Would you like the journaling step of your scrapbooking to be easier?
Say hello to Photo Stories 2012 – a Paperclipping blog series.
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Archive for the ‘Photo Stories 2012’ Category
Photo Stories 2012: Free Yourself to Scrapbook Your Childhood
Monday, January 16th, 2012
What are the stories you’re neglecting?
Say hello to Photo Stories 2012 — a Paperclipping blog series.
I’ve wanted to scrapbook my childhood for as long as I’ve been scrapbooking in this new “traditional” way, which goes way back to 1996. Guess when I finally got around to it? Oh, about January 2011. Yep. It took me 15 years to start something I really wanted to do, and it was only this Photo-Stories method that made me feel able.
Photo Stories: Are You Committed?
Friday, January 6th, 2012
I’m committing to something.
I’m committing to talk more about what has become one of the most important aspects of memory-keeping for me.
I’m committing to share more about how it fits within my own system of scrapbooking and how it might fit within yours.
One year ago I shared The Most Important Word for You to Learn for the year and How You Really Can Tell All of Your Stories.
If you weren’t around here at that time, I hope you’ll read both of those linked articles. But the gist of it is that you can add your thoughts, journaling, important information to your digital photo files! They become part of the information of the photo and they’ll transfer with your photos, too.
That means that someday when you’re gone and your adult children or grandchildren are shuffling through your most important photos, they’ll have your words, too.
Above is a screen capture of a photo I took in December. To the left in the caption box is my journaling.
The other day I mentioned my curiosity to know whether any of you had started and continued documenting your photos. Here’s what Tammy said:
Just wanted to let you know that I did start adding info into the caption section of my photos (in Picasa). I haven’t kept up with it completely, but love the ones that I did. I also love that when I upload to Facebook, that info automatically becomes the caption there as well. I do still put the info into my Project Life, or traditional pages — what struck me most was when you said that there isn’t any way to know how future family members will view photos, and that the printed photo is not the only copy anymore, so you don’t have to be as worried about what you do with that one print. I figure it is possible that some of the digital files will end up in one place, and the scrapbooks may end up in another, and that is all good. Thanks for the metadata journaling tip! I’m definitely going to do more of that this year. –Tammy Brandt
I’m so happy to hear this!
If you’re curious to know more about the diverse and awesome benefits of adding your words to your photos, plus a simple way to do it, please read these two articles:
This process has transformed my thinking about scrapbooking.
Who wants to join me this year in adding our words to our photo stories?
Please leave a comment with your commitment.
I’ll do random periodic check-in’s with you to keep us remembering and feeling excited, and to help you make it mesh with your scrapbooking!
So who’s in?
How You Really Can Tell ALL of Your Photo Stories
Thursday, January 27th, 2011
There was one question people had from last week’s newsletter article that was most prominent. You remember my article about preserving your photo details and your journaling by attaching it to the photo file’s metadata?
A whole lot of you are ready to jump on board now that you know how easy it is. But this one most common question from you made me realize I can also help you save a lot of time and keep you from doing work that is totally unnecessary.
The question . . .
Do you add journaling into the metadata for all of your photos?
No! That is definitely not necessary! You really don’t need to do that.
Other questions were related —
- When do you add your journaling?
- Do you do it after you import your photos?
- How do you find the time?
My System for Easy Photo-Journaling
I don’t always start working on my photos when I import them. Sometimes I do and sometimes I come back later. No matter when I do it, here is my system:
- Choose the photos that best tell the stories — the photos I might want to scrapbook or print.
- Put copies of these photos into quarterly albums.
- Edit and journal only the photos in my quarterly albums.
- Tag (or keyword) only the photos in my quarterly albums.
Choose the photos that best tell the stories.
I go through my main library (which I divide by year) and look for the ones that best tell my stories. Most often these are also my favorites, but many non-faves make the cut too because they are necessary for the story.
I’ve found there is one question to ask that is key in helping me reduce the number of photos I feel I need to use (and I love my layouts more as a result). The question to ask yourself is not, “Which photos do I like or love?” There are way too many. Or the worst question, “Which photos should I not use.” We’re too attached to our photos. This will get you nowhere.
The key question is instead, “Which photos will best tell the stories?”
By asking myself this, it’s very easy to identify those photos. Usually they’re the ones that best capture the action or the emotion of real life. I don’t delete the others. I still have them in my library.
I add a star-rating (any kind of identification or rating will do) to those story-telling photos so I can see them in an instant when I’m ready for the next step.
Need more help with this? I have an article with very specific examples of what to look for when identifying good story-telling pictures — How to Choose Your Best Vacation Photos.
Put copies of these photos into quarterly albums.
I move a copy of the starred photos into a quarterly album. In Aperture it’s very easy to do this. I click on the first one in my library, then hold down the command button while I click on all the other starred photos. Next I drag them all into my quarterly album. They show up in both the yearly library project and the quarterly album.
