Photo Books make Great Gifts
By MJ Johnston
Are you running out of gift ideas? Do you have lots of photos with no idea of what to do with them? Why not combine these two aspects and create photo books to give as gifts?
Photo Books are great way to make very personal, very memorable gifts that people will always cherish. Unlike a sweater, it's guaranteed to fit, and unlike socks or necktie, it won't bore the recipient into a coma. Sounds like a great gift idea, doesn't it? If you start early, you can tailor the books to the recipient. An early start is the key though, as you will probably want to take photos specifically to illustrate the themes of the books you're giving.
The first thing you need to do is plan. Make a list of the people you want to create photo books for. Think about what sort of photo books they would like. Some are easy-grandma might just be happiest with a photo book chock full of pictures of her grandchildren. However, your son might be far more thrilled with pictures of rusty old army tanks than "boring family stuff." And if your wife loves flowers, you could document her flower garden and the care and effort she put into it-but you could also take another approach, and just take lots of good pictures of flowers to fill the book. You could even, if you don't feel self-conscious about being so corny; add love poems to the book.
You can also give photo books as gifts to commemorate major events in your family's or friend's life. For example, if you have a family reunion, you can document this in photographs. You'll be taking pictures anyway; you might as well do something with them. You can also take notes of the goings on, as you'll probably want to add text to the book to tell the story of the reunion. You will probably want to write down any funny captions that you can think of, although you can always come up with more captions later.
Your family members are not the only ones who would appreciate it when you create photo books as gifts for them. You may want to, for example, create photo books of your company picnic or company holiday party? You could pool everyone's photos, and merge them into a photo book to later be given to all the attendees.
Weddings, too, are a great opportunity to give photo books as a gift. Chances are they will hire photographers to document the main wedding, and most likely the wedding photographers will make photo books, but you can photograph all the peripheral events and private, informal parties, and make a book of that. 
You could also consider a photo calendar, and use one picture for each month!
It is simple and easy to create photo books.
The first thing you need to do is get the photos together, obviously. If you don't have them already you will have to take some. Next, you must upload them to an online gallery site that allows you to hire them to print photo books for you. Then, you arrange the pages as you want them, and order the photo book. You'll get as many copies as you want of a professionally printed photo book.
It's that easy!
M.J. Johnson
Also see: 
Hoorray photo sharing site inkubook.com photo book printing Smile Books for more idea starters. picaboo.com Design Software for Custom Photo Books
MJ Johnston writes for a variety of websites, including Hoorray, a photo sharing site that offers the quickest and easiest way to build a free online photo album, as well as free online photo storage. Source: MJ Johnston
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