Fifty photographs is enough
You do not need a complete archive. A good fifty-image book beats an exhaustive one.
Written contributions welcome
Messages from family or colleagues can be typeset alongside the photographs.
Buy multiple copies
Because, for a milestone that matters to a whole family, one volume can be an awkward gift to hand over.
The difficulty with every milestone is the same: the person has everything they need, and nothing in a shop says what you actually mean. An album of their own life does, because it is the one gift that cannot be bought for anybody else.
Nobody expects it. People are used to receiving objects; they are not used to receiving their own life, edited and printed properly. The reaction is almost always a pause on the first spread, then very slow page turns, then a story you have never heard about a photograph you have looked at a hundred times.
What you need to gather
Fifty or sixty photographs make a lovely book, and they do not need to be good in any technical sense. Snapshots, Polaroids, phone pictures and prints from a shoebox all belong. Enlist one accomplice with access to the family photographs and a reason to be discreet: two people gathering material is much faster than one, and it keeps the surprise intact.
Retirements and working lives
Work albums are often the easiest to fill and the hardest to organise, because the material comes from twenty colleagues at once. Send it all to me in whatever state it arrives. Where a team or a department is clubbing together, short written contributions can be set alongside the photographs rather than crammed into a card.
Memorial albums
Some of the most valued albums I make are for people who have died. They are hard to commission and harder to work on, and they matter enormously to the people who receive them. If that is what you are considering, take your time. There is no deadline, and it is better made carefully than quickly.
Where photographs are damaged or very old, restoration happens first and is quoted separately.
Allow longer than feels necessary
Four to ten weeks is the honest figure for a celebration album. Gathering photographs from relatives always takes longer than expected, and anything needing scanning or repair sits at the front of the schedule. For a Christmas album, order by the end of September. Round-number anniversaries need starting earlier than you think.
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.