styles. After all, sometimes it's easier and quicker to have fewer options to choose from if you need to pull something together by a certain date, like a last-minute gift for your boyfriend .

RELATED: 37 Best Personalized Gifts You Can Find on Amazon

With Pinhole Press, you can choose from various photo book styles ranging from board pages to softcovers to accordion-style setups. Upload your photos and let the system do the work, or manually place the photos into the layout yourself. Rothman says her kids love the Custom Board Books , which have themes such as " Count With Me ," " Healthy Habits " and " I Can Be Anything ." These photo books aren't just visually stimulating, but they can also educate and entertain kids for years to come .

"I got my daughter the ' My First Photo Book ' as a toddler and made it all about her — like pictures with family, doing things she likes, her favorite toys, at the playground and beach, etc. — and she still is obsessed with it," says Lexie Sachs , executive director of strategy and operations at the Good Housekeeping Institute.

Rothman also notes the custom Photo Puzzle is a fun option for kids, and the Itty Bitty Books are easy to tote around in a work bag for on-hand entertainment. There's less variety in some categories, including Itty Bitty and hardcover books, but with so many additional photo categories other companies lack, there are still plenty of great options for kids.

RELATED: 12 Best Personalized Books for Kids

If you store your snaps in Google Photos, then Google's very own photo book maker might be the most convenient option for you. Even though there are no fancy designs, the process is seamless. Choose from two options: a 7" x 7" softcover photo book or a 9" x 9" hardcover photo book. You can include between 20 and 140 pages, and you have the option to add a spine title if you hit more than 48 pages for a softcover or any number of pages for a hardcover.

Another hallmark of Google Photos is that you can make one photo book and order multiple copies to give to family members and friends who are also pictured in the photos. Since they come at an affordable price point, you could give everyone on your gift list a copy, whether you decide to create a collection of candid photos for your closest friends or a tangible memento of a fun family trip. Though there may not be as many designs and styles to choose from, that can make the customization process less daunting.

RELATED: 50 Trendy and Most Popular Gifts of 2023

Chatbooks Custom Photo Books & Albums

"Set and forget it," Rothman says about the ease of using Chatbooks, which markets itself as "ridiculously easy." You can upload images from Instagram, Flickr, Dropbox, Facebook or your computer and edit them on your desktop or via the app . The service's Custom Photo Books & Albums option is great for families looking to personalize a family vacation , as you can choose colors, layouts, cover styles, collages, captions and more. Peruse its vast collection of more than 300 unique book covers, or shop the premium lay-flat and special occasion photo books.

You can also have fun with the Instagram and Facebook series — a 6" x 6" or 8" x 8" book with 60 pages — that lets you store your favorite social media posts in a tangible place to look back on for years to come.

Unique to Chatbooks is its subscription service, which allows you to receive a softcover, hardcover or mini photo book each month. If you and your family love taking photographs of walks in the park, weekend road trips or vacations, this service is ideal for getting your photos in your hands ASAP. One thing to note about the subscription option is that there are only two sizes available (5" x 7" and the monthly mini).

How we choose the best photo book makers

At the Good Housekeeping Institute , our pros in the Media & Tech Lab have been testing photo book makers for more than a decade . For this article, we referenced a robust test of photo book makers completed in 2009, examined updates to apps and ordered new products to test in 2023.

When choosing the best photo book makers, our Lab experts consider ease of use, performance and appearance . That means our pros take an in-depth look at a wide range of features, such as how easy it is to navigate the interface and add photos and text to the book; upload and delivery time; the number of styles, covers and templates offered; and the photo, paper and binding quality.

What to look for when shopping for the best custom photo book maker

Keep the following features in mind when choosing the right photo book maker website for your needs:

✔️ Size: Whether you're looking for a small photo book for kids or a much larger album to house snapshots from a long family vacation, there are regular, large and miniature photo book sizes available. It's best to think about how many photos you want to include and where you plan to store the album (i.e., will the book be too tall for your bookshelf or just right on top of your coffee table?).

✔️ Shape: Most photo books are rectangular or square in shape, but some companies also offer photo puzzles, calendars and tabletops to choose from too. The shape is really about aesthetic preference and the orientation you prefer for your photos.

✔️ Page count: Are you compiling 20 photos from your daughter's first-birthday party? Or are you putting together an anniversary album of pictures of you and your partner throughout the years? The number of pages determines the number of photos you can include in an album, so you have enough space to include everything.

✔️ Paper quality: This is probably a no-brainer, as the quality of material your photos are printed on is as important as the quality of the photos themselves. Although companies with higher-quality paper, like Artifact Uprising , may have a higher price tag, the extra money goes toward paper that won't lead to photos bleeding into the crease. But there are still services that are affordable and offer good-quality products, like our best value pick, Walmart Photo .

✔️ Binding quality: Some companies, like Google Photos , will add a binding to your photo album. This feature is especially important when considering the durability and longevity of your photo album. Whether it's a softcover, hardcover or lay-flat book, make sure the binding can withstand accidental drops and the wear and tear of passing the family album around at holiday parties.

✔️ Templates: If your photo album will have a certain theme or be centered around a specific occasion — or it's your first time using a photo book maker — choosing a service that has a variety of templates to choose from will let your creativity flow and also help you warm up to the design process.

✔️ Editing capabilities: When looking at beginner-level or more advanced designer tools, consider how robust or simple they are to use. Having lots of control over the interface is fun, but if you're looking for a more straightforward experience, opt for a service that does the majority of the decision-making for you or offers designer help, like Shutterfly .

What is the easiest way to make a custom photo book?

" It really depends upon the service and your preference ," Rothman says. Although some online custom photo book makers also have an app, it can have limited functionality, be buggy or not as easy to use as the desktop equivalent. "Often, an app makes it super simple to upload pictures from your phone (a major plus!) but doesn't allow as much flexibility for product assortment or editing once you've selected." That said, designing a photo book on your smartphone or tablet versus a desktop may come down to how many edits you intend to make .

"If you plan to do a lot of editing, the non-app version on a larger screen would likely be your best choice. If you want to quickly make a book with limited changes, an app on your mobile device may be the way to go," Rothman explains.

Why trust Good Housekeeping?

Elizabeth Berry is the updates editor at the Good Housekeeping Institute , where she ensures product reviews reflect accurate information. Prior to this role, she was an editorial assistant at Woman's Day , where she covered everything from gift guides to recipes.

To update this article, Elizabeth collaborated with former Good Housekeeping Institute Chief Technologist & Executive Technical Director Rachel Rothman to gather testing notes regarding current picks. Rachel, who has tested several of the best photo book makers on this list, has more than 15 years of experience evaluating thousands of products, including toys and cars for Good Housekeeping’s annual Best Toy Awards and Best New Family Cars programs.

Amina Lake Abdelrahman is a product review writer and editor who worked as an editorial assistant at the Good Housekeeping Institute from 2018 to 2020, writing original content based on GH Institute Lab experts' product testing and analysis.

Amina is a product review writer and editor who worked as an editorial assistant in the Good Housekeeping Institute from 2018 to 2020, writing original content based on GH Lab experts' product testing and analysis. Amina graduated from Montclair State University with a B.A. in communication studies and journalism.

Elizabeth Berry (she/her) is the Updates Editor at the Good Housekeeping Institute where she optimizes lifestyle content across verticals. Prior to this role, she was an Editorial Assistant for Woman’s Day where she covered everything from gift guides to recipes. She also has experience fact checking commerce articles and holds a B.A. in English and Italian Studies from Connecticut College.

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Photo Albums

Relive every special moment with one-of-a-kind photo albums.

With any happy get-together, vacation, or special occasion, you’re likely to think, “I want to remember every bit of this!” That’s where personalized photo albums come in.

The best photo albums are the ones that capture everything from life-changing moments to behind-the-scenes bloopers you and your family will laugh about for years to come.

Whether it’s a large photo album that spans years or a small photo album that focuses on a single special day, you will love having all your amazing memories right at your fingertips.

