Making an Instagram Book Just Got Easier

There are a billion ways to turn your Instagram images into books. Some are easier or more convenient than others, but if you're a control freak, you like things done a certain way. So awhile ago I wrote a big ol' post about exactly how to turn your instagram photos into a book, and have used the process to make four volumes of books containing roughly 1000 instagrammed images. They are awesome (if I do say so myself). Here's a photo of all four books:

(They're made by Blurb. You can use this link to save $20 on your own bit of blurb/instagram awesomeness.)

The only part of the process that I've been less than 100% satisfied with is collecting the Instagrammed images. Up until now, I've been downloading my entire archive (from InstaArchive), then separating the photos that I've added since making my last book so I can include the newer ones in the new book. Not a huge pain, but not as convenient as it seems like it should be.

Happily, I've since discovered the IfThisThenThat website. It allows you to set up what they call "recipes" which are like little formulas that can do awesome things—like archive your own Instagram photos for you. In my case, I set it up so that every time I post a new image to Instagram, my IFTTT recipe will grab the photo and put a copy of it in a designated DropBox folder for me. Score! My set up looks like this:

Now, every time I'm ready to make a new book (I do so about every 250 images), I don't have to sift through my whole archive to find the new stuff. I just download them from my DropBox! When I'm done, I empty the DropBox folder, and I'm all set to start shoot for my next  book!

For the step-by-step on the whole process, check out my earlier post.

Have fun!

Thirst Relief Mentor Auction

I'm honored to be participating in Thirst Relief International's annual Mentor Auction again this year. If you're not already familiar with Thirst Relief and the amazing work they do, prepare to be blown away.

Their mission is to "overcome death and disease resulting from the consumption of contaminated water by providing safe, clean drinking water to those in need around the world."

Founded in 2005, Thirst Relief operates in nine countries to launch sustainable water projects in impoverished rural areas and urban slum communities.  100% of public donations go to their various water projects and amazingly—$5 provides 25 yrs. of clean water for one person.

Want to get in on the action and give yourself something to feel really great about? Make a donation to one of their projects —OR— get your bidding on to win a 90-minute mentoring session with yours truly (along with a copy of my Wicked Fast Wedding Workflow Guide and my InDesign Tutorial Video)!

Check out this video to learn more about the work they do, then feel awesome while you set the auction bids on fire! I'm looking forward to connecting with the highest bidder!

PS: Better hurry!  Bidding closes Sunday night (Feb. 3rd) at 10pm CST!

Thirst Relief Short from Anton Lorimer on Vimeo.

How to Turn Your Instagram Photos into a Custom Printed Book

*** This post has been updated to make it even more awesome! *** Let's be real.

I appreciate scrap booked labors of love as much as the next gal, but honestly, if my future (yet-to-be-conceived) children are to have any chance of having their memories live on in an analog format, I can't carry on with the fantasy that someday I'll make scrap booking a regular part of my life. Maybe for a special gift, but definitely not a monthly/yearly thing.

Thankfully, I found a painless alternative.

I've been stewing about how I can make it easy to make sure that our family memories (and bits of daily life) have a life beyond a dusty ol' pile of hard drives.

(This is one of my favorite What the Duck comic strips by the genius Aaron Johnson)

I generally recommend that each time you download photos (whether from your phone, or your "real camera"), pick your 10-20 favorites and order some prints. When they come, just drop them in a photo storage box. Getting fancy with glue and scissors is nice, but totally not required.

Of course, if you're like me, as diligent as I am with taking care of client images, when it comes to my own personal photos—I'm lucky if I download them 3 or 4 times per year. In fact, I've gotten to the point where—like lots of folks—most of the time, the only camera I have with me is my phone.

And the most action my personal photos ever see is if they happen to get posted online via Instagram, etc. So it made the most sense to find a way to make a book from my Instagram images.

And since sifting through my entire photo collection in search of the images I happened to post to Instagram is not likely to happen (like trying to find a needle in a haystack), I was on a mission to find a better way.

Enter Blurb. There are a lot of book-making solutions out there (especially when it comes to Instagram and other social photo sharing sites), but many leave much to be desired in terms of design flexibility, ease of use, and product quality.

Having been a Blurb fan for years, I already knew that I wanted them to print my books, but the online tool they provide for printing your Instagram images has some sort of bug that jumbles the images out of order if you try to add more than the default of 52. And since I was planning to include roughly 250 images, this was a serious concern. (This is really too bad, as otherwise this tool would be so great!)

