Web or Print Publishing is so easy for any budding Photographer or Graphic Designer

A colleague of mine at work (Richard Wong) will tell you his photography is only a hobby....but his passion, eye for detail and design sense tells quite another story. Very talented person! Check our his new web album it is constantly updating.

Richard created this web album using JAlbum (see below) and the BananAlbum skin.

BananAlbum can be used on its own and was developed by another photo enthusiast (Rudin Swagerman) for personal use....once other people saw the great potential of BananAlbum they wanted to use it as well. BananAlbum is free to use (although you can purchase a license for $30.00 USD....this will give you a "clean" BananAlbum. No intro, no icon on the bottom right hand corner, plus information on how to incorporate audioPlayer functionality. If you want a great way to add an easy album to your website - the $30.00 is a great deal! Note: when registering, you must give the domain (the URL) that BananAlbum will be hosted on.

BananAlbum can be used for any type of image - photography or original artwork (digital or other mediums).

Back in 2006 I had blogged about JAlbum, it has come a long way since then! BananAlbum is now bundled in JAlbum. "With JAlbum you have full control of the look of the generated album, not just color theme and basic layout, still making an album is just a matter of drag and drop + a button click if you prefer to use one of the many existing looks. JAlbum will process your images, make index pages and slide show pages and even upload the final album to the Internet for your friends to see. JAlbum runs on all platforms and speaks 30 languages."

But wait, there is more.....

You can take your images from JAlbum and publish a book in Blurb. Took some great photographs over the holidays, publish them in a book from Blurb. Prices are quite reasonable starting "at only $12.95 for a 40-page softcover, $22.95 for a 40-page hardcover with dust jacket. The bookmaking software is free." Click this link for further pricing guidelines.

The process is easy. Install Blurb BookSmart, choose the type of book you want to make, play around with the photos, stories, etc...and your book is done.What a great birthday, Christmas (next year), or special occasion gift! Work the cost into a school program. Students take their own photographs all year then publish them into a book at the end of the year....great keepsake. Companies want to tell their own story - to be original.

I am going to use Blurb to tell our story since we moved to New Zealand almost 3 years ago. Some of my family members will probably not ever travel from Canada to New Zealand so if I pull a book together for them with pictures of the people and places they have heard us talk about over the last couple of years.....it will bring our new home closer to them.