Types & Sizes Of Photo Albums

The first question you should always ask yourself is what kind of photo album you want to create. Is your aesthetic more modern? Or are you drawn to brighter and more whimsical elements? Whatever your style is, we have a photo album design to match! 

Once you’ve chosen your design, it’s time to decide what size works best for your photo album. For smaller occasions, maybe you’ll want to go with a square, 8x8 size. For bigger occasions, perhaps a 10x10 or 11x8 photo album would work better for you. It’s all up to you! And, if you need help making the best photo album ever, you can also hand it off to our trusted team of Shutterfly designers with our Make My Book® Service. This photo album maker service keeps it easy for you — simply choose your album design and size and they’ll handle the rest. 

Covers & Finishes For Photo Albums

Make your photo album stand out with an amazing cover that gives your family and friends a sneak peek at what’s inside. Plus, the cover material matters when it comes to durability and aesthetic! Our soft cover photo album covers are great for easy flipping and our hard cover photo albums are great to make sure the cover stands the test of time (and toddlers). If you want a more polished look, you’ll love our premium leather cover instead. 

After you choose the cover, it’s all about the finishing touches. Choose the page layout that works best for your photos. Standard pages might do the trick but deluxe layflat pages are great for those landscape photos that span an entire spread. You can also upgrade the quality of your printing to ensure your photos are printed with smoother tones.

Scrapbook Photo Albums Made Easy

If you love making scrapbook albums, you’ll also fall in love with our collection of photo albums. There’s something very unique about adding your own personalized embellishments to a photo album, whether they’re online or with the scrapbooking material you have in your home. Luckily, Shutterfly allows you to add as many (or few!) embellishments to your photo albums as you like. Keep all of your own personal touches & keepsakes in mind in as you create your custom photo album and start getting excited for the finished product. 

Photo Albums To Keep Holiday Cards

The holidays are full of special moments every year whether it’s baking cookies with Grandma, celebrating at an ugly Christmas sweater party or simply enjoying quality time with family. Capture all of those moments in your personalized photo albums. Photo albums also work well to store holiday cards you receive every year. Simply design a photo album with those blank spots in mind and get creating. 

Wedding Photo Album Ideas

Our most luxurious option is our professional flush mount albums with 10 seamless spreads to choose from, ultra-thick pages and a leather cover. You can customize your album to your heart’s content or use our free Make My Album Service — our expert designers can do all the hard work and you can just sit back and wait for it to arrive. 

  Besides making a photo album to relive your special day, photo albums are also an awesome substitute for a guestbook at your wedding reception. It’s a great way to showcase all your beautiful engagement photography or even some favorite photos from your adventures over the years. Your family will love seeing them, too, and adding their own messages to the album. 

Baby Photo Albums

There are so many precious moments to capture in a baby’s first few years of life — keep them all organized with a collection of baby photo albums. Whether it’s a massive photo dump a year at a time or photo albums broken down by special milestones, all that matters is that you have a tangible, easy place to hold all their baby photos. Include special messages they’ll love reading when they’re older, along with dates, funny stories and beyond. Pro tip: For even easier creating, set up automatic upload on your Shutterfly App — from there you can organize by date, special occasions, silly faces and more.

Personalized Photo Albums For Every Occasion

When it comes down to it, you don’t need to wait for a big life event to make personalized photo albums. Every part of your life deserves to be celebrated and captured from your home remodel and gardening transformation or an amazing concert you don’t want to forget. Our custom photo books work for you and your memories — no matter how big or small.

Capture Each Memory With Personalized Photo Albums

Keep all of your most cherished memories in one place with a personalized photo album from Shutterfly. When you create a photo album with Shutterfly, you have the ability to customize every aspect of your photo book —  from the size and placement of your photos to the cover style and design of your album. You get to choose the look and feel that matches the sentiment of your photo album, whether it's a keepsake memory book of baby photos or a high-quality, leather photo album from your wedding day. Whether you're capturing professional photos or your own snapshots, personalized photo albums store the best memories.

How to Make a Photo Album

Customize your photo album from cover to cover to make a high-quality photo book that suits your style. Choose from a variety of covers and bindings, from softcover and hardcover photo books to one with premium layflat pages. Upgrade your book for special occasions with metallic cover accents or a beautiful leather cover. To tell your book's story, incorporate custom captions, pre-designed Ideas pages, and decorative embellishments. Choose your photo book's template style and size, upload your favorite photos , and start creating. It's simpler than scrapbooking, and your family and friends will love to flip through the pages of your one-of-a-kind photo album for years to come.

Best Photo Album Themes and Ideas

You can make a personalized photo album for any occasion. The best photo books have a theme that gives your album consistency. Document your little one's firsts in a baby photo album. Capture all of their exciting milestones like a first tooth or a first birthday and customize your album with colors and designs that suit your baby's personality. Celebrate your big day with a wedding photo album that showcases your favorite photos from the ceremony and reception. Relive your most memorable vacations with a travel photo album commemorating family trips and exciting adventures. Whether you're creating a stylish coffee table book or a keepsake treasure that will be passed down from generation to generation, you'll love flipping through the pages of your most memorable moments in your personalized photo album from Shutterfly.

MAKING PHOTO ALBUMS TOGETHER

Share and create your photo book or photo album. Relive the most beautiful moments.

SHARE PHOTO ALBUMS PRIVATELY

Create a free online photo album. Keep each other informed and invite family and friends. Make memories together!

CREATE A PHOTO BOOK

Relive memories with a Premium photo book. Our unique editor helps you create a world-class photo book. Create photo books together!

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Learn How to Support Stressed and Anxious Students.

21 Ways to Use Photos in the Classroom

Snap, snap!

From a wall of photos to celebrate your students to using photos as an organizational tool (for example, a photo of art supplies on the canisters where they’re stored), photos can be incredible classroom tools. Here are 21 ideas for using photos in the classroom, from the first day of school to the last.

Picture-Perfect Introductions At the beginning of the year, take photos of your new students holding a sign that tells you something about them. For example, have them complete the sentence: When I grow up I want to be… or, All you need to know about me is that I am…. Post these photos around your classroom, or use them as writing prompts for personal essays. Source: http://flamingofabulous.blogspot.com/2012/09/im-still-kicking.html

The Selfie Project A great project for middle- or high-school students. Have them create digital self-portraits that incorporate layers of images that describe and express students’ individuality. Next step? Have students write essays about their portraits. Source: http://www.schoolartsdigital.com/i/271882/40

High Flyers Have students write important goals on a balloon cutout. Take pictures of students in motion, then cut out their figures and attach them to their written goals. Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/19844054580021472/

Photo Scavenger Hunt and Collage Here’s a fun photo project for young kids or older students. Assign individual or pairs of students a shape, a letter, a color or even a less tangible theme (optimism, friendship) and send them around the school grounds to find photo evidence. Students can then create a collage or photo book to share! Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/211176670003265217/

Nameplate Here’s one for the little guys! As students are learning how to spell their names, a custom name puzzle makes for great practice, and they couldn’t be easier to make. Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/69383650485935406/

Create a Face Book (Seriously!) For students who are learning about social cues or emotions, create a literal book of faces, expressions, emotions and scenarios they’ll see throughout their day. These photos can be great prompts for talking about feelings and emotions. Source: http://www.ikatbag.com/2010/05/facebook.html

Inferential Images Use photos to teach students about how we make inferences. Have students work in small groups to make observations, list schema (background knowledge) and then make inferences. Then invite students to bring in or find photos to use in your next inference session. Source: http://mrshallfabulousinfourth.blogspot.com/2013/11/using-photos-for-inferencing.html

Meme Class Rules Give your class rules and procedures a touch of humor by taking photos and turning them into memes to use in a presentation or post on a bulletin board. Middle school students could do this as a class assignment. Have them make memes about book characters or science lab procedures, for example. Source: http://www.traceeorman.com/2014/03/five-ways-to-use-memes-to-connect-with.html

