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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.
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?
When we announced the two-week summer break from the Paperclipping Roundtable, someone said they were excited for me to bring back some inspiration to share with you all from out trip.
The pressure was on and I had hopes of delivering. But then the plane ride to K.C. exacerbated the little virus that was my souvenir from Las Vegas and turned that baby into all of the following:
I spent most of my visit to family in bed. And I skipped my 20-year high school reunion. And I didn’t gather much inspiration to share with all of you.
Fortunately, Izzy took a bunch of shots, and I think they give some great ideas…
It looks magical to pose at the front of the property with the house back in the distance, rather than posing immediately in front of the house.
Over the shoulder shots are really cool. Especially when the smoke is still flying.
Un-posed group walking shots have lots of energy.
Shooting a line of people from an angle gives the photo movement, directs the eye, and can be more interesting than a straight-on shot.
Get a waterfall in the background. They’re cool. Fountains are all over Kansas City.
It’s really beautiful to get lots of green in a photo, especially when there’s greenery in the foreground and repetition of nature moving to the background.
Just a note because I know how thoughtful you all are — It took a while but I’m feeling back to my normal self again. The only thing that lingers, despite two antibiotics plus Prednisone, is the tinnitus. I’ve had constant ringing (no breaks!) for 3.5 weeks!
The doctor says it’s time to visit an ENT now. At least I feel good again!
Have you started scrapbooking your summer yet? I like to scrapbook whatever season I’m currently in because I tend to be most in the mood for playing with the colors and themes that are around me.
So I thought I’d offer a little help for those of you who are also scrapbooking summer. Or photographing it, for that matter. Below are ten Paperclipping articles and video tutorials for fun summertime scrapbooking!
Interested in the video tutorials, too? Find out what else you’ll get when you join the Paperclipping Members! Just click here!
I added a new keyword to my tags and categories for photos.
Clothes.
You know what inspired it?
This…
Trinity put on her outfit, then told me she wanted us to be twins for the day and asked me to wear something similar.
I already had a layout idea of her 1st grade dresses that became my tops.
We’ve already traded a lot of clothes that fit the other better, and I have this picture of her looking through my closet for potential inheritances.
Seeing her looking through my clothes, shoes, and jewelry makes me nostalgic because I remember how much I loved scavenging my own mom’s beautiful things when I was little.
Lately I’ve gotten more and more excited about the time I hope to come when we’re close to the same size and we can trade like sisters.
So with all this going on, I realized the subject warrants its own keyword so I can easily find these photos when I’m ready to scrapbook them.
What are the newer patterns emerging in your life that might warrant a keyword in your photo tagging and categorizing system?
Every time I go into a store there’s a new Lady Gaga staring at me through new eyes and a new face.
That lady knows how to put herself everywhere, including on the cover of nearly every magazine, it seems. And she always looks different, yet you always know it’s her.
What could she possibly have to teach us?
How many pictures do you have of yourself from the past six months? Just yourself?
From the past year?
Recently I shared random journal prompts, themed journal prompts and layout ideas for pages about ourselves. But what if you don’t have any pictures to go with those ideas and prompts?
I recently decided to start taking a monthly self-portrait. I even set up a set on my Flickr page so I can see them all in one place.
You could do the same pose every time with a different outfit. If your hair style evolves as quickly as mine, it might be interesting. Frankly, that sounds boring to me. And Lady Gaga wouldn’t approve either.
Not that we’re looking for her approval. Not that we want our pictures to look anything like hers.
But maybe we can shake it up a bit and get more pictures without doing the same old thing over and over again, as you saw me do with my daily outfit pics from my Week in the Life 2010 project (snore).
So here are some ideas for mixing it up and getting different poses.
Think about the things you spend a lot of time doing? The largest percentage of my day is in front of my computer.
For this picture I focused the shot on the back of the chair where I would be sitting.
The second largest percentage of my time just might happen to be in front of the mirror. I believe one of the secrets to a long youthful life, a vibrant energetic day, and a great marriage is to get fully dressed with hair and makeup in the morning. Every day.
When one simple action affects at least three major areas of your life, you know it’s worth doing. So I do it.
You have two sides. Turn around and show the other one. But look back so we can still see your face.
By the way, if you stand by a window it will look like there’s a reason you’re facing backwards. Don’t do this in front of a wall or in the middle of a room. It might look funny.
You could probably do it outside, though. Of course, if you’re also taking the shot yourself, the other people outside might think it’s funny.
This is the cop-out pose. Just kidding. It’s definitely easier when you’re in a hurry don’t feel like getting out the tripod.
