“It brought it all back about why I stepped away from commercially available photo books and why I began 20 Photos."

My brother’s girlfriend made him a photobook of their summer together.

*(I was staying in my brother’s very cool apartment in Berlin)*

It was a super nice idea of hers. I flicked through the book (nosey little sister)

The things that were nice about it were:

1/ That they had printed memories of their summer in Italy together- forever. And that’ll only become more valuable as time goes on. And the longer they left it, the less likely it was that they’d print those memories.

(Aren’t we funny in our habits as humans? There’s no logical reason for it, but it’s an indisputable fact I see time and time again)

2/ It was a lovely blend of their photos - details of delicious meals and epic landscape photos and the human shots of them goofing around - all the ingredients for a gorgeous collection.

The not-so-good things about the photobook:

1/ There were at least 5 times the number of photos that they needed to remember the trip - lots of repetition of the same things just from a bit of a different angle. It was overwhelming.

2/ With some small editing tweaks, the photos could have been so much better - straightened and balanced in terms of colours and shadows and composition. A little distracting.

3/ The print quality was so underwhelming even though it was a good photobook company - some of the colours weren’t quite right and the paper just didn’t ‘feel’ great. Basically, the photos didn’t sing- the poor prints detracted from the memories- when all I wanted to do was get wrapped up in the story of their amazing summer!

I recognise I’m coming at it from a high bar - I love nice things! (Don’t we all?)

I want to know I’m getting something really nice as an output when I’ve put time into it. Photo books take hours of our time to put together, no matter what the print companies promise. I used to be a photobook junkie, but I became increasingly disillusioned with the poor print quality and restrictive layouts.

Looking at this photobook brought back exactly why I stepped away from commercially available photo books and why I set up 20 Photos.

When I set up 20 Photos I set out to tackle these exact problems.

1/ We remove the repetition in the photos and find the ones that tell the story beautifully. It’s “20 photos” because that’s the amount of images that a human brain can take in without feeling overwhelmed. Allowing a perfect blend of substance, story and detail.

2/ All of our photos that go to print are professionally edited by me first. Straightening up the horizons, improving the composition and balancing out the shadows and colour. Editing is the absence of distraction - it means you’re able to enjoy the point of the photo, to hear it sing… and you won’t know why.

3/ The art paper that we use feels incredible. It is special and it’s not available from consumer print services.

An aside:
When I was starting out and looking for print partners, I had a fine art print company (whom I’d previously used for my huge photographic seascape prints and my Portrait Award prints) tell me ‘they don’t ‘do’ holiday snaps’. Another put their prices up. Doors closed firmly - they weren’t interested.
Art printing can be a snobby world, but I call total nonsense on that. I don’t see why it should be elitist or saved for galleries. The reality is that the prints are made from high quality ingredients and need expertise to get the best out of them. But there is no magic society that decides what should be enjoyed or is worthy of it or not. If a picture is important to you that is all that counts - whether it has an audience of just you, your family and friends- if it means something then it’s worth it and we don’t need an external taste police to decide that.
So I started to make the prints myself instead with a commercial-grade fine art printer in my studio. It’s slow but the quality is that worthy of a gallery.

Fine art paper is expensive but it holds detail and colour beautifully. The ink we use is also pigment ink which basically means it doesn’t fade out unlike those used in commercial photo printing (you know the ones, where the reds disappear after a few years on the wall?). Our classic photo set isn’t a bound book, but it does have a spine that you can write on and is designed to sit elegantly on your bookshelf, ready for you to dive into your memories.

And that’s it - that’s 20 Photos in a nutshell - I created a company that is picking apart all of my irritations of photo printing and the photo book world and making something that solves it. Beautifully and without the hours of faff.