A Twist on an Old Favorite - Guest Book!

My friend Renae is getting married in less than a month. I've been helping her with a bunch of her wedding stuff, and been learning a lot while doing that too. I shot some pictures of her and Jeff back in September, kind of an engagement session, with a borrowed SLR camera, and really had no idea what I was doing. She wasn't getting any pictures done like that with their chosen wedding photographer, so I asked her to let me take some. I was helping her create a Save the Date, so we wanted to get some new photos to use on the card.

It was my first time using an SLR, and really my first ever "shoot". I'm so lucky that they are my friends, because it made it a little less nerve wracking. I haven't ever taken any classes, didn't know a thing about light, flash, what poses to tell them to do, etc.....I just had been reading a few photography blogs (post coming up around those) and wanted to try it for myself.

So, we headed downtown to this spot that I'd seen a few weeks earlier that seemed very "Jeff & Renae-ish". We were down near Stubb's and just started walking around. Jeff was such a great sport, even with an outfit change for Nae, and me saying "Well, let's try this.....or how about over here.....um, yeah, that didn't really work out.....how about this?".

The pictures turned out OK to me. They were super happy with them, and knowing that I am my worst critic, I guess was happy with them too. We had a few good ones that we used for the Save the Date and Nae even printed a few for framing.

Well, the other day Nae was trying to decide which picture she wanted to use for her Guest Book idea for her wedding. She was going to print one pic, put a really big matte around it, and have the guests sign that and hang it later in the house. When I was talking to her about it, which one she wanted to use, where she was going to put it in the house, etc.....I kind of already
had another idea in mind that I wanted to run by her. The night before, I'd seen something on one of the blogs that I thought would fit what Nae was trying to accomplish pretty well.

I suggested to her that we might use a bunch of the pictures from the photo shoot, and put them in an album, leave lots of white space, and use that for the guests to sign instead. It would be a coffee table type album, that she would be able to easily display, and she wouldn't have to pick just one picture. She loved the idea....and I had a new project! Woohoo!

So, that night, I went back through the pictures that we took in September. These were the same photos that I was just OK happy with just a few months ago....BUT, something happened. I started to look at them with all new possibilities. After reading blogs and looking at amazing images for so many months, I was able to look at my own photos in a whole new way. I saw things in them that I hadn't seen before and I was so excited about it. I really totally dorked out over this project.

I worked on it while Tara did my hair.....bless her heart being so patient with me and willing to work around me and my computer. :) Renae stopped by too, so she got to see what I had started....loved it, and let me finish it up with the pics that I wanted to put in there.

I worked on it and finished it up after midnight. I tell you, I was too excited to not finish it that night. So.....about 6 hours later, I had the finished album, ready for review. I sent it to Nae and she blessed it and it was ordered. I got the confirmation that it shipped today, so it should be here next week. I can't WAIT to see what it looks like in real life!!

The site I used was www.photoworks.com, but I found another one just this morning that I might try next time, www.mypublisher.com. The new one has a really neat feature of a forum on it's site, so you can read tips from other users.

Anyways.....enough about all of that, here is what the album ended up looking like!!