Blurb's BookSmart software for creating photobooks was first released in 2007, while BookWright was released in 2014 as a beta, and publicly released in February 2015. BookWright can import photobooks in several other formats, including Blurb's BookSmart format and Blurb's Bookify format.

According to Blurb, "Because BookWright is brand new, we have new technology available to us to make the app run smoother and faster, refresh the overall look and feel, and to incorporate new features."

It sounds like a no-brainer - BookWright should be the default choice when deciding which software to use to create a photobook for printing by Blurb. After using BookWright to create a photobook, I believe it's not a simple choice. Read on for details.

blowing dandelions

Point Peron, Rockingham, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art @35mm, 1/1600 sec, f/5, ISO100

My youngest nephew Micah, having fun with dandelion clocks.

Samantha showing off her braids

Patong, Phuket, Thailand
Canon EOS 50D, 24-105mm f/4L IS @35mm, 1/250 sec, f/4, ISO200

While recently in Phuket, Thailand, my youngest daughter Samantha had her hair braided, and I captured these photos on the balcony of our hotel room, with diffused lighting from an overcast sky.

The photo to the right is the first photo I took, composed to use the palm trees in the hotel gardens as a background. However, when reviewing the photo on my camera's LCD, I noticed that the lighting on her face wasn't optimal, leaving the right side of her face very dark.

After positioning Samantha's face towards the light, I obtained the photo above. The lighting on Samantha's face is more appealing, and the details of half her face are no longer lost in the shadows.

It is important to consider the direction and quality of the light when composing your photos, as it can make a big difference to the resulting photo. Simply repositioning the subject, or changing the direction you are shooting from can have a big impact on your photo.

With portrait photography, the eyes in particular are very important, and losing one or both eyes in shadows will reduce the impact of the portrait, as shown in the photos in this post.

We recently spent a week on holidays in Phuket, Thailand, and had a great time with two of our children. Here are a couple of photos showing a storm rolling in over the ocean, coming towards Patong Beach.

my parents-in-law - married for 50 years

Last month my parents-in-law celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. That's quite a milestone, and we're thankful that they are still healthy enough to have an active part in the life of our children.
With seven children and 38 grandchildren, it can make for some large family gatherings.

Family is important to me - my wife and my children, but also the extended family - parents, brothers and sisters, in-laws, nephews and nieces...

I enjoy family gatherings, and love to see the kids interacting with their grandparents, and the fun that the kids have with their cousins. I think one of the reasons I appreciate this family time is because I missed out on most of it when I was growing up. My parents emigrated from the Netherlands to Australia soon after getting married, and I was born in Australia, while my grandparents, uncles and aunties and cousins were all back in the Netherlands.

My parents took myself and my siblings to the Netherlands several times when we were growing up, and it was great to catch up with family each time. While I have great memories of those trips, it wasn't the same as being able to see those family members on a regular basis.

Two weeks ago, the entire family spent a weekend together in a large holiday home / camp near the beach. We had a very enjoyable weekend - lots of time to chat, eat and have fun, and our children and our nephews and nieces had lots of quality time together too.

Maddie

Point Peron, Rockingham, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM @35mm, 1/125 sec, f/2, ISO500

This is my youngest niece Madalyn, photographed during a family weekend away several weeks ago.
She was always ready with a smile when I pointed my camera in her direction.

star trails

Lake Leschenaultia, Mundaring, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art @35mm, 119 frames at 30 sec, f/3.5, ISO1600

Here is another photo from our night sky shoot at Lake Leschenaultia on Saturday night. This photo was created by stacking 119 photos, and each of those photos was a 30 second exposure.

I used my Phottix Aion intervalometer to trigger the camera, and had to clean up a few of the frames, due to some random stranger on the other side of the lake shining his torch directly at us.