Explain This Photo Photos make fantastic writing prompts. Find photos online and give each student a photo. Have them write a descriptive, narrative or persuasive essay based on their image. Source: http://photoprompts.tumblr.com/

Sight Word Class Book Take photos of students holding sight words (or number facts), then put them into a class book for whole-class or individual practice. Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/287597126180040411/

Personalized Mother’s Day Card All you need to create a structured photo shoot for Mother’s Day cards, the 100th day of school or another occasion is a decorated strip of butcher paper and a stool at just the right height! Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/340584790541122282/

Instagram Bulletin Board Celebrate your class with an Instagram bulletin board filled with student snapshots of daily life in your classroom. Change the photos every few weeks and have a new group of students write the captions. Source: https://dborck.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/student-life-on-display-with-instagram-board/

Catch a Character Use props and a sheet as background to turn students into popular book characters, like this Cat in the Hat. Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/21040323234349481/

Our Plant Diary As a class, create a plant photo diary, documenting the growth of a vegetable. Have each child plant a seed (green beans, corn or peas work best) in a plastic cup, wrapped with a wet paper towel. As the plant grows, have students take photos of it and add them to their plant books made from recycled paper bags! Source: http://eisforexplore.blogspot.com/2012/02/garden-reflections.html

Label It Rather than names, use photos to label the things that students use every day, like book boxes or cubbies. This notably raises the chances students will put things back in the right place! Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/233694668138854329

Math Shots Have students use a camera to take pictures of shapes, elements of geometry, measurements or another math concept that they see in the school and at home. Source: http://buggyandbuddy.com/math-kids-finding-shapes-playground/

Center Image Put student photos on Popsicle sticks and use the sticks to assign students to centers or other group work. Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/26880928997960370/

Word Watch Assign students the task of representing their vocabulary, in this case, prepositions, through photos. Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/394135404865381287/

Document It! Take photos during a field trip or science experiment, then have students put them in order and add captions to create a record and help students retell the event. Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/235805730463608690/

Create Photo Timelines Have students use a free timeline-maker tool to create a biographical or historical timeline. Source: http://www.dipity.com/jamesblackburn/World_War_II/

Class Spirit Books Collect your own and students’ photos throughout the year, and at the end of the year they’ll have enough to create a Remember Me photo yearbook that they can sign and keep. Assign each student a page, or work together to bring your picture-perfect year to a brilliant finish. Source: https://www.remembermeyearbooks.com/

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10 Photo Assignments to Inspire and Challenge Your Skills

Liz Masoner is a professional photographer and she shares her tips and techniques on photo editing and how to photograph nature, portraits, and events with film and digital cameras. Liz has over 30 years of experience and she is the author of three books on photography.

The best way to learn photography is to practice, though sometimes you can get stuck in a rut and not know what to shoot. That is why photographers love assignments; they give us a purpose and an idea of what to photograph. 

Why Are Assignments Important?

Self-assignments are key to any photographer's growth. Even professionals with decades of experience will work on personal assignments that they may never get paid for. The goal of any self-assignment is to spur creativity, solve problems, learn new techniques, and challenge yourself.

As you start out in photography, you're probably filled with excitement and ready to shoot anything you can. That being said, sometimes a little direction and guidance are necessary.

Below, you will find ten photography assignments. Each covers a new topic, skill, or concept and they were chosen to help you learn how to see as a photographer. They are meant to be a personal challenge that you can complete at your own pace and with no outside judgment, simply as a means to practice and improve your photography. Hopefully, you will learn something new with each assignment and be able to use that in every photograph you take in the future.

Remember when composing your images to keep in mind the basics: the rule of thirds,  shutter speed , aperture,  depth of field , and  exposure .

Assignment #1: Up Close

This assignment encourages you to get close and personal with your subject. It is an exercise in viewing a common object in a new way and examining its finer details.

• Choose an object that you see or interact with every day.
• Focus on a small part of it, get as close as your camera will allow you to focus, and shoot away.
• Try to capture different angles and unusual lighting to add to the mystery of this tiny world.

From the whiskers of your cat to a fragile Christmas ornament, and even common soap bubbles, there is an entire world that we often overlook because we don't get close enough.

Assignment #2: Motion

Photography is a static medium which means that it doesn't move. Conveying a sense of motion is often crucial to capturing a scene or emotion and it is an essential skill for photographers to practice.

The goal of this exercise is to understand how shutter speeds can be used to convey motion.

• Choose a subject or series of subjects that will allow you to convey motion in your images.
• It can be slow motions, like that of a turtle, or fast motion, like a speeding train.
• Blur it, stop it, or simply suggest that there is motion in the photograph.

Challenge yourself to capture the same motion in different ways. For instance, you might go to a race track and stop the movement of the cars completely in one image, then leave the shutter open and allow them to blur out of the frame in the next. 

Assignment #3: Shadows

Shadows are everywhere and they are vital to photography because this is the art of capturing light. With light comes shadows and when you begin to look at shadows as a photographer, your world will open up.

• Take a look around for shadows and record them with your camera.
• You could show the shadow as the total focus of the image. Perhaps the shadow is incidental to the subject.
• Is the shadow natural or created by flash?

Shadows are integral to creating depth in a two-dimensional medium such as photography. Take some time to seriously explore the "dark side" of the light.

Assignment #4: Water

Water is everywhere in photography and it presents many challenges. There are reflections and movements to work with and in this exercise, you will take a deeper look at water.

• Find water anywhere: lakes, streams, puddles, even the glass on your kitchen table.
• Pay attention to reflections and use them to your advantage in the photographs. Use this opportunity to get familiar with a polarizing filter (a very useful tool in your camera kit) so you can accentuate or eliminate reflections.
• Play with the motion of a stream or the crashing waves. Notice the difference between stopping the flow of water and allowing it to blur to create a real sense of movement.

Be sure to make water the subject and not an accent to the image. Water alone is beautiful and mysterious and your challenge is to explore all of its potential as a subject.

Assignment #5: Leading Lines

A classic assignment in photography schools, 'leading lines ' is a popular and fun subject. The goal of this assignment is to learn how to direct the viewer to your subject using lines.

• Choose a subject then look around for lines in the scene that you can use to 'lead' the viewer to the subject. 
• Find an interesting line then determine what the subject of your photograph is.
• Remember that lines can be man-made or natural. For instance, the yellow line down the middle of the road or a tree branch. Even a person's arm can be a leading line of their face.

Use this assignment as an excuse to take an afternoon photo excursion. Walk downtown or in the woods and look around you for interesting lines that lead the eye to a subject. There is an amazing assortment of lines out there in the world and once you begin to see them, you won't be able to stop. 

Assignment #6: Perspective

How do you normally stand when you shoot? If your answer is straight up like a 5-foot-something human being then this assignment is for you. The perspective assignment challenges you to view the world from an entirely new perspective, which in turn gives the viewer a new look at the ordinary.

• Take another afternoon or evening for a photo excursion wherever you like.
• This time, every time you find something to photograph, stop!
• Ask yourself: How would a squirrel see that tree? How would a robin view that birdbath? How would a snake view that log?
• Take your photographs from very high or very low angles. Get on your belly or stand on a chair, whatever you have to (safely) do to get the 'right' angle on your subject.

If you pay attention to professional photographs, many of the images that have the WOW factor are photographed from extreme angles. People enjoy these photos because they've never seen an object from that viewpoint. It is new and unique, and you can train yourself to shoot with this in mind.

Assignment #7: Texture

You may have captured a few textural details in the 'Up Close' assignment, but this assignment takes that to the next level. The goal in this one is to study textures and forget about the object itself: the texture becomes the subject. You will also begin to realize how light affects the appearance of texture.

• Find a few objects that have very detailed textures like trees or rocks, even knit sweaters or woven rugs.
• Photograph them as close as your lens will allow.
• Use different angles and capture the same texture as the light changes. Notice how the different lighting directions and camera angles can change how much texture appears.

Textures are all around us and many of the best photographs in the world play up the textural element. This assignment should teach you how to recognize and accentuate those elements in your photos.

