When Tesco Photo first got in touch about me testing out some of their products, I’m not going to lie I was a little bit sceptical about their service. Tesco has never been a company that has jumped to mind when I think about photo printing, but – I’m glad to say, I was really pleasantly surprised by the results.

I took the opportunity to finally invest in a physical portfolio of my work. I’ve always thought about needing a physical art book of my images, but never really wanted to do the work to make it – so I mustered up the motivation and put one together. I also made some photo calendars for 2019. Our house is chaos with people coming over for private dance classes with my house mate, Matt, and we’ve been talking about getting a wall calendar for ages to keep track of when people will be coming over (mainly so I know when it’s more of a danger parade to walk around semi-naked) – now we have a solution.

Looking through my work to find my best shots was actually quite a cathartic process. I feel so relieved when I  finish editing a whole weekend’s worth of shots, I kind of forget about them as soon as they’re done. It was a really self-gratifying process to take the time to sort through and (re)discover some favourite images. It’s also easy to forget what happens over the course of the year and let everything merge into one – it was pretty nostalgic to look through and remember everything. I have to say I was super-proud of what I’ve managed to achieve. 

To build your products, you have to use the online editor – which is really easy to navigate and pretty intuitive. It works on templates and drag and drop, so it’s simple to use and get your head around. I was a little frustrated about being confined to a template – but for this sort of thing, you don’t want anything too complex or crazy, so it really wasn’t the end of the world. 

The thing that really impressed me was the insanely fast turn around. Both of my products gave me an availability time and prediction for arrival between 8-12 days, which is not an unreasonable turn around at all, but they both arrived within 4 days of me ordering them. It was so quick!

I am a little in love with my portfolio. I love the smooth faux leather cover. I wish I’d been able to get a logo embossed on it, but it’s not a massive sacrifice. The colours are vibrant, and it’s held the quality really well. It’s lovely and glossy – I couldn’t be happier. As with any printed books, you have to be a little careful of your images being slightly cut at the edges, or part of the image being in the gutter of the page. 

I was a touch disappointed with the ID writing on the front of the calendar, but how long are you going to be looking at the cover, really? I’m in love with these too, though. They’re just beautiful – the quality is lovely. The pages are nice and thick so writing won’t bleed through, and the quality of the images are spot on. 

My pet peeve is when you get streaks on your images from a low-quality print. That’s absolutely non-existent in these. They’re not top-top notch HD, mad, insane quality, but they do look really professional. Pricing wise, it’s pretty mid-range too, but you get really solid quality for the price.