You guys know by now that I am all about that print life. Luckily when you book through me, you never have to worry about how you are going to print your professional photos. (woo!) But what about your personal pictures? I take [literally] hundreds of photos of my family. I don't want them to sit on my hard drive or chill out in the cloud - never to be looked at again. But what do you do with them all? Even though I cart around my big camera literally everywhere - sometimes it's just easier to pull out my phone and snap the picture. (Or, like most cases, my kids and dogs are doing something cute and I don't have time to grab the DSLR) What do you do with the hundreds of cell phone pictures that get posted to Instagram or Facebook? I'll tell you what I do; Chatbooks.

     Here's the thing, I'm kinda a photo snob. I know my phone pictures aren't the greatest quality and can't be blown up super big (max is like an 8x10 guys). And even if I did print and frame them, all I would do whenever I walked past is judge the quality compared to my D750. Which is not fair! Even if you have a new IPhone with it's dual camera for "portrait mode" to give you that "blurry background" - In print (and even online) there is such a difference in quality. But they are still pictures, and the subject matter is still important. It's like that cheesy, old saying, "The best camera is the one you have with you." It's important that these pictures get off your phone and into print somehow. I was on board with Chatbooks the moment I saw their first commercial. Easy, fast but with decent quality? Sign me up! I literally started my series, "The Robbins Nest," when I was pregnant with Jones. It is a simple way to document our life!

      What I also love about Chatbooks is that you can have contributors to your series! I love having Danny sync his photos (that I would normally never see) so that they print along side mine in order. I have other ways of printing my personal pictures taken with my dlsr (which I'll talk about another day.) But with Chatbooks, I know that my phone pictures are taken care of and are in print. When we have family over they love to flip through them and see if they can find any of themselves. (like 95% are of Jones and the dogs.)

     Lets talk quality, (hello! photo snob) the first book I printed was a "test run" if you will. I got a referral code from a friend and only had to pay shipping. Nothing to lose, right? I decided to stick with the softcover option. (Now that I'm 64 volumes deep, I wish I would've paid the extra money and got the hardcover, but oh well. I'm too much of an odd ball to have my series start being hardcover while the first bit are all soft.) I was happy to find that even though it was a softcover, it did have a little more beef behind it than a regular page. It also has a nice soft texture to it as well. Each book holds 60 images. Or if you have time to make captions, and one is extra long, that counts as a "photo." Since I am all about quick and easy, I never update my captions. Instead, I have my account set to pull images from my "favorites" folder on my phone. This was another game changer for me - especially since I rarely post all the pictures I take to Facebook. In regards to the printing - I was pleased to find that the images came out perfect! A little dark in some, but that was usually due to the way I took the picture. I love it when I have images taken with my DSLR saved to my phone - I always try to use one of those as the cover image. I feel like pro photos print better as the cover. (If you don't have any pro photos on your phone, at least make sure the image is properly exposed.) 

     I love my Chatbooks and dream of someday building built-ins around my fireplace with a shelf just for them. (100% serious) They make me actually want to take pictures with my phone more - which I hardly did before because I wouldn't do anything with them. If you're interested in trying out Chatbooks, use my referral code to give it a go. It's good for $10 off your first book. (Which is a book if you don't do anything extra!) Give it a go and let me know what you think! 
 

http://invite.chatbooks.com/whitneyrobbins1p9