Assignment #8: Color Harmony

Color is important to photography because the world is full of color. This exercise requires a bit of study in color theory, which you will then put into practice in your photographs.

Do you remember art class in elementary school? You may have learned that yellow and blue make green, but color theory goes beyond that. There are cool and warm colors, complementary and contrasting colors, neutral colors, and bold colors.

It can get quite complicated, and photographers should have a basic understanding of color so you can use that when composing photographs. You don't have to study color like a painter would but can use tricks used by interior designers to influence your color decisions.

• Once you have an idea of color theory, take another photo excursion and put what you've learned into practice.
• Capture photographs with the primary or tertiary colors.
• Look for complementary colors then contrasting colors to photograph.
• Try finding a scene to photograph that is filled with neutral colors, then one that uses a bold color to 'pop' from the scene.

This is an advanced lesson, but one that any photographer working with color images will find useful. As you practice working with colors, it will become second nature and you will know how to work with color to change the feel of your images.

Assignment #9: Emotions

Take a photo of a person smiling or scowling, right? Not so. The intent of this assignment is to convey emotion in photographs  without  a face.

• Take photographs that express each of the basic emotions: happy, sad, and mad.
• How would you express the feeling of anger with no person? What about happiness? Sadness?

This is a purely conceptual assignment, but it is important to be able to relay emotion in your photographs and you might not always have a person available to do that with. Challenge yourself to think deeper about this one.

Assignment #10: Don't Look!

Are you ready to put your photography skills to the test? In today's world of digital cameras and the ability to see image captures right there on the LCD screen, photographers are losing some of the skills needed to visualize a photograph.

In this assignment, your challenge is to shoot as if you were using a film camera. That means that you will not look at the photographs you've taken until they are downloaded on your computer. Instead of relying on the camera's screen to see if you 'got the shot' you will rely on your instinct and knowledge, just like photographers did before digital photography. Can you do it?

• Plan a photo excursion to a particular location and permit yourself to photograph only 36 images (a roll of 35mm film).
• Turn off your camera's LCD screen so it does not show you the image after you have taken it.
• If you cannot turn off the camera's screen, cut a piece of thick paper and tape it over the screen. Use masking or painter's tape so you don't leave a residue on the back of your camera.
• Go out and shoot your 36 frames, thinking carefully about each image because you don't have an endless number of shots. Bonus points if you turn your camera to completely manual settings for focus and exposure.
• Don't peek at your photos until you get home and download them.

How did you do? Were you able to get good exposures on your own? How did it feel to be 'blind' and not know how your image turned out right away? 

This is similar to what it is like to shoot with film and it does require you to think harder about every image you take. Next time you shoot, slow down and pay attention, pretend that the screen is not there and rely on your own skills to create a great image. You will be a better photographer in the end.

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8.8: Creating a Photo Album

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• Marcus Lacher
• Minnesota State Community and Technical College via Minnesota Libraries Publishing Project

If your presentation’s purpose is more slanted towards entertaining versus educating, then a photo album is a popular feature that might facilitate that entertainment. PowerPoint’s photo album allows users to load a bunch of digital photos into a single file, one photo per slide, formatted consistently, with a variety of formatting options. Photo album is a great tool for creating self-running presentations that display photos from an event or a family memory (graduation, wedding anniversary, funeral, etc.) PowerPoint creates a new presentation file when a user chooses to create a photo album.

To start, take note of where the photos you want for the album are located (preferably on a local device). Then go to the Insert tab and click the Photo Album button. Once the Photo Album window opens, the next step is to insert the pictures from your device by clicking the File/Disk… button. The Insert New Pictures dialog window will appear. The user should then navigate to where the photo files reside on their device, then select multiple picture files (remember to use the Ctrl button to select multiple non-consecutive files) and choose Insert. The selected files will appear in the Pictures in Album scrolling-window in the Photo Album window. The order of the slides can be rearranged in this window or in the main PowerPoint window.

The more important decisions that should be determined before clicking the Create button pertain to the Album Layout and Picture Options. Notice how the Captions below ALL pictures option is disabled? This is due to the Picture layout currently being set to the Fit to Slide option. Choosing any other Picture layout will enable this option.  Captions are a great way to add accompanying text to each slide in the album and provide explanation for the photos when no presenter is present. If this feature is skipped and needs reversing, choose the Insert tab, click the Photo Album drop down arrow, and select Edit Photo Album. The picture layout, frame shape, theme and picture options can all be redefined, and pictures can be added or deleted as well. The Insert Text Box is an alternative way to add manually add text to a separate slide versus the captions, which defaults with the operating system’s file name as the slide caption. This data can be edited for each slide via the normal PowerPoint view. Photo albums can become even more entertaining when additional (yet to be explained) functionality is added. However, these features, which demand a lot of creative attention, can become very time-consuming! The Photo Album feature was designed to work with the Windows operating system. Therefore, this feature is not available for Mac users.

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12 Exciting Photography Assignments to Challenge and Inspire

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Everyone likes a good photo challenge. But photography assignments can also be very discouraging if they’re approached the wrong way. A good photography challenge will strengthen your photo skills and inspire you in multiple ways. A bad one will leave you wondering why you even tried photography in the first place.

12 Exciting Photography Assignments

Here are 12 exciting photography assignments to help you find the right one.

1. Shoot With a Limited Amount of Equipment

2. Take a Photo Every Day for a Year

3. Limit Yourself to X Photos a Day

4. Take Photos With Your Smartphone Camera Only

5. Experiment With a Completely Different Genre

There’s a wide variety of photography genres out there. There’s underwater, glamour , smartphone , landscape , and portrait , to name a few. Trying something new can help you fall in love with photography all over again. So take a temporary break from your main photo genre. If you’re a portrait photographer , take panoramic photos of your neighborhood. If you spend lots of time photographing animals, improve your self-portrait photography skills. When you expose yourself to different genres, you’ll learn many valuable lessons. And they will be useful long after the photography assignments end.

6. Photograph the Same Person or Object Every Day

7. Quit Social Media Temporarily

8. Create a Stop-Motion Video Using Photos

9. Take Creative Self-Portraits With a Friend

10. Crop or Rotate All Your Photos in a Specific Way

11. Include the Same Object in Every Photo

12. Invest in a Photo Book and Complete Every Assignment in It

Conclusion: Exciting Photography Assignments

You don’t need to travel the world or break the bank to improve as a photographer. A single assignment that lasts at least a week can teach you many lessons. And it’ll help you become a better photographer. All you have to do is find photography assignments that work for you. Then, dedicate some time to it, and watch your photo skills strengthen!

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Photography is a skill that requires constant practice and experimentation, so if you want to improve you need to constantly work on it. Here are some DIY mini-project ideas that you can do anytime.

Know Your Camera The longer you hold the camera in your hand, the more you memorize the location of the buttons and their configurations using muscle memory. For photographers working outside the studio, this skill is really important. You should always know where each button is without thinking about it. You can achieve this by holding and using the camera as much as possible.

So use your home camera and try to change as many settings as you can during this practice period to get used to the feel, position, and button configuration. You should be able to change all camera settings without looking at it. This will help you use and set up your camera faster and take more photos in less time.

Don't forget to read the instructions too. There are many options that you will learn and find very useful if you read the manual. If necessary, watch Youtube videos related to your camera to see what it can do that you thought was impossible before.

Create better composition You can practice composition with almost anything you have at home. Keep in mind, though, that most subjects you find will be stationary, and you won't get much better at shooting the same thing over and over again.

Try practicing composition on non-stationary subjects such as your spouse, children, parents, pets - anything that breathes and moves in the house. You might annoy them a bit, but they'll get used to it eventually. Since they'll be unpredictable and moving all the time, you'll have to constantly readjust yourself to compose correctly, which will allow you to hone your composing skills.

You can almost do the same with stationary objects, but try to compose the shot as quickly as possible this time around. And, of course, after each shot you can switch between multiple objects so you don't get too used to the angle and position.

