"I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once." –C.S. Lewis

THE ENTIRE DESIGN PROCESS HAPPENS ONLINE WITH OUR BOOK MANAGER DESIGNING YOUR BOOK EXACTLY THE WAY YOU WANT IT.

It happens about once a week around here. The doorbell rings and the UPS man drops off a heavy square box filled with a surprise I never get tired of opening. Like Christmas over and over again I cut open the tape and unwrap a little piece of art hand made for our clients to help them relieve a very important day in their lives. For as much as I love these things oddly enough we've only really encouraged our couples to get something this tangible in the last year. Let me explain the little epiphany I had in 2012.

We had just wrapped up editing about 1000 final photos for a beautiful wedding up in New England and I couldn't wait to release them all to this sweet couple. After hour after hour of uploads the phone call finally went out for me to tell her that the photos were ready for her to love and I'll never forget the response I got. " How am I ever going to narrow down all these beautiful photos for facebook?!" - I died a little inside.

If you keep up with us at all you know that I'm pretty active on every social media platform I can get my hands on. In fact couples sharing their photos to the world is one of the biggest compliments we could possibly get but the reality that in our generation we're ok with paying thousands of dollars for a photographer to document such a sacred and beautiful day just so that we can keep them on our computer is a change in our industry that I was hoping I'd never see. There's something magical about that moment you're going through your grandma's boxes of junk and you stumble into a picture of her and your grandpa on a vacation. Old black and white photos rinkled and yellowed with age that smell musty are packed full of more magic than almost anything else in the world and we're headed straight towards being the first generation to not pass that magic on to our kids since the camera was invented. I'll climb off my soap box in a minute - but first. If you do nothing else with your wedding photos print every single photo out small and cheap, put them in a shoe box, and tuck them away. If you do two things - get a book.

Our albums are the perfect examples of artists working for artists. These books are hand printed, hand stitched, and packed up more like a beautiful necklace than a collection of photos. Our in house designer spends 75% of his time customizing designs with a modern clean look to retell exactly the story that each couple wants all while working with an online software system that allows the client and the designer to see live changes to the design and interact while the book is being built. The entire process is so neat and is something I can't believe I didn't focus on sooner.

Take a minute today to remember that sound an old film camera makes when it rewinds. I finished up a roll of film of Gavin playing in the backyard last night and just that sound got me excited to see what I'd shot. The best (and worst) part is having to wait until I can get down to Bedfords and drop off the roll to even see whether those little memories were frozen just the way I had wanted. When I hold those photos, whether they're out of focus, or sharp they'll sit in my hand as a physical memory of that evening playing together. Don't lose track of the tangible. Before we ever were worried about how many people "liked" a selfie, we took photos to remember the places, people, and moments that really did matter.

There's a lot of worth in that.