My Thirty Photo Books

I joined Blipfoto in mid-December of 2011. In 2012, I made my first two books. I had all of these pictures, you see. I wanted to do something productive with them. And I had always dreamed of being an author. So I started making photo books.

I made four more in 2013, 10 in 2014 (my banner year), eight in 2015, five in 2016, and just one this year, 2017. It feels like I've had a busy year; too busy, I guess, for making books.

Also, I received some sad news in mid-February: MyPublisher, my favorite photo book company, was scheduled to go out of business in early May. (They were sort of taken over by Shutterfly.) The news depressed me. I admit it made me think about not making any more books. A sad state of affairs indeed.

If you own a house, you know this: a house demands something of you every so often. There are tasks to do. Appliances to mess with. Yards to mow. On this day, we did some of those things. We took out the big air conditioner in the living room; washed the windows there, polished the wood. I vacuumed the entire top floor and the stairwell. I reorganized my main sitting area.

And I came across a few of my photo books, the latest ones that hadn't been filed with the others yet. So I got the whole set out. I played around with them. I put them in chronological order. I organized them by theme. I preened over them. I took pictures. This is the whole set of photo books thus far, all 30.

The three newest are the little black square book at the top right (The Little Book of Trees), the one at the right of the third row (Whipple Dam, Greenwood Furnace, and Bald Eagle - three of my favorite state parks), and the one at the bottom right with Old Main and a snow dinosaur in front of it.

That one is number 30, a book I made in celebration of my 30 years of full-time employment at PSU. That was a milestone I reached in September of 2016, though the book didn't happen until earlier this year. If there is one thing I have lots and lots of pictures of, it's Penn State! Almost all of the others are 20 pages; this book is 40 pages long.

As I handled my books, I picked up the one about Dexter. My husband and I smiled as we looked through it. But it is from 2014. As you all know, there have been a LOT of Dexter pictures since then. (And he's lost five pounds since then, believe it or not!) "How many books do you have of Dexter?" my husband asked. "Just one," I said. And we agreed that we need at least another one.

And I don't know if I've mentioned it but this has been a banner year for butterflies! It has been the year of the endless summer, with sunny and hot temperatures continuing well into October (and into TODAY, October 15, though tomorrow it will be chilly, finally). I may hate global climate change but I can still enjoy the butterflies. Also, I only have ONE book of Arboretum pics! Can you believe that?!

So there are at least three more books I'm thinking of: Dexter, butterflies, Arboretum. I believe they will be the little black square ones, like up top. Those are from Shutterfly, who took over MyPublisher. So far there are eight of them. Maybe not too far in the future there will be a few more. Gee, I guess I'm back in the book making business again, for here I am plotting and scheming my next three books! :-)

I've occasionally posted pictures of my sets of photo books, and here are links to all of those, for the sake of posterity:
Jan. 28, 2013 - Making Magic/How To Make a Photo Book Online
July 19, 2014 - My Photo Books: The Whole Set, So Far
Dec. 6, 2014 - How To Make a Photo Book Online, Take 2
Jan. 15, 2016 - My Two Dozen Photo Books
June 27, 2016 - Dancing Girls See, Dancing Girls Do!

And now, the song! Rod Stewart and Ron Wood, with Every Picture Tells a Story.