Try macro techniques Chances are there are at least ten small items on hand right now as you sit at your desk and read this article. There are plenty of opportunities to improve your macro skills using these items while you're sitting at your desk wasting time on the internet.

Take a few of these objects and create a cool scene to photograph (which also allows you to practice conceptual photography). Practice handheld focusing and high magnification handheld shots. You can even practice macro lighting using flashes on table stands. The possibilities are endless in this area, all you have to do is practice.

You don't even need a macro lens. Start by using macro filters or close-up filters or try reverse lens macro. You can even use lamps and other lights in your home to illuminate your subjects. Use the reflective surfaces for creative shots and if you head out to your garden you're sure to find more insects, flowers and leaves that can make good macro subjects. Also, this is the best time to try to learn focus stacking.

Improve editing To get good at editing, you can research new ways to edit something, new processes, and maybe even different workflows. This way you will gain experience in this area and possibly improve the quality of your images and post-processing techniques. Also, it will help you optimize your workflow by getting used to it and eliminating any bottlenecks you might have.

If you're not used to editing your black and white photos, you can give it a try. It can help you develop a creative eye and help you learn to see particular details in black and white. You can also learn to focus more on lines, patterns, textures, tones, shadows, etc. of a scene and create powerful images that will captivate viewers for longer.

Maintenance of your equipment Your camera and equipment should be maintained and cleaned from time to time. It's pretty easy when you're at home and have the luxury of time and a clean workspace. You won't have that luxury on the pitch, so it's essential to know what you're doing and how.

When cleaning your equipment at home, be sure to become proficient. Make sure you can clean your camera, lens, and other accessories as quickly and thoroughly as possible. If you can properly clean your camera (even using the wet process on your sensor), you'll end up saving time and money by avoiding service center visits and being without your camera when it's needed.

Apart from your camera and lenses, you will also need to clean your tripod as most of the time it gets dragged through mud, dirt sand and also salt water if you are shooting near or at the beach. Over time, the parts and the material itself wear out and render your accessories unusable. So be sure to clean and lubricate the tripod and monopod. Also take the time to frequently attend to your other tripod-like accessories.

You will learn something new every time, gain experience and improve. All you need is the will to do it. You will notice the differences and improvements in just a few days.

How to teach photography to beginners

All successful photos have three things in common. Do you know what they are? It’s not the correct aperture, exposure and focus distance. Neither is it a suitable camera, lens and tripod. What about the successful use of hyperfocal distance, ISO invariance and ETTR? No! The three variables that matter most in photography are simple: light, subject and composition.

Light Photography is light. Without it, you couldn't take any photos, let alone good photos. The quality of light varies from photo to photo, but in all cases it is what gives your images their underlying structure. You can't get more fundamental than that. You've probably seen photos with beautiful light - photos that would otherwise have been rather ordinary. What makes light so important to the final quality of your photos? The character. In its simplest form, light is an emotion. The feel of your photo will be very different depending on the lighting conditions: hard light, soft light, warm light, cold light, and everything in between. Each type of lighting conveys a different emotional message, changing the character of your final image. While there are other ways to convey emotion in your photo, light is one of the most powerful.

If you've never thought about light, go out and take some pictures. At some point, you'll find yourself capturing a scene with spectacular lighting conditions, and you'll realize that taking great photos is almost easy. But what is exceptional lighting? There are so many possible conditions that you can encounter. Which are the best? While I think there are some really spectacular and particularly special lighting conditions - which I'll get to in a moment - the truth is that any type of light can be ideal. Indeed, in itself, "good light" means nothing. On the contrary, "good light" is light that makes your photos look the way you want.

A few types of light are special enough to be researched as often as possible, as they are particularly good for a wide range of subjects. The most important, at least for outdoor photos, is the golden hour - the times of sunset and sunrise when the sky is filled with stunning colors and the atmosphere filters the light into a soft glow.

Similarly, foggy conditions often make for interesting photos, simplifying the scene in front of you and bathing the world in soft, cool light. The same goes for thunderstorms, which make the sky intense and the world dark. Additionally, clear moonlit nights, which can make a landscape look mysterious and eerie, and for "blue hour" - the time of night close to golden hour, but where the sun is well below the horizon, and where everything has deep blue and purple tones.

The quality of light depends on the conditions you encounter, and it's not always something you have the power to change. However, for particularly important photos, you always have the option to wait and capture something amazing when the lighting conditions improve. The best lighting conditions in the world - even in an ordinary field - are far better than the bland lighting of Yosemite Valley. Every photo needs light; every good photo needs good light.

Subject When most of us take a picture, we do it because something caught our eye. This "something" is, unsurprisingly, your subject. If you're describing a photo to someone else, the subject is probably the first thing you'll say. "It's a picture of a mountain with snow blowing through the air." "This is a picture of a whale I saw last year." "It's a photo of my friend." As humans, we think of the world in terms of subjects. A powerful documentary touches us by what it shows us and how it shows it, but most people don't notice the "how". Indeed, a good subject can captivate your viewers, and other parts of an image - including crucial elements, even light - can take a back seat. This is also where the technical aspect of photography comes in. How do you represent your subject? Do you want to isolate it with a shallow depth of field or do you want everything from the foreground to the background in focus? Will your photography be sharp and detailed, or impressionistic and blurry? Every technical decision is really just a creative decision on how to represent your subject in the best possible way.

So when choosing the right subject for a photograph, you have to think about the future. What would the ideal photo of this subject look like, and how can you achieve it? Visualize the end result and do whatever you can to make it happen.

Composition Finally, the third crucial element of any photography is your composition. Composition is, quite simply, the arrangement of the elements of your photograph. It encompasses the position of the camera, the relationships between the elements of a photo, and the subjects you emphasize, downplay, or completely exclude. Composition is how you tell your story. A "good" composition is one that effectively tells your story, without distraction or confusion. Your viewers don't have to get lost in a convoluted mess to figure out why you took this photo. Composition is the stage of the game where you ask yourself "how". How can you convey the beauty, excitement, darkness, intensity, sweetness or any other emotion of a scene as perfectly as possible? How can you arrange the elements of your photo so that the image is successful? A good composition emphasizes the most important parts of a photo, while minimizing what detracts from the image.

As you can imagine, composing is a very personal subject, with many different elements, way more than I could cover in a single article. For the sake of simplicity, I will only touch on them briefly:

Simplicity Your photo should convey exactly what you want, and as few elements as possible should distract from your emotional message. If there are distracting elements in your photo, or elements with different moods and emotions, find what you can do to improve them.

Eliminate anything that can harm the quality of your photo; change your position or framing to lessen the effect. Even if your goal is to take a chaotic and distracting photo, you should do so as clearly and unambiguously as possible, without "non-chaotic" elements that tell a different story. The best way to fix most photos is to exclude as many unnecessary (or harmful) details as possible.

It doesn't just mean deleting them in Photoshop. Although post-processing can play a role here, it is far from the most important. If you haven't mastered the art of simplifying photos in-camera, it's a stretch to believe that the Spot Correction Brush can save the day. Some unwanted elements can slip into your frame, and that's okay. You rarely come across a "perfect" scene without distractions or problems. But if you're aware of these issues in the field, you've come a long way to fixing them as much as possible.

Balance Every part of a photograph attracts some degree of attention - some parts more than others. Bright, saturated colors and high contrast tend to catch the eye of your viewers, for example. The same goes for engrossing subjects or unusual things in a photo, just like in the real world. It's a matter of balance. When taking a photo, be careful where you place the elements that attract a lot of attention. If the left and right halves of your photo have the same visual weight, the composition is said to be balanced; otherwise, it is an unbalanced image.

Neither is good or bad. You can take good photos that are balanced and good photos that are unbalanced. Either way, this decision has a major impact on the underlying sentiment of the photo, i.e. its moods and emotions. A balanced composition looks calm and peaceful. An unbalanced composition, on the other hand, draws more attention to one side of the photo, resulting in a more tense and dynamic result.

