Digital photography has changed so much in the last 10 years that it’s almost hard to fathom where it even began.  But before social media, we would simply take our photos, put them on our computer, and probably email them to friends and family, post them to a blog, or maybe even make photo books from a trip we took.

But now, we take so many photos each day… and while posting them to social media shares them with all of our friends and family, they tend to get lost after a few days.  If the Timehop app has taught me anything, it’s that photos and memories can quickly be buried and forgotten.  It’s really fun to see what I was posting 1, 3 or even 8 years ago, but I also don’t want that to be my only access to those photos!

Enter Chatbooks.  I saw a friend post about these books a while back but I think I was overwhelmed by the number of Instagram photos I had and how many books they wanted to print from said images.  Yikes!

But once I wrapped my brain around how I could use these books – for personal AND business reasons – they made a lot more sense for me and I didn’t feel quite as overwhelmed.

Chatbooks gives you the option to create two different kind of books.  One is using photos from Instagram and/or albums on your phone.  The other option is only using Instagram photos.  Each book is 60 pages with 1 photo per page.  You can customize it by selecting whether to show avatars, captions, locations, date and time.  You can even filter it by hashtags, which is how I ended up creating the books you see above.

Every wedding or engagement photo I post, I use the hashtag #SabrinaWeddings.  So when I connected to Instagram through the Chatbooks app on my phone, I used that hashtag to filter out just those images.  At the time I printed these books (around mid-April of this year), there were at least 180 photos which made up 3 books.

I created a “series”, which means each time there are enough photos to create a new book, they will automatically print it and ship it to me!  Looking in my app, it even shows me that I have 222 photos with this hashtag and there are currently 42 photos in my next book.  So when it gets to 60 photos, another book will print!  Each book is $6 and if you choose slow shipping, it’s free :-)

I just love how I now have these little albums that I can easily take with me to meetings or to just flip through to see every couple we’ve had the joy of working with!  No, they aren’t the best quality out there and I do have actual sample albums that I take with me to meet with potential brides.  But let’s face it, I now have actual copies of some of my all time favorite wedding images from the last 3 years!

As most of you know, I’ve been posting #theDailyCatherineMarie on Instagram for a while now.  During my pregnancy, once we found out she was a girl, the hashtag was #babyCatherineMarie.  So of course I had books printed with BOTH of these hashtags.  And honestly, I L-O-V-E them.  I’ve gotten many of these photos printed as normal 4×6 prints, but to have each photo in one book with the date AND the caption with it is just priceless to me.

It’s like I already have 3 miniature scrapbooks that I worked on just a few minutes each day… and they only cost me $6 each :-)

I’ve gotten several emails from them saying they’re about to raise their prices to $8 per book, which is still an incredible price for these!  But if you go ahead and create a series and subscribe to it (meaning they’ll send you a new book each time 60 photos are available), they’ll keep you at the $6 per book price for the next two years.  We won’t be using #theDailyCatherineMarie that long (I don’t think!), but I’ll definitely still be using #SabrinaWeddings so it’s nice to know I’ll be saving a little money on those.

They give each person who creates a book a referral code.  And if you’d like your first Chatbook for free, you can use my code here: QJTGN3ZU on their website chatbooks.com.  If you order one, let me know!  I’m always so excited to get these in the mail and would love to share in your excitement when you order your books too!