Learn to get other shots instead, though. It’s cool that you’re the photo-journalist of your own life and that of your family’s, but come on…there’s more to you than that! Photograph yourself without the camera in hand.
In addition to the photo-setup tips above, I have two other suggestions to help you keep going on regular self-portrait shots…
I’ve taught myself to get used to the act of pulling out the tripod and not letting my lazy side talk my motivated side out of it. Yes, it’s a bit of a hassle. But it’s worth it if you’re serious about having more photos of yourself. I’ve developed a fairly intimate relationship with my tripod.
But why not just hand the camera over to someone else every month? You could definitely do that. But I figured out one thing about myself: I am more self-conscious with someone else behind the camera.
When you’re setting up your own shots, you can play and try things…and delete.
Oh, yes, I do delete.
If you’ll get out of your comfort zone and try some playful or dramatic poses, you’ll get a more interesting variety and you’ll have some shots to illustrate a variety of stories.
But this just isn’t something I can get myself to do with anyone else around. That’s why there is such a difference between the shots I take of myself now, and the shots I had Izzy take of me every day a year ago for Week in the Life.
Of course, you might be different and do better with an encouraging photographer there.
Not me.
I noticed that I happened to take self-portraits on the eleventh of two different months. It struck me that it would be very cool to have a number of shots taken on the same day over different months and years.
I don’t do them all on that date, but I’ve found that a target dates helps me to remember. And if your target date is earlier in the month instead of later, you’ll be less likely to miss it.
So if you’ve been looking at our Altered Books Tutorial, or the journaling prompts and the scrapbooking layout ideas I’ve been posting lately, and wondering what photo you would use, maybe you’ll benefit from a monthly self-portrait?
It might be less than what Lady Gaga takes, but I think it’s sufficient for our needs.
I don’t mean to brag, but…
Between the months of April and June, I’ve taken 322 photos so far.
During that time period I selected 98 of those that I wanted to share, print, and/or scrapbook.
I’ve tagged all 98 with keywords. I’ve permanently added my thoughts (journaling) or relevant information into my photos. I’ve edited all that needed a little editing. And I uploaded the 98 photos to Flickr and into my Family Photos April – June 2011 set.
Now my family and friends can see and download any of these photos, along with my journaling from my Flickr account, which serves as a backup in case my regular backup fails.
I spend a small amount of time with my photos every week to do these things. If I die tonight in my sleep, all of the stories that go along with my photos for 2010 and 2011 are already documented and saved for my children — embedded right into the digital photos.
If I don’t die tonight?
I’ll scrapbook the stories I really, really want to scrapbook, and only those stories.
And for the first time since I started this hobby, I feel totally 100% satisfied and at ease with what I have not put to paper.
You can read a detailed description of my system (with screen shots) for organizing, tagging, and documenting the stories of your photos.
After my post on printing in unusual sizes, someone asked me how you can print the smaller sizes at a place like Costco. If you invest in Photoshop Elements (I think it’s around $70), you can actually recoup your expenses in the long run if you print lots and lots of small pictures.
Why is that?
Because after you re-size your pictures, you can drag those smaller pictures onto one canvas and print them on a single 4×6.
For example, you can crop six photos into 2×2, create a 4×6 canvas, and drag the six photos onto the canvas. You’ll print all six photos as one 4×6 print. Six photos for the price of one 4×6 print!
Pretty awesome.
Sometimes I want a very unusual size, like I might digitally crop a photo to 3×6.5. When I do this I’m not looking for that specific size, necessarily. It’s just that when I’m working on the cropping, that’s the size that I happen to think looks cool for that photo.
Here’s a 4×6 print I developed most recently. The white gap in the middle is the extra space on the print. The photos on the left are 3×2. The photo on the right is 2×4.
The other two photos for the layout fit on one other 4×6 print. I cropped them into individual photos and put my layout together:
It’s most economical to print on 4×6′s, because they cost significantly less than the enlarged sizes.
But I’ve also found I use much less product when I have enlarged photos, since they take up so much space. So that extra cost for enlarging may end up a wash when when you factor savings in scrapbook supplies.
Here are some of the more typical sizes I tend to print in…
You can fit six 2×2′s onto a 4×6 print using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.
You can fit four 2×3 photos onto a 4×6 print.
Place two 3×3′s, or one 2×3 + one 3×3 on a 4×6 print.
I place one picture of these sizes onto an 8×8 print.
Or I like to do grid collages like the one above in the 8×8 size.
These sizes would both go on an 8×12 print. If I’m doing a 9×9 photo, that still leaves me room for quite a few 3×3 photos all around the edges of the print, so I often add photos of that size to the print, whether they’re for the same layout or a different one.