Breathing Room When taking photos, each subject should have their own breathing space, or personal space, in the composition, unless you have a specific reason not to. When two subjects are close together, or against the edge of your photo, the result can be disconcerting. This advice is pretty self-explanatory, but you'd be surprised how often I see shots fail because they overlooked something so minor. An otherwise fantastic mountain photo can look completely contrived if placed too close to the top of the frame or, even worse, cut off completely.

Interconnectedness Good photos work because the elements of your composition work together rather than fighting each other. In some cases, it goes even further, achieving what is called interconnection. Sometimes different parts of the same photo have deeper similarities than they appear at first glance. For example, you can photograph a tree shaped like a distant mountain, or your subject wearing a shirt that matches the color of their eyes. Perhaps the simplest example is that of a landscape perfectly reflected in a pool of water. Such patterns give the picture a purpose, even if not all viewers consciously notice this connection. The idea is to make your image feel like a singular, unified whole, where the reason you took the photo is clear. This level of interconnectedness won't always happen, but when it does, the results can be very powerful.

If you master these three variables - light, subject and composition - you will have mastered what is perhaps the most important part of photography: figuring out how to convey your emotional message. Good photos touch us because they impact our emotions and resonate with us on a deeper level. The light creates a strong atmosphere; a subject gives your viewer something to relate to; the composition structures a photo to complete your story. In this article, I have of course only scratched the surface. In fact, no matter how hard you study these subjects, photography is an endless ocean. There is no "end point" to fully understand the creative aspect of photography. It is always possible to learn more. This is what makes photography so rewarding. Light, subject and composition are things you can only really learn by going out there and taking pictures, then critically reviewing your work and seeing how you can improve. So when trying to take the best photos possible, focus on creativity. Yes, the technical aspect of photography is always important; as I mentioned a moment ago, every technical decision is also a creative decision. But you have to back up a "technically good" photo with something more powerful. Ultimately, it's your emotional message, born out of the decisions you make every time you click the shutter.

Practice photography book

A source of ideas and knowledge is a good book. But it can be difficult to choose from the many popular photography books. We've created this list of great books to help beginners and enthusiasts get to grips with photography. Take a look for yourself and see which book suits you best.

The Photography Ideas Book by Lorna Yabsley Published by ILEX in partnership with the Tate group of museums, this dynamic book dissects and reimagines the art of photography, ultimately offering lessons in how to look with fresh eyes. Each page is devoted to a mini description of an artwork and an explanation of a specific concept used to create it, including perspective, multiple exposures, glitching, collage, and scanning. All of these pages explore brilliant photographic processes while shedding light on dozens of exciting photographers working today.

BetterPhoto Basics by Jim Miotke This is an excellent technical book that seeks to demystify the often overwhelming world of photography. Perfect for beginners, it covers common camera controls, explains the basic concepts of aperture, shutter speed and focal length, and provides tips on focusing, lighting and composition. It also contains practical exercises as well as sections with more advanced instructions, making it an ideal book to develop your skills as you progress through your photography journey. Many inspiring photographs will help you understand how all these techniques can be combined, not only during shooting but also in post-processing.

Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson Veteran photographer Bryan Peterson explains the fundamentals of light, aperture, and shutter speed, and how they interact and influence each other. With a focus on finding the right exposure, even in tricky situations, Understanding Exposure shows you how to get (or lose) image sharpness and contrast, freeze the action, and get the best meter results, while also exploring filters, flash and light.

Authentic Portraits by Chris Orwig Taking a portrait is not an easy task. In fact, it is an art form in its own right. Chris Orwig is a past master in this art and shares his wealth of knowledge with you. The techniques are refreshingly simple and quickly build confidence. Whether it's finding subjects, preparing yourself, or encouraging your subject, this 400+ page book of portrait photography tips and information has it all. If you want to take soulful and meaningful photos, and not just snapshots, this book is for you.

Extraordinary Everyday Photography by Jed Manwaring and Brenda Tharp The driving force behind this book is the concept that beauty can be found all around us, and that you don't have to travel across the world to get "the picture". Authors Brenda Tharp and Jed Manwaring offer captivating lessons with titles such as "Practicing to See Everyday" and "Photographing at Dusk" to inspire readers to see the familiar in new ways. In plain language, they describe how one can find unexpected pleasures by getting up close, focusing on details, and creating abstract views. They also provide exercises to help you apply what you've learned to your own environment.

Photographers on Photography: How the Masters See, Think, and Shoot by Henry Carroll If you like to learn from the best, consider reading this guide, which highlights approaches from the pros. It is packed with interviews, images and quotes from photographers such as Dorothea Lange, Saul Leiter and Wendy Red Star, which explore their ideas, concerns, motives and methods. Whether you're interested in commercial work, photojournalism, or concept art, you'll come away with a greater appreciation for the artistic process — and some inspiration for your own practice.

The Art of Photography: A Personal Approach to Artistic Expression by Bruce Barnbaum It can be difficult to master the technical aspect of photography, but it is even more difficult to develop your own artistic voice. In this rhapsodic text, photographer Bruce Barnbaum explores approaches to image-making, explaining why large photos work, how color and composition contribute to emotion, and how a single moment can be interpreted in limitless ways. There are some handy tips, like shooting the film and presenting the image, but it's mostly a guide to help you harness your technical skills for maximum creativity.

The Photographers Eye by Michael Freeman Design is the most important factor in creating a successful photograph. The ability to see the potential of a strong image and then organize graphic elements into an effective and compelling composition has always been one of the key skills in photography. In this book, photographer Michael Freeman explains how digital photography has brought a new and exciting aspect to design, with instant feedback from a digital camera enabling immediate evaluation and improvement. This has had a profound effect on the way digital photographers take pictures.

Advancing your Photography by Marc Silber Marc Silber interviewed some of the best photographers in the world and learned their secrets for amazing composition. Today, he brings their wisdom to you in an easy-to-understand manual. Too many photographers reach a certain level and struggle to progress. We are bombarded with so many videos, books and people telling us what to do that it can be overwhelming. Marc wrote Advancing Your Photography so you can have an easy to read manual to take with you. All of his advice is based on decades of photography and the deep wisdom of the fantastic photographers he's interviewed.

Good Pictures by Kim Beil This book takes a fascinating look at how we got to where we are today in photography and why we use the tools we use. You've probably never thought about why we have thumbnails and where they come from. But you will feel much closer to photography after reading Good Pictures.

Picture Perfect Practice by Roberto Valenzuela If you're frustrated and overwhelmed by the challenges of real-life locations and executing a big picture, or just want to become a better shooter but don't know where to start, Roberto Valenzuela's Picture Perfect Practice gives you the tools and information you need to finally become the kind of photographer you've always wanted to be: the kind who can confidently enter any location, in any lighting condition, with any any subject, and knowing that you can create stunning photographs that have timeless impact.

The Photographers Guide to Posing by Lindsay Adler When you're shooting people, you can have great composition, perfect light, and the right camera settings, but if your subject doesn't look good, if the pose is bad, the shot won't make it. Posing is truly a crucial skill that photographers need to possess in order to create great shots. If you're looking to improve your ability to pose your subjects, whether men, women, couples or groups, The Photographer's Guide to Posing by best-selling author and photographer Lindsay Adler: Techniques to Flatter Everyone is the perfect resource for you.

Fast Track Photographer by Dane Sanders Competition in the photography industry has never been fiercer. In this guide, renowned photographer Dane Sanders reveals that the key to success is to stop worrying about what other people are doing and focus on your most powerful resource: you.

How I Make Photographs by Joel Meyerowitz With nearly 60 years of photography experience, Joel Meyerowitz knows a thing or two about cameras and shares some of his top tips for creating engaging and beautiful images in this book, How I Make Photographs. Joel Meyerowitz is considered one of the most respected street photographers of all time. In this book, he lays out four key concepts that will help you better capture your world.