Milky Way over Lake Leschenaultia

Lake Leschenaultia, Mundaring, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, 10-22mm @10mm, 30 sec, f/3.5, ISO3200

Last night I ventured out to Lake Leschenaultia with a friend, and with my oldest daughter, to shoot the night sky. We wanted to be far enough away from the metro area to avoid the light pollution, and the relatively late rising of the moon meant a dark night sky for a few hours.
It was cold, but our view of the night sky was not marred by any clouds, and we managed to get some worthwhile photos of the Milky Way and the stars.

Michelle and Tenieka

Golden hour is the period of time just before sunset, when the low orange light of the sun provides some interesting opportunities for photography. Last week Monday (a public holiday in Western Australia) I took some of my children, a nephew and a friend of my daughter to Lake Walyungup in Warnbro for a photography session during golden hour.

sunset at Warnbro Beach

Warnbro Beach, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, 10-22mm @18mm, 1/20 sec, f/4.5, ISO640

We decided to make the most of the public holiday today, and I took some of my children, a nephew and a friend of my daughter out for some photography in the late afternoon. After enjoying the golden hour at Lake Walyungup (photos to come), we then headed to Warnbro Beach to watch the sunset and have dinner.
It was a great sunset, with smoke from a bushfire adding some colour and texture above the horizon.

Grill'd

Fremantle, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art @35mm, 1/160 sec, f/1.6, ISO800

A burger restaurant in Fremantle, photographed while on a photowalk with some friends earlier this year. The Silver Efex Pro 2 plugin for Adobe Photoshop from Google's Nik Collection was used for the black and white conversion.
I wasn't too keen on the colour version of this photo, and this black and white version reproduces the moody scene better than the colour version.
This was shot hand-held with my favourite lens, the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art series lens.

Some photos of the Sibum twins in the bath last night - all shot with the fabulous Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art series lens. Lighting was courtesy of a Canon 580EX flash on my camera hotshoe, bouncing off the wall and ceiling behind me (the near-white walls of the bathroom make it easy to bounce the light around).
They have been featured on my blog before they were born in a pregnancy shoot, and as newborns.

Bathers Beach Sunset Silhouettes

Bathers Beach, Fremantle, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art @35mm, 1/250 sec, f/4.5, ISO500

Something from a photowalk earlier this year - these sunset silhouettes were shot at Bathers Beach in Fremantle.

I normally have my camera mode set to aperture priority, and this occasion was no exception. The default behaviour of the camera is to try to expose for middle grey, so I dialled in 1 1/3 stops of negative exposure compensation to reduce the brightness of the scene. This allowed me to capture the silhouettes in front of the awesome sunset colours.

setting up for shooting

Bathers Beach, Fremantle, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, 10-22mm @16mm, 1/20 sec, f/4.5, ISO640

Blurb are a well-known print-on-demand company, and they offer numerous book printing and photo book printing options, with a variety of paper types, book bindings and other options. Blurb provide multiple options for creating books, allowing you to use either their BookSmart software, BookWright software, web-based Bookify, a plug-in for Adobe InDesign, or you can do your own thing and create a PDF file for Blurb to print as a book.

Be sure to read my post on lessons learnt from printing a Blurb photo book, where I take a closer look at using Blurb's BookSmart software, and provide some recommendations and guidelines for creating a photo book.

To encourage you to make a photo book with your own photos, and to save you money, I will be keeping this page up-to-date with current offers and discounts available from Blurb. These are all valid coupon codes - no expired codes will be listed here.

Here are the currently available Blurb coupon codes, sorted by expiry date:

Save 30% off photo books
coupon code:	COMMUNITY30
expires:	08-Sep-2025
details:	Offer valid through September 8, 2025 (11:59 p.m. local time). Valid only for photo books uploaded to and purchased through your own account. The discount is applied toward your product total with no minimum or maximum order amount. This offer has a maximum value of $725. This offer is good for two uses, and cannot be used for ebook or PDF purchases, and wall art, or combined with volume discounts, custom orders, other promotional codes, gift cards, or used for adjustments on previous orders.
Save with Blurb's volume discounts
coupon code:	none required
expires:	not applicable
details:	Volume discounts applied at checkout are: 10-19 copies: 10% discount 20+ copies: 20% discount For details of discounts on large orders, you can request a custom quote from Blurb.
35% Off Your First Photo Book
coupon code:	none required
expires:	not applicable
details:	Valid for printed books only. Get 35% off your first photo book. This offer is good for one-time use, and cannot be combined with volume discounts, other promotional codes, gift cards, or used for adjustments on previous orders. Offer valid for 30 days after user's first registration.

