Phone photographs welcome
Modern phone files print well at album sizes. I will flag anything that will not.
Professional and personal mixed
The newborn session and the three-in-the-morning photograph belong in the same book.
Copies for grandparents
Further copies cost printing and binding only. A soft back edition is the economical way to give everyone one.
A first year produces more photographs than any other year of a life, and almost none of them get printed. The newborn shoot sits in a gallery that expires, the phone fills up, and the year that everybody said would go quickly goes quickly.
A baby album is the simplest possible answer to that, and the one people are gladdest to have ten years later. It does not need to be exhaustive. It needs to exist.
Newborn shoots, the first year, christenings
A newborn session on its own makes a lovely short album. A first year makes a fuller one, and works best as a run through the months: the hospital, the first weeks, sitting up, the first birthday. Christenings and naming days can be their own book or a chapter inside the year.
Most first-year albums are a mix of professional shots and phone photographs, and that mix is the point. The newborn session is beautiful and the phone photograph of three in the morning is the truth; a good album has room for both.
Phone photographs are fine
Modern phone files print far better than people expect at album sizes, and I will tell you honestly if a particular image will not hold up before it goes anywhere near a page. Screenshots and heavily compressed messages are the usual casualties; the originals from your camera roll are almost always fine.
Send far more than you need. Sixty to eighty photographs makes a strong first-year book, and getting there from six hundred is my job rather than yours.
Copies for the people who will want one
Grandparents are the reason most baby albums get ordered in threes. Once the album is designed, further copies are charged for printing and binding only, and a soft back edition is an inexpensive way to give everyone one.
If you are the grandparent rather than the parent, this makes a good gift and I am used to arranging it quietly at that end. Send me what you have and I will deal with the rest.
Lay-flat, and made to survive being handled
Baby albums get handled more than any other kind. They are shown to visitors, taken to relatives, and eventually looked through by the child in it. That argues for a lay-flat construction with rigid pages rather than something delicate.
The Baby Book is built for exactly this: lay-flat pages, a coordinated cover and box, and the most affordable album in the range.
Albums I would suggest
Further reading
Tell me what you have, and what you would like made
Send me the photographs and a sentence about the occasion. I will come back with a recommendation and a price, with no obligation.