Blurb also makes a book plug-in for Lightroom, but after playing around with it for awhile, though the interior page layout options had what I wanted (a single square image per page), I found the cover layout and material options to be limiting (compared to the choices Blurb offers elsewhere) and ultimately I wasn't able to cobble together the book in the specific way I wanted. So, I turned my attention back to Blurb's free desktop application (called BookSmart).

Here's the Step-by-Step

1. Download your photos from Instagram. You can use something like InstaArchive to download a .zip file of your entire collection. After you make your first book, I suggest creating a recipe with IfThisThenThat (IFTTT.com) so you can have your instagrammed images sent to your DropBox Account where they'll already be waiting for you in a nice organized folder (this is my favorite method). Unfortunately, they'll only be sized to 612px x 612px. Don't panic. We'll deal with this in step 3.
2. Sort and renumber the files. Use Bridge or Lightroom (or whatever works) to renumber the images. They should already appear within Bridge in chronological order, but if with long goofy file names, there can sometimes be problems with file order, so I always make sure to renumber.
3. Batch upsize them. Bummer that the archived or DropBoxed images from Instagram are so low res. (it will be ok, breathe!) Use a quality plug-in to scale them up without tearing a hole in the universe. I use Alien Skin's Lightroom plug-in called Blow-Up (they have a free trial as well as a verion of the plug-in for Photoshop). I size my images big enough to print 4x4 @300ppi (1200 x 1200 pixels).
4. Decide on a page layout. Choose one of the existing layouts in Blurb's desktop application and drop in your images. Or, for more control—build your own layout.

   I wanted a single image per page with plenty of white space around it, so I wrote a Photoshop action to build out each 4x4 image with a nice white background to fill out a 7x7 page. You can write your own, or download my custom action here (for a 7x7 book). Then batch run the action on the whole folder via Bridge.

5. Design a cover. You could use InDesign (recommended), Photoshop, or do it directly in BookSmart (Blurb's free desktop application). I'm a control freak who wants a consistent cover design for all my books, so I designed accordingly (using InDesign) and will swap the images (and colors) with each "edition." I also included a place for volume/date information to note the time span for each book. For example, Vol. One reflects the fall of 2011 through the spring of 2012. Additionally, I included a photo of both Emir and I on the back to quickly document how we change over time. In the future, that image be a whole family photo. If you have InDesign CS4 or newer, you can download my front/back cover InDesign templates here. Drop in your own photos, edit the text, and export to jpg.
6. Put it all together in Blurb's BookSmart. It's easy to load the photos, select them all, then drag and drop onto the first blank page and you'll see the rest will auto-complete, building your book in minutes, no matter how many pages you have. (Their limit is around 284 pages or so, so if you have more than that, plan to split it across multiple books.)

Enjoy!

 PS: Save 20% on your Blurb books through Dec. 8th with the code ANY20

A Personal Battle: Living with OCD

I don't usually get quite this personal on my blog, but what the heck—sometimes you just have to put yourself out there and trust that it will be for a good reason. Besides, it's entirely possible that someone may even find what you have to say helpful, encouraging, or even—dare I say it?—inspiring. I hope that's the case.

The truth is—I have a confession to make. I am far from perfect. (Well geez... Don't act so surprised!) It's a well known fact that no one is perfect, but that doesn't stop us from trying, does it? I'm as guilty as anyone else when it comes to thinking that I might actually be Super Woman, but the universe has an annoyingly stubborn way of reminding us that we're all human.

I run a successful business. I'm a published author. I have a wonderful family and a rich life filled with more rewarding experiences than I could count, which I wouldn't trade for the world. But alone, in the privacy of my own mind, I'm waging war—fighting a constant battle against Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

More than a torturous condition that very few people understand, OCD is listed by the World Health Organization as one of the top 10 most debilitating disorders around. Having kept my battle private for more than 22 years, I've decided to open up and go public in an effort to help others and spread awareness after a recent and especially bad flare up that began in October of 2011 (just as Emir and I left on our bike tour) and roared to epic proportions this past February as we got serious about wanting to start a family. The reinvigorated battle lead to my recent TEDx talk called, "Anything is Possible, and That's the Problem. Or is It?"

The talk explores the ways in which our beliefs shape our realities (however distorted they may be), and how we can all benefit from a wider perspective and more balanced thinking. Check it out:

If you or someone you know is suffering, it's easy to end up in a very dark place if the OCD goes untreated. Find a therapist (who specializes in OCD), ask your doctor about medication, and get some good books. These are my personal favorites:

When in Doubt, Make Belief by Jeff Bell Part memoir, part therapy, this is a great place to start.