This step is vital! It allows you to see only those photos that are most important. It saves enormous amounts of time because you’re only working with them — the ones you are most likely to use. They’re the ones your children are most likely to be interested in.
(And trust me. I’ve started receiving photos from my parents. I’m happy that they took a decent amount of photos. I’m also happy that they didn’t hand me as many photos as we tend to take these days!)
The yearly library projects where you keep all of your photos are cluttered and unattractive. They can even be stressful. But a quarterly album of just the most important story-telling photos is inspiring. It’s beautiful and it’s simple and approachable. No overwhelm happens to me when I’m in these quarterly albums because they ‘re so manageable.
My Library of 2010 Photos – (overwhelm)
My Album from July-September 2010 – (wonderfully manageable)
You can always go back into your full library and pick more photos. But do you know what I usually end up doing? Most often I eventually remove another two or three photos from my quarterly albums!
For more help with this step you can read my article — How to Inspire Thanks Through Your Photos
Edit and journal only the photos in your quarterly albums.
I only work with the photos that I actually think I’ll print or share. I definitely do not edit any of the other photos in my library. I may never use those, so why spend the time on something that is unlikely to have any benefits? Spend your time on the important things — the things that will have maximum results. Editing and journaling photos you may never use will not give you good results and will take time away from better things.
If you missed my article on how to permanently attach journaling or picture details into your photo files, here’s the link — The Most Important Word for You to Learn This Year.
Tag (or keyword) only the photos in your quarterly albums.
This is great for finding photos later, but I admit I’m not as adamant about doing this as I am about editing and journaling into the metadata of my photos. If I neglect one of the steps in this article because of a lack of time, I would rather my photos have my journaling than tags.
That said, I do tag them for the most part. Tagging is also good for long-term documentation because it identifies the facts about the photo. In the short term it makes it easy to find photos.
Tagging may seem tedious, but it’s pretty easy when you’re only tagging the pictures you’re most likely to use — the ones in your quarterly albums. Of course, it’s also very easy to find untagged photos I’m looking for with the quarterly albums because I can see all of the important photos at a glance since they’re separate from the entire library.
Questions?
I hope this helps you clarify a workable system for yourself! My system makes it very easy and — even very enjoyable! In fact it has completely changed the way I think about my scrapbooking and has relieved so much guilt and anxiety when it comes to telling all the stories I want to tell. There’s no way I can scrapbook all of the stories I really want to tell.
But I can tell them all — at least to a minimal extent — because I’m jotting the stories into the photos themselves! All of my photo stories are being told! Wow! Can you imagine what that feels like? This means I can relax and just choose the stories I most feel like putting onto scrapbook pages — those I most want to spend extended time with and not worry about what doesn’t get done.
It’s a whole new world now.
The Most Important Word for You to Learn This Year
Thursday, January 20th, 2011
Click here to see a large version of this photo.
Remember how we used to write the names of the photo subjects onto the backs of our photos?
Remember how valuable those notes can be when looking back at old prints? Especially our parents’ and our grandparents’ photos?
But you might also remember the way the writing formed permanent indentations into them, visible on the front.
What If…?
What if you could easily add names, dates — any kind and any amount of information relevant to you — to every one of your photos without much effort and without the indentations? No one would ever have to wonder.
What if you could print multiple copies of a single picture and automatically have your photo’s details included on each one? What if you could add the same details to a whole group of photos — let’s say twenty different photos from the same event — without the effort of having to manually copy them over and over again?
You Can, But You Won’t
For many, this possibility must seem like a fantasy, but the truth is, a small few others of you are already doing it! There is one word you should learn this year if you don’t already know and use it to its fullest potential. It’s the most valuable word any memory-keeper and photo-story-teller can know. It will allow you to attach all of the important information, plus your own personal reflections and journaling, to any photo no matter where the photo goes!
Unfortunately, many scrapbookers don’t even want to hear this word because it sounds like it’s technical, and therefore, it sounds like a difficult concept to learn.
But it’s not!
The Word I Can’t Say
I’m afraid to print the word in a sub-title or in the title of this article because some are so scared of the sound of it that they won’t read this if they see it. So instead, let me just share with you the information I attached to some of the photos I’ve taken so far this year. When my kids and grand kids get my photos it will be like I gave them a photo journal of our lives, but they’ll be able to use the photos any way that they want without my words hampering their projects the way the imprinted writing of Dear Grandma sometimes does with her old photos . . .
Izzy’s workspace for the afternoon. Next we moved on to lunch at Udupi’s and then worked at Starbucks for a short little half hour.
Very most favorite restaurant. We always leave here feeling unbearably full and wishing we could eat more!
Very most favorite restaurant. We always leave here feeling unbearably full and wishing we could eat more!
