I had a mission and a dilemma.  My mission was to create a coffee table book to showcase my best photographs – possibly something that I could use as a portfolio as well.  You can get really carried away with portfolio quality books, but I didn’t want to spend an excessive amount of money.  And the typical printing services don’t have anything nearly as nice as I would like.  What was I to do?

Fortunately, a friend of mine pointed me to a website and service called Blurb.  Blurb is an on-demand book publisher that specializes in books that you make yourself using their special software.  The software is free to download, of course, and it’s fairly easy to use.  You have a bunch of templates you can work from, layouts that are practiced in the industry, or you can start from scratch adding text blocks and photo blocks wherever you need.  It may be a little time consuming to get everything exactly the way you want it, but not necessarily more time than you would on any portfolio.  And you pick up speed as you work along.

The final product may not compete with some of the top-end portfolios that professional art directors might call in.  But it’s certainly something that you’ll be proud to share with friends, family and consumer level clients.

Visit the site: Blurb

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