Photo book ideas: subjects, order and spread layouts
Pick one subject with a clear start and end, such as a year, a child, a trip or a house. Choose an order, by date, place or theme, and plan the book in spreads of two facing pages.
Choose a subject you can describe plainly, then decide whether the book needs captions, longer accounts or both. Photos and scanned keepsakes can sit together if they help explain it.
Settle the order before the layouts. Layout trouble often comes from photos that belong to two sections at once.
Make a digital scrapbook
Add your photos and keepsakes in tbf scrapbook, then arrange them on the pages.
Titles, section labels and caption patterns for a photo book
Book titles
- [Surname], [year]
- [Name], nought to [age]
- [Number] [street name]
- Then and now: [town]
- The [decade] years
- Year one at [place]
- Our first [thing]
Section labels
- Arriving
- Room by room
- Spring
- Summer
- Autumn
- Winter
- Before
- After
- Every day
- Going home
Caption patterns
- [Name], [age], [place]
- Back row: [names]. Front row: [names].
- Then: [year]. Now: [year].
- Day [number], [town]
- [Room], [month] [year]
| Material available | Book idea | Useful page sequence |
|---|---|---|
| Many years of one place | Then and now | Old view, new view, dated details |
| A short trip with mixed cameras | Stops along the route | Arrival, a spread per stop, departure |
| Similar daily photos | One repeated routine | Same view grouped by month or season |
| One object made over time | A project record | Materials, stages, mistakes, finished object |
| Several people's photographs | One shared event | People, activity, small details, closing scene |
Subjects with a first and last page
A good subject hands you an opening photo and a closing one. Without both, the book drifts.
- A year: January to December, a spread or two a month, ending on the last photo taken that year.
- A child: one spread per birthday, with the party and an ordinary day from the same year.
- A trip: the departure, each stop in order, and the way home.
- A house: the day you got the keys, each room before and after, and the present day or the last photo before moving out.
- A person: earliest photo to latest, one spread per decade.
- A team or hobby: one season, from the first session to the last match.
- One day: a wedding, a festival or a leaving party, in hour order.
- A town: the same streets photographed then and now.
Ways to order the photos
By date is the default and suits a year or a child. Check camera dates first: a phone left on the wrong time zone shuffles a trip.
By place suits a trip or a house. Group every photo from one town or one room together, even if they were taken on different days.
By theme suits a long span: food, people, places, weather. Give each theme a spread or two and finish on the most recent photo.
Then and now pairs an old photo with a new one from the same spot. Plan it before taking the new photos, with the old print in hand.
Spread layouts to mix
Plan in spreads, because that is how the book is read. Alternate busy and quiet spreads so the reader gets a pause.
- One wide photo across a spread, only after checking that the fold does not hide an important detail.
- Big and small: one large photo on the left, three small detail shots on the right.
- A grid of six photos, three on each page, with a consistent gap and clear caption space.
- Quiet page: one small photo centred on a plain right page, the left page empty.
- Sequence: four to six photos in a row across both pages for an action, such as a jump or first steps.
- Chapter opener: the section title on a plain left page, a full-page photo on the right.
What to leave out
Keep the best one of each burst of near-identical shots. Two photos of the same smile at the same angle weaken each other.
Keep a few photos where nobody is posing: the kitchen table, the car boot, the view from a window. They show the everyday that posed groups miss.
If a photograph needs a longer explanation, reserve a text page rather than shrinking its caption. The subject decides how much writing the book needs.
Steps
Opening spread
The title alone on the left page and one photo that sets the subject on the right, such as the front door or the departure board.
A busy middle spread
Three photos on each facing page with matching gaps. Keep the fold clear, then add one caption block per page rather than tiny text under every image.
A then-and-now spread
An old print of a place on the left and a new photo from the same spot on the right, each captioned with its year.
Closing spread
The last photo of the subject large on the left page, and a plain right page with the dates the book covers.
Questions
What makes a great photo book?
One subject, a clear order and a strict cut. Fewer, stronger photos with short, consistent captions read better than every photo from the event.
How many photos should a photo book have?
It follows from the spreads. A grid spread holds nine and a full-bleed spread one, so plan the spreads and the total works itself out.
Is a photo book the same as a scrapbook?
No. A photo book is mostly photos and captions. A scrapbook adds keepsakes, handwriting and longer writing alongside the pictures.