We went about a week with no heater. I don’t care if it is Arizona — 63 degrees inside the house is not warm enough! We all slept in our camping sleeping bags and often sat in them during the day. We even managed to scoot around the house with them sometimes!
For New Year’s Eve we had bought sparkling grape juice for the kids and wine for the adults. But we had gotten such a late start for the holiday evening that we forgot to pull it out.
The next day I served it to the kids with their Mac ‘N Cheese. They have no need to have a fancy entree with their fancy drink! All three were very happy and felt very adult.
I got a kick out of Blake insisting that their drink looks “just like” our wine! Ummm, not exactly.
The next day I served it to the kids with their Mac ‘N Cheese. They have no need to have a fancy entree with their fancy drink! All three were very happy and felt very adult.
I got a kick out of Blake insisting that their drink looks “just like” our wine! Ummm, not exactly.
Boots and tights are the best.
My second place. Home away from home. Long live the Apache Junction Starbucks.
What happens when Dad collpases onto the floor.
Trinity, Gatsby, Gizmo, Dad, Aiden
Trinity, Gatsby, Gizmo, Dad, Aiden
The chaos of rounding up 5 people and heading out the door as a family.
On Mondays Trinity dances for three hours from 4-7. She dashes home from school and grabs a snack to eat while she does as much of her homework as she can.
About 30 minutes later she’s getting her dance clothes on and heading out for jazz, tap, and lyrical.
About 30 minutes later she’s getting her dance clothes on and heading out for jazz, tap, and lyrical.
Done at 7, we have a late dinner around 7:30, after which she tries to finish up the schoolwork and then heads to bed.
We try to remind her to eat a substantial snack before her intensive workout. Today she grabbed a pizza to eat on the way to supplement the apple she ate earlier.
That One Word — Shhhh!
So what is this one word? What is this magical function called? You’ve heard it from me before. It’s called “metadata.”
Metadata is just information that is attached to your digital photo. Some of that information is the camera settings, the camera itself, the date and time. But you can add your own metadata. If you tag/keyword your photos with names and other categories, you are adding metadata.
Why This Makes Life Easy
Notice a few things about the journaling on my photos above . . .
- Same journaling for a set of photos - Two of the photos have the exact same journaling. When you only have one thing to say about each photo in a set, you only have to type it once. Then you can copy your journaling into the metadata of all of the other photos!
- Journaling on your scrapbook pages - When it’s time to scrapbook, you can copy and paste it into a word document to print on paper. Or you can paste directly onto a copy of your photo, like I did with the set of photos of Trinity at the top of this article!
- Postponing a scrapbook page - No matter how long it takes you to finally get around to scrapbooking a photo, you’ll have the details right there with the photo to remind you! In the same place as the photo! You can expound on it for your actual scrapbook page if you want, but at least you won’t forget the details! Sometimes I copy my journaling from the metadata, sometimes I expand on it, and sometimes I’m scrapbooking a different angle on the story and write something completely different.
There are other benefits when it comes to sharing your photos and your layouts with others and online…
- Sharing online - If you upload your photos to Flickr, your words will automatically appear as the photo description. You won’t have to write your descriptions twice! If your family downloads one of your pictures from Flickr, they’ll automatically get your words, too! (This may also work on other photo sharing sites I haven’t used. It might also depend on the photo managing software you use, though. I use Aperture).
- Giving to friends - When you give copies of your photos to friends and family on CD’s, DVD’s, or by transferring them with an external hard drive, your journaling details will go right along with the photos!
- Sharing scrapbook layouts - When you photograph your layouts to share online or for publishing, you can enter the page’s journaling and supplies into the metadata and it will always be right there for you, as well as on Flickr!
So how do you do it?
It’s going to be different for every type of photo manager. Mine (Aperture) has a metadata panel with all of the information the camera attaches to each photo. It also has any metadata I automatically add on import, like my copyright notice.
On that panel there is also a blank field called, “Caption.” That is where I enter all of my journaling or any other important details. It looks like this. . .
To the left on the photo is my metadata panel. Look for “caption” and you will see a very short bit of detail I attached to this photo.
The caption field seems to have no size limit. I’ve added enough journaling to some photos that I have to scroll way down to finally get to the end of the caption field.
Instructions for other photo managing software:
This article has instructions for most other photo managing software, including Picassa, Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, as well as how to add it if you’re just using your computer’s picture file system without additional software. Just scroll down through the article until you find the name of the software/system you’re using.
Don’t Let Fear Stop You from Telling Your Story!
I really hope this article has demystified metadata for you! It’s a simple concept and it’s simple to do. It might be new but it’s not hard or complicated at all! Avoiding it because it’s a new concept would be like avoiding modern medicine because you don’t fully understand it.
As memory-keepers, you can’t get much better than the ability to add information and thoughts to a photo so that it follows the photo no matter where that photo goes or how many times it gets printed!
