Scotland Family Vacation Photo Album
Of all of the albums I made last year, this one has to be my favorite. I made it for my grandparents so we could relive our Scotland trip together and in the (8+ hour!) process of culling my favorite images, arranging them to tell a story, and incorporating some of my favorite blog excerpts, I felt like I was right back there again.
Starting from the outside and moving inward, I chose a brown leather cover with gold foil stamping. Not only does its simplicity better highlight the images, but it also fits perfectly in my granddad's personal library - the kind where you can curl up in a comfy leather chair under soft lamp light and read for hours on end, surrounded by the sweet smell of old volumes.
The most fun part, naturally, was arranging the images. Since I wanted to tell the full story of the trip, my goal was to weave together land- and cityscapes with images of my family having fun. Of course, the latter was mostly just images of the girls making funny faces, but you work with what you've got. That's what they did most of the trip, after all!
Once I'd pieced together 60 pages worth of images, my final task was to read through ten days' worth of travel blogs and decide what would not only fit best with the images, but would also add to the story. Rather than list out the things we did (a task I already visually accomplished through the photos) I instead chose to use visual illustrations of the many places we visited, opting to create a feeling with these words that could almost jump out of the beautifully tactile pages.
Putting this album together didn't give me an epiphany precisely, but helped me to more narrowly focus how I would like to engage in travel and adventure photography. As these albums are perfect for any occasion from multi-week adventures abroad to family beach trips to destination elopements to weekend get-aways in Asheville, I'm introducing them into my travel photography collection, complete with the descriptive text to better document your trip. Check out my Vacation and Destination Photography post for more information. Below, I've included a few of my favorite pages from this Scotland album to see them up close.