I would not have been able to showcase the beauty of our desert to the same degree, nor the fun of being out there that morning with 4×6 photos. Both the focal point photo and the collage on the right are 8×12′s.
Costco prints in all of these sizes, plus larger ones. Non-local printers, such as Persnickety also prints and even more.
I have a tutorial that I made for Paperclipping Members a while back that shows how to drag photos onto one canvas as a collage, and then make the digital round-corner frame on top of it that you see in the Tea Time layout above.
Here’s another one:
Member’s can find this tutorial in the Member’s Area or on iTunes. It’s Paperclipping 108.
Or, if you’re not a member, you can hop over here and sign up! What have you been waiting for?
Other related tutorials in the archives that Paperclipping Members can watch are:
You can learn about a Paperclipping Membership by visiting our Membership Information Page.
I’ve been using Flickr as the medium for sharing my own life’s photo journal project. If you look on my Flickr page, I have a handful of collections (with a couple more in mind to add soon) in the right column. I called one of those collections, My Life’s Photo Journal.
Within that collection I have lots of sets. You can see those sets in the screen shot below. Some sets are the photos from each quarter that I want to print for scrapbooking or framing, or share online. Other sets are by topic: our food story, my self-portraits (a new project of mine), etc.
I love the ability to share in sets and collections this way! If you click on a set, and a photo, you’ll notice my keywords and journaling carried over from my photo manager to flickr.
Not only is this a great way to share our life’s stories with family and friends who are interested, it’s also another backup in case I lose my photos in a disaster at home (as long as you’re uploading full-res photos, that is).
Take a look at any of the sets within my collection and see if this is something you might want to do!
Is there really just one thing you can do that will have massive impact on your pages and get people to look every time? I’m happy to tell you there is, and any scrapbooker with any budget can do it.
I love finding ways to get massive results with less time, effort, and resources. When I was young I figured out the one simple thing I could do to make my room feel and look relatively clean (and keep my mother off my back)!
My bed took up a large percentage of my floor space, even though it was only a twin. I figured out that all I had to do was make the bed and suddenly my room felt clean, even with the same amount of stuff all over my floor and desk. The bed is one big flat surface and even with my messy floor, a made bed alone would make the difference between a room that looked decent and a room that looked like a disaster.
Is there an equivalent power in scrapbooking? One simple improvement that will make enormous impact overall? Absolutely! And I can’t wait to share it with you!
No matter what your scrapbooking style, the one thing we can improve that will make the biggest impact is our photos! We could add all kinds of new scrapbooking skills or buy all kinds of awesome gadgets or beautiful supplies, and while those improvements will be great, they won’t make the same impact as two basic improvements in the photos we take.
As I’ve worked with scrapbookers, I’ve found two common areas that amateur photo hobbyists can improve, even without buying a new camera:
During my Holiday Photography Tips course that I’ve given to the Paperclipping Members in the past, I found myself saying one thing over and over again to those who had requested feedback: Bump up your exposure! This is such an easy improvement to make!
Whether you learn to get perfect exposure straight out of the camera, or you boost the exposure in your post processing (which is what I usually do), this one thing will take a dull photo and transform it into one that will draw people in and make them want to look. I boost the exposure of a huge percentage of my photos when I process them on my computer.
If you don’t get lots of compliments on your photo by lots of different people (and I don’t mean from the same two people, but from a variety who don’t know and love your children as much as your mother does), then you could probably benefit from learning to frame your shots differently.
There is a difference between a person who takes pictures and a person who captures emotion, beauty, movement, and life. Good composition will make people fall in love with mere strangers in photos. Photographers who compose well are showing us a view of the world that is different from how we normally look at it.
When you see great photos from others, pay attention to how the photographer composed the shot compared with how you typically compose.
To take great photos, we must learn to see differently than everybody else. It’s not hard to make a few improvements in this area. It just takes a bit of practice and learning.
Those two improvements — exposure (easy!), and composition (a little harder, but doable!) — will have a massive impact on your photography. And this, in turn, will have a massive impact on your scrapbook layouts. You don’t need a new camera to get this (although the camera and lenses do make a difference). You don’t have to buy new scrapbooking tools and updated supplies. Just take the camera that you have, brighten your photos with better exposure, and learn to frame your shots in a way that makes even the most everyday subjects look beautiful and intriguing.
Want to get started? Here are some photography-related video tutorials available in the Paperclipping Membership right now. Sign up here to get access or head over to the Member’s Area or iTunes if you’re already a Member.
Paperclipping 112 – Summer Photography Tips
Paperclipping 82 – Fix Bad Photo Lighting
Paperclipping 34 – Working With Levels
