Building a house is one of the greatest undertakings in a lifetime. It lasts months, sometimes years, consumes an enormous amount of energy, money, and nerves, yet ultimately brings tremendous satisfaction. Most people document the process with their phone, photographing foundations, rising walls, and the first roof. These photos usually end up sitting forgotten in a gallery, never looked at again. Meanwhile, a photobook chronicling the building of a house is a truly unique keepsake that shows the entire journey from an empty plot to a finished home.
Documenting the stages of construction
The key to a good building photobook is regularity. It is worth taking photos at every significant stage: excavation, foundations, ground-floor walls, the ceiling slab, upper-floor walls, the roof truss, roofing, windows, plaster, installations, floors, finishing. It helps to photograph the building from the same spot so that progress is clearly visible. Such shots arranged chronologically create a fascinating sequence in which the house grows before your eyes. It is also worth photographing the crew at work, material deliveries, and even plans and sketches from a notebook, because all of it is part of the story.
Photobook layout
When designing a photobook from a build, a chronological layout with clear headings for individual stages works well. At the beginning there might be a photo of the empty plot, and at the end the finished house with smiling residents on the doorstep. Between these shots it is worth including both wide angles showing the whole building and details, for example a close-up of distinctive clinker bricks, the colour of roof tiles, or the first light switch installed. It is precisely the details that make the photobook interesting and personal.
Who is this photobook for
A house building photobook is above all a keepsake for the builders themselves, but it also works as a gift. Family and friends who visited the site at various stages will happily see the entire process from start to finish. Such a photobook is also a fascinating document years later, when the house has long been lived in and it is hard to imagine that it was once a bare skeleton of steel and concrete.
Building a house is a great adventure, full of challenges but also joyful moments, such as the first time driving onto the construction site, the ceiling slab going up, or laying the cornerstone. Gathering these memories in one place, in the form of a beautifully printed photobook, gives them permanence and significance. Years later, sitting in the living room of that very house and turning the pages, it is hard not to smile at the sight of how it all began.