• How to use a camera to own the streets.
• Why you should always look at the world with a sense of possibility.
• How to put your subjects at ease
• The importance of being playful and finding a goal that suits your personality.

Magnum Contact Sheets by Kristen Lubben This groundbreaking book features a remarkable selection of contact sheets, revealing how Magnum's most celebrated photographers capture and edit the best shots. Addressing key questions in photographic practice, the book sheds light on the creative methods, strategies and editing processes behind some of the world's most iconic images. This book is less action oriented than others on this list and focuses more on the stories of the photographers who took the photos. It is a must-read book.

The Art of Photography: A Personal Approach to Artistic Expression by Bruce Barnbaum It can be difficult to master the technical aspect of photography, but it is even more difficult to develop your own artistic voice. In this rhapsodic text, photographer Bruce Barnbaum explores approaches to image making, explaining why large photos work, how color and composition contribute to emotion, and how a single moment can be interpreted in limitless ways. There are some handy tips, like shooting the film and presenting the image, but it's mostly a guide to help you harness your technical skills for maximum creativity.

The 4-Step Process for Creating a Beautiful Travel Album

St. Augustine once said, “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”

Travel makes our lives better. When we see and experience other cultures and get to know people in other places, it deepens our worldview, teaches us flexibility, shows us the beauty of other cultures, and lets us rest and recharge.

Sharing our travel experiences through a photo album helps keep our memories vivid, provides a record of the people and places we’ve seen, documents the experiences we’ve had, and provides a legacy of stories to pass on to our family members.

The problem is that when we come back from our trips, our photos often get digitally buried with the rest of our day-to-day images. You may not know how to translate the images you’ve taken on your trip into an attractive album that documents your experience.

If you need some guidance on how create your own travel album, we’re here to help! This post will give you advice on how to take helpful notes during your trip, show you how to get organized before you create your album, and give you the technical tools and advice you’ll need to create your album.

Let’s dig in! 

Documenting Your Travel Experience While You’re Still on the Road

To help keep your album organized and make the design process easier and more efficient, I recommend keeping a written record of your travel.

We gave some tips on this process in some of our previous posts, so you can check out these articles for help with your documentation efforts:

• How to document the stories of your trip
• Keeping a written record of your group vacation
• How to organize your vacation photos while you’re still on vacation

A little prep work while you’re still on the road can make your album creation process a lot easier…and I promise, it doesn’t have to take a long time or take away from the fun of your trip!

Step One: Do Your Prep Work

Once you’ve returned and settled back in, it’s time to do the prep work to create your album.

I recommend starting by creating a written list of the things you’d like to include in your album. Your list could include any (or all) of the following:

• The places you visited.
• Your favorite stories from the trip (including things that didn’t go according to plan!).
• The people you traveling with, or met along the way.
• The food you ate.
• The activities and adventures of the trip.

Once you’ve created your list, it’s time to organize your photos. Start by selecting the very best photos for your album, then edit the images you’ve chosen to remove red eye, straighten the images, adjust angles, improve lighting, etc..

Be careful about the resolution size of your images when you’re working with your photos. In general, use the largest photo you can. If you use a small photo, you will be limited by how much the photo can be enlarged in the album tool.

Most album designing sites will alert you if your photo does not meet the required number of pixels for the finished size you want to include in the album. If you ignore the warning, you’re going to have a photo that is blurry or grainy in your album, because it was enlarged more that the resolution of the image could handle!

I also recommend adding memorabilia to your album! Printed plane, train or museum tickets are becoming obsolete in these days of electronic ticketing, so if you have them, include them in your album pages. You can also take photos or scan printed items, and use those in the album as reminders of the trip

Once you’ve got your photos and memorabilia picked out and edited, you’re ready to move on to the next step.

Step Two: Pick Your Album Tool

You’ll need an online service to create and print your final album. Here are the ones I recommend for individuals who are creating their own albums:

• Mixbook : Their books are a little on the pricier side, but they provide loads of options and the finish on the pages is high quality.
• Shutterfly : Their software is easy to use, but some of their templates have varied spacing between photos. Be sure to choose a template with consistent spacing/gaps.
• Apple Photo: If you’re a Mac user, you can create a photo album in your Photos App. To begin, Click File>Create>Book.
• MPix : This service doesn’t offer quite as many album size options, but their print quality is excellent.

Once you’ve chosen the tool you’re going to work with, break up the project into manageable pieces so you can keep track of what you’ve already done, and work on a little bit at a time. I recommend creating a project folder on your computer, to copy your selected photos to. Then within that main folder, create sub-folders by theme and design one sub-folder at a time when you’re working on your album.

Step Three: Design Your Album

Now it’s time for the fun part: Designing your album! Here’s my recommended process for laying out your travel album:

Select your album size. Typical sizes for albums are 12×12, 10×10 or 11x 8. Choose a size that fits your trip, and fits the purpose of the album. Some online sites have limited size availability, so feel free to go back to Step Two if you need to pick a new tool.

Choose your paper and finish. Semi-gloss is my go-to paper finish for client projects, and it will work in most situations. Some sites offer premium finishes (like “Pearl”) for an additional fee.

You may also be able to also choose a “lay-flat” option for your album. When you choose this option, the album will get printed on sturdier, single sheet spreads that lay flat when the book is open, and your photos and text won’t get lost in the “gutters” of the pages.

Pick a template. The online sites listed above all offer a variety of design templates. You need to make sure your template doesn’t overwhelm your photos and stories, so I recommend choosing one with a simple background without embellishments, or creating a blank book and adding a muted background color.

When you go with a simple template, it also keeps the look timeless, ensuring that your album won’t look dated in a few years.

Group your photos together and start laying out your album. Go through the photos you chose in Step One, and group events together on the same “spread.”

When you view an album with photos on both the left and right side, that’s called a spread. It’s more cohesive to design spreads with a single theme, versus one theme on the left side and a different one on the right side.

If you want to limit the album to a certain number of pages, then combining themes on a spread is okay. In that case, I recommend having a clear separation between each theme, so the navigation is obvious to the viewer.

When you’re designing your album, remember that less is more. Don’t repeat photos of the same item or event, unless those photos are part of a series that tells a story (like a sunset, time lapse, moving item, or a reaction to a moment).

Choose the photos that tell a story. A chronological timeline is most common for travel albums (meaning you start at the beginning of your trip on the first page of your album, and end with the last part of your trip). You can also organized the album based on events, locations or architecture.

Here are some quick tech tips to help with the album layout process:

• Keep events together on the same spread.
• Limit the number of photos in a spread to 8 to 10 (depending on your album and spread size).
• If a picture extends over the center seam, adjust the placement so the page crease doesn’t run through a person’s face (whenever possible).
• If you modify photo frames, make sure the gaps between photos stay consistent. Most album software tools will allow you to customize templates, so you can modify a template or create your own. If they do that, they’ll need to make sure the photos are aligned within the frame. Check to be sure the gaps between photos are consistent, and take a look at the margins (including top, bottom, left, right margins, and the space between sides in the spread). Any inconsistencies will become an undesired focal point in your album.

Keep it interesting and personal. If possible, Include candid photos of people experiencing something new or different. Buildings can be interesting to put in albums – especially when the architecture is unique – but sometimes a lot of photos of objects can make your album feel less personal. It helps to include shots of people in front of buildings every now and then, to break things up and keep your album interesting.

Of course, if the theme of your album is architecture or animals, that’s different!  For example, in this Africa trip, this series of gorilla shots gives you a sense of the experience of being among a gorilla family.

Add captions or story text blocks. You want to make sure your album tells a story, especially for future generations, so include captions and stories in your album. This includes first and last names of the people in your photos!

Keep your font type and point size consistent throughout the entire album, and be careful not to put text over the center of a photo or across someone’s face.

Step Four: Print Your Album

When you are ready to print, I recommend previewing the album just to be sure it’s 100% ready to go.

Look for spelling mistakes, inconsistent photo alignment, margins, gaps between photos, point size on captions and titles. Also make sure there aren’t any resolution warnings of photos that need to be adjusted.

