The easiest way, if you have digital photos, is probably to do it through a company like snapfish or similar. The procedure is quite simple - you upload your photos and then you use the 'picture organizer/manager' (different companies have slightly different titles for this) to arrange them in the album the way you want. It looks like the pages of an album onscreen, so you can see exactly how it's going to look. Then you can size the photos any way you want, have as many or few to a page as you like and also write captions under them. It looks very effective as you can have your best photos in full page size and several smaller ones on the opposite page, for example.
You can also play around with the general look by changing the background colour (I've found a light colour looks better than black, but that's just a personal preference). Finally, you choose photos for the front and back covers of your album.
When the whole album is the way you want it, you simply pay and it will be delivered to you in book form.