Devil in the Details by Jennifer Traig An intelligent and tragically hilarious memoir.

Nowhere Near Normal by Traci Foust Another eye-opening (brilliantly written and humorous while simultaneously tragic) memoir that helps to put things in perspective.

Perhaps I'll share more details of my own battle someday in a future blog post, but for now here are some things worth knowing:

• OCD is not a personality trait. Preferring to sort your closet by color, alphabetize your music collection, or keep your house exceptionally tidy because it makes you happy—is not a symptom of OCD.
• Statistically, there are people in your life who have OCD and hide it well. Share this post and these links. Spread awareness.
• There are a number of highly successful and creative people who have gone public with their OCD including: David Beckham, Justin Timberlake, Cameron Diaz, Megan Fox, and Leonardo DiCaprio (who famously played another famous OCD sufferer, Howard Hughes in "Aviator,"). Super geniuses Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein are also thought to have suffered from OCD.
• Although there is no cure, symptoms can be managed with medication and/or therapy. If you know someone who suffers, encourage them to get help. It can get better!
• Learn more here.

Making Time for Creativity

One of the mistakes I made early in my business, was forgetting to budget time into my schedule for myself to recharge, recalibrate, and dare I say it—relax. I was shooting like a maniac on every day of the week, with multiple sessions per day and one or two weddings every weekend. Ba—nanas.

This went on for about three years before I finally got my act together. When I think back to that time, I still can't quite figure out how I managed to hold it all together, but I'm grateful that I was able to grow from the experience.

These days, I have a much better grip on things and regularly make it a point to give myself lots of breathing room for all kinds of passion projects—photo related and otherwise. While it's not always easy to look at your calendar and simply draw a big ol' line through days, weeks, or even months at a time, it's one of the most rewarding things you can do for yourself. The payoffs can come in the form of increased focus, new and expanded ideas, and of course—creativity.

Recharging my batteries also means that I'll have more time, attention, and energy to devote to clients, enabling me to provide them with the best possible experience.

Like most things, if you don't allocate time for "taking time off," it's unlikely to happen. With this in mind, I've blocked out the rest of 2012 to devote time to several writing projects, travel, teaching, and hopefully—lots of nephew squeezing. :) I look forward to sharing my adventures along the way!

Before you go, check out this TED Talk from Stefan Sagmeister who shares the value he's found in routinely taking an entire year "off."

More Nephew Photo Time!

Haris loves to go fishing. He loves his Sponge Bob Squarepants pole. And—he loves worms. So naturally, we headed out to the lake to catch these summer moments before fall catches up with us.

So fun! Love you guys!

Baby Oscar & Company

Nephew # 4 came into the world just over a week ago, and I was finally able to catch up with him at home with my camera. Look at all that hair!

After a snack break, it was back to sleep...

Big brother Dominic wanted some face time too...

In fact, he was so inspired, he picked up his own camera and played along. A quick learner, he could be heard repeating things I had said like, "Turn this way," or "Open up your shoulder." So funny!

Gina and Roy's house has this huge window in the living room.... making moments like this possible.

Dom was sporting a new haircut yesterday, making him look so grown up!

So much fun! xoxoxo

I'm a Tia (Again)! Bienvenidos a Oscar Luis Furr!

Oscar is already one in a million—he was actually born on his due date. My sister Gina and her husband Roy arrived at the hospital about 5am, and Oscar arrived a mere 1.5 hours later! I can't wait to head back over later today and get a better look at him. He was eating within 15 minutes of his first breath—incredible!

Dominic was soooooooo excited. He could be heard proudly (and repeatedly) proclaiming, "My baby brother!"

Oscar gets checked out by the pediatrician (Oscar was not too happy about having been interrupted while eating!)

This is my favorite—the look on big brother Dom's face when he walked in the room and saw mom with baby brother Oscar. LOVE!

So glad Oscar is here! Can't wait to get some quality snuggle time with him soon!

When Was the Last Time You Played in the Rain?

We're all anxiously awaiting the arrival of Dominic's baby brother, and having been in San Francisco all week, I was glad he didn't show up while I was gone! As soon as I got home, I headed over to my sister's house to hang out and squeeze in some quality Dom time before the baby comes. When it suddenly started raining, I suggested we find Dom's rain boots and go out to play. This is precisely why I love having the S95 in my purse—it's on-hand and available for spontaneous moments like these!