All offers are valid through through to 11:59pm local time on the specified expiry date.
Coupons are good for one-time use, and cannot be combined with volume discounts, other promotional codes, gift cards, or used for adjustments on previous orders.

This page describes the radio control transmitter that I re-packaged, to make it smaller and more portable, and more suitable for kite aerial photography (KAP).

Kite aerial photography (KAP) is a form of aerial photography, where a camera is suspended from a kite line to allow aerial photos to be taken, with the camera either being triggered by an intervalometer, or controlled and triggered via radio control. My KAP camera rig uses a 6-channel radio control transmitter and receiver to control the camera, allowing me to rotate and tilt the camera while it is airborne. Depending on which camera I use, I can also remotely trigger the camera shutter.

Read my Introduction to Kite Aerial Photography guest post on DIYP for more information on the how and why of KAP, and have a look through some of my KAP photos.



As I have taken my KAP gear on a couple of domestic and international business trips, I wanted to make it more portable. The transmitter is quite bulky, and the protruding joysticks don't make it easy to pack. Some of the re-packaged KAP transmitters posted on the KAP forums provided inspiration and ideas, including:

• 2.4 GHz transmitter goes to the chop shop
• Dave's Chopped Spektrum
• Customized Turborix
• custom Arduino KAP transmitter (more details in this forum thread)
• forum thread with various completed results

My primary aim for re-packaging the transmitter was to make it smaller and lighter, and thus more portable. A secondary aim was to make it easier to operate one-handed.

To achieve this, I decided to:

• use 8 x AAA batteries instead of 8 x AA batteries
• custom-build a smaller case
• use a removable antenna
• remove un-used circuitry and controls

In late November last year, I was privileged to be able to photograph the wedding of one of my nephews - the first of my nephews and nieces to be married.
My oldest daughter, aged 13, was my second shooter for the day, and captured the photo below showing an emotional father of the bride. This shot would not have been possible without a second shooter, as I was at the front of the church, shooting the processional entering the church.
Instead of a stately recessional at the end of the service, the bridal couple had decided to run out of church, with the rest of the bridal party following. It caught me by surprise, but I still managed to capture a photo of their exit.
We had a lot of fun throughout the day, and I really enjoyed sharing the day with Brady and Bernice, photographing their special day. A selection of photos from their wedding day are included below.

This is the thirteenth article in a series on "understanding your camera" that I am writing as I teach camera basics and camera operation to my children.

So what is exposure compensation, and why should photographers know about it?

The short answer is that exposure compensation allows you to adjust the default exposure selected by your camera, by several stops up or down.

Modern cameras have a lot of smarts built into their electronics, and are designed to make a lot of decisions about exposure and camera settings each time you take a photo. In most cases, the camera can make faster and smarter decisions than you can, and it is a good idea to take advantage of this processing power built into your camera.

Despite this, your camera cannot always correctly determine the exposure, because it makes some assumptions about the scene being photographed. There are situations where you need to be able to adjust the camera exposure up or down, depending on the scene being photographed, and the lighting conditions, to achieve the results that you want.

Gnarabup Beach, viewed from the lookout

When I was a kid, we used to holiday every summer at Prevelly, near Margaret River, in the south west of Western Australia. A few weeks ago, we spent a week there, staying in Gnarabup (right next to Prevelly). The area has changed a great deal from the times when we used to camp there, with lots of resorts, restaurants and houses in the area. It is still a great place to holiday at, with plenty of fantastic beaches and things to do.

Gnarabup Beach was a 5 minute walk from where we were staying, and it was a popular spot for kite surfers. Here are some photos of the kite surfing action, all photographed from the lookout above Gnarabup Beach.