With so many things to check, I recommend checking for one at a time. For example, first check the album for text problems, and fix any issues you spot. Then go through the album again, focusing on alignment of photos and text. Finally, check that the template is centered within the spread, so that top and bottom margins are the same, and left and right margins are the same. When you focus on checking one thing at a time, you (hopefully) won’t getting distracted and miss problems.

For example, the photo below shows a spread with a date heading, narrative, labels and 9 photos. Everything is lined up and centered, so your eye isn’t distracted by a misaligned photo edge. The labels of the animals or locations are lined up across each line of photos, and they are in white to make them easily readable. There’s a lot on this spread to check, which is why I recommend going through and checking one element at a time when you do your final look before printing.

Everything You Need to Create an Album You Can Enjoy Today and Pass On Tomorrow

Here’s my most important tip for creating your own travel photo album: Have fun with this process!

Creating your own travel should be fun, not stressful. Take things a little bit at a time, if that feels easier, and use this process to help you revisit the best memories of your trip.

If you decide you’d like some help with an album, we frequently create them for our clients. You can see how we create albums and view some samples of our albums right here. We would be happy to discuss album design and print options with you – contact us for your free, no-obligation consultation.

2 thoughts on “ The 4-Step Process for Creating a Beautiful Travel Album ”

Confused…I want the trip photos in a coffee table style book…do you guys do that?

Yes all of our album designs can be coffee table books! We use premium publishers so our clients like having their albums on display!

If you’d like to learn more about how we can make a travel album for you, please sign up for a free consultation. Just go to the Contact page on the website.

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Homework | Photo Album by mahumada1

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Java代写：CS156980 Shapes Photo Album Part1

使用Java Swing实现一个 Shapes Photo Album .

The Shapes Photo Album: Part 1

This assignment starts with a context of the application, followed by an outline of what you must achieve. It is a relatively open-ended assignment and does not spell out explicitly which interfaces, classes, methods and variables you need. Spend time understanding what the application must do, and then design your solution accordingly. This “open ended” approach is intentional, and allowing you freedom in your design decisions is important part of this assignment.

Many of us use our phones (and cameras) to take pictures of friends and family members, and then share those pictures in photo albums - either online or in-person (with actual “photo books”).

Pictures can be used to succinctly and effectively illustrate many things. For example, a stationary histogram visually depicts the distribution of some data points. A histogram with moving bar heights visually depicts music (e.g. a music equalizer).

In the next two assignments, we will build an application that helps to create a simple “photo album” from shapes. One of our main goals will be to practice the “separation of concerns” we’ve covered during lecture. We will support the description of data we want visualized and then have an application that renders the descriptive text properly in a variety of ways.

Informally using English, we could provide a description for one page of our photo album in a way similar to this:

These are descriptive commands that tell us, in sequence what things (shapes) to place on a logical canvas, where to place them, how to color (or resize) them, and when to “take a selfie” (snapshot) of the system.

Our application may then use such a description to:

• “Show” the photo album in various ways. Perhaps we simply want to view the sequence of changes in a spreadsheet, or perhaps we want to see each “snapshot” as a visual rendition of the shapes, on different pages of an electronic album.
• Produce a verbose description for what the photo album will look like (for the visually impaired).
• Other possibilities…

The Shapes Photo Album

We will build this application progressively using the classic Model-View-Controller architecture. In this assignment (Part 1) we will focus on the model of this application. There is no starter code for this assignment: you must use the above description and broad ideas to design the interface and implementation of the model. You are deliberately not being told about the specific details of what the controller and views will need or do. You are also not being told about how exactly the application will receive a description from the user (it would not be relevant to the model).

Here are some aspects to think about:

• What does the model represent? Remember: this is a shapes application, so think “application model” here.
• The model should be able to support various kinds of 2D shapes, although currently we have described only rectangles and ovals.
• The model should support adding various kinds of transformations to shapes, such as moving, changing color and scaling.
• As you implement, remember to consider the client perspective (the person or class that is using the model).

How is the photo album seen?

One way the application may show the progression of creating the photo album is to produce a text description of the commands and the model state changes. Here is what a description might look like:

In short, it first describes the shapes that are part of the photo album and their details. Next it describes model state changes as the shapes are transformed/moved/removed. Each snapshot is a “freeze frame” of the model state - think of it as a “system selfie” - the picture captured is that of the shapes in their then-current locations (and state) and is analogous to a “page” in a photo album. You may think of the first part of this output as a “read-back” of the model state changes, perhaps for devices that cannot show the photo album visually, or for users who are visually impaired who have screen readers. The snapshots are historical “save points” that can be retrieved irrespective of the model state.

• Design a model to represent a shapes photo album. This model may consist of one or more interfaces, abstract classes, concrete classes, enums, etc. Consider carefully what operations it should support. Create a high-level UML class diagram to represent your design.
• Think about and include in the model interface operations that you think are relevant and the model should offer.
• Document your model well. Be sure to document clearly what each method does, what purpose it serves and why it belongs in the model.
• Implement your model.
• Test your model.
• Implement the text output rendering of your model according to the format given in the previous section (How is the photo album seen?), so we can visualize your data.

What to submit

Submit any files created in this assignment, along with a text README file explaining your design, and your UML class diagram. Your README file and UML should give the graders quick insight into the purposes are for every class, interface, etc. that you include in your model. Verbosity is not a virtue here, so clear, concise documentation is better than reams of verbiage. Think of your graders as your users; help them so that they can quickly get a high-level overview of your solution and code. NB: The UML diagram and README do not replace the need for proper Javadoc!

Since this is an open-ended assignment with you making design trade-off decisions, there are no server-side tests. For this assignment, you will be graded on

• the design of your model interface(s), in terms of clarity, flexibility, and how plausibly it will support needed functionality;
• the appropriateness of your representation choices for the data (please comment on why you chose the representation you did in the code);
• the forward thinking in your design, in terms of its flexibility, use of abstraction, etc.
• the correctness and style of your implementation, and
• the comprehensiveness and relevance of your test coverage.

Eminem Announces New Album ‘The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce),’ Releasing This Summer

By Steven J. Horowitz

Steven J. Horowitz

Senior Music Writer

• Drake Removes ‘Taylor Made Freestyle,’ Featuring AI Tupac Shakur Vocals, From Social Media After Threat of Lawsuit 2 days ago
• Electronic Duo Justice on How Taking Eight Years Between Projects Influenced New Album ‘Hyperdrama’: ‘It’s a Big Leap of Faith’ 2 days ago
• Mary J. Blige on Her Strength of a Woman Community Fund, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction and Why Her Next Album May Be Her Last 2 days ago

Shortly before making an appearance at the NFL Draft, Eminem announced that his 12th studio album “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grace)” will be releasing this summer.

EMINEM — THE DEATH OF SLIM SHADY 💿 NEW ALBUM 🚨SUMMER 2024🚨 pic.twitter.com/RFmNjhK2N3 — NFR Podcast (@nfr_podcast) April 26, 2024

A trailer for the album shortly hit the internet after his NFL cameo, showing a true crime reporter discussing the death of Eminem’s alter ego, Slim Shady. “Through his complex and oft-criticized, tongue-twisting rhymes, the anti-hero known as Slim Shady has had no shortage of enemies,” he says.

Popular on Variety

The rapper surprise-released his last album, “Music to Be Murdered By,” in January 2020. It was an instant success, bowing with the top spot on the Billboard 200 and spawning the hit single “Godzilla” featuring Juice Wrld, which peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100.

Slim Shady has long been an alter ego for Eminem, dating back to 1997’s “Slim Shady EP” and “The Slim Shady LP,” which arrived two years later. The character has often been one he’s assumed to deliver his more aggressive and violent lyrics, which branded him as a controversial rapper from the start of his career. He’s assumed the alter ego on songs including “Guilty Conscience,” “’97 Bonnie and Clyde” and, fittingly, “Kill You.”

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