I have three cameras including my phone. Well, there’s one more dslr, but I haven’t used it in years, and that’s neither here nor there. I use all three and two of them I use professionally for my work, but also for my own personal photos. Out of those three cameras I have thousands and thousands of photos…all stuck on the stupid machines! I just backed up my phone the other day, which somehow held almost 2,000…again. In the years since my business has grown and become successful, my own personal family photos have been pushed further and further down the list. In the last three years and out of probably tens of thousands of photos, I’ve printed perhaps 50? That may even be a stretch. It’s becoming a nagging feeling along with my fear of deleting any photo ever, I clearly have a problem. I made myself a promise to take some time each month to go through personal photos and do something with them. I want them to be seen and held. I want them off of my computer!
Well, as if the photo gods had heard my silent plea for help, I came across an ad in the Click magazine the other day for a company called Artifact Uprising. It offered a free app in which you could load your smart phone photos and Instagram images to create a photo book starting at $16.99! Well, well, well, it’s like it was created just for me…except you can get it, too!!! Isn’t this exciting?! So, I tried it out. I decided to start a book using my Instagram photos only because the only thing I’ve ever done with those is create the sticky gram magnets. The book offered in the ad is a soft cover 5.5″x5.5″ book containing up to 40 pages. It was extremely easy to load my photos and the program walks you through each step beautifully. They have you first choose a cover and you can add text if you choose to do so. Then, you choose your photos, which they count and number the order for you as you tap. I quickly exceeded my 40 images and opted for the full 100 photos. I figured if I was finally doing this I was going to make it worth my while AND I was not going to worry about a theme or putting them in a special order, I just needed to print something…ANYTHING! After choosing your photos you are guided to organize them however you see fit. You simply tap a photo and drag it wherever you’d like it to sit. You’re then shown the whole order and you can make any changes necessary. I added my payment info, hit save for my future orders, and hit the purchase button.
Well, that was so incredibly easy that I had to try out their prints, as well. For slightly over $20 you receive 25 5×5 prints of your choice. Follow the steps for ordering prints, tap your 25, and purchase! Choose your shipping method and you’re done! Amazing, right?! I was giddy I tell you!
Well, I received my goodies within the last couple of days and thought I’d share my findings with you. The book arrived today and on the inside of the box was this lovely reminder. I think it is going to be my motto for this year. I desperately need new habits for my own photos. I thought it might get you moving, too!
So, here it is. My first soft cover book. They do offer hard cover books and other items, as well through their website if you’re interested.
Overall, the quality seems good. While it’s a softcover book, the paper is good quality. This company only uses recycled paper for all of their products and it’s not flimsy. I was very happy with the colors and the overall quality, especially since most of the photos are Instagram images. As you are choosing your photos for your book, you will occasionally get a notice about an image not having a high resolution and that it would need to be printed smaller. In that situation, I opted for the small photo which is shown on the left page of the book below. Most of the images that I had made into collages fell into this category. I was curious how it would print even if it were made smaller, but it looks great!
Now, while these are not high end, professional level books in my opinion, I am pleasantly surprised with the quality, but more importantly, I’m so very happy to have something to hold in my hands! I have flipped through this sucker at least a dozen times already and I am so happy I ordered it. I ordered a second book from them today containing images from our last road trip.
The other product I ordered via the app was the prints. These I like, I’m glad to have them, but again they are not the high quality, professional prints I’m used to ordering. I had to remind myself several times that is not the purpose of these. Some images ordered were a little messed up. A couple of them the heads were cut off of the people and I don’t know if that was an error on my part, not paying attention to the cropping (I think I must have missed that completely if that was the issue) or if it was an error on their part. Overall, I’m pleased with the colors and quality of the images, especially the landscapes.
The paper used for these is also the recycled paper and it is quite thick. It feels to me like a heavy card stock and the image is printed directly onto it without any sort of finish to it. I like them, I will certainly order from them again in the future.
They also offer images on wood blocks via the app. I haven’t tried those, but perhaps that will be my next experiment 🙂 So, there you go! Check them out and order something, anything, get those images off of your devices and like they said, “into your life.”
~Melissa
