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The One Thing That Will Make the Biggest Impact on Your Scrapbook Layouts

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

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!

The One Small Change that will Yield Massive Results

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:

Exposure
Composition

Brighten Your Photos

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.

Learn Good Composition

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.

How high or low was the photographer in relation to the subject?
At what angle did they take it? And don’t be fooled! To an untrained eye, many shots that appear to be straight-on are actually at slight angles.
How did they use the lines of the surroundings?

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

This Week At Paperclipping

The Paperclipping Roundtable – Long Projects Chronicled
Scrapbook Your Food Story 3 Part Series – Start here.
Paperclipping April Challenge – Put recent tutorials and topics to use!

Don’t Miss It!

Paperclipping Video Tutorial – Next week’s video tutorial will be all about embellishment gathering and layering! Get your membership before we release it!
The Digi Show – Look for it to release soon!

Tags: how to, Photography, photos, scrapbook
Posted in Photography Tips | 24 Comments »

How You Really Can Tell ALL of Your Photo Stories

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

scrapbooking
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.

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.

Collage of Us

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)
Yearly-Library-Screen-Shot

My Album from July-September 2010 – (wonderfully manageable)
Album-Screen-Shot

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.

Tags: Scrapbooking
Posted in Photo Stories 2012, Photography Tips, Scrapbooking Ideas | 28 Comments »

By Being Creative We Fall in Love with the World

Friday, January 21st, 2011

I remember an interesting conversation I had with someone a few years ago. We disagreed on the source of human goodness — the things necessary or unnecessary to motivate a person to be a source of good and love in the world.

This morning I found someone — a photographer — who communicated my thoughts in a beautiful and moving way through his words, his stories, and his photography. Janet White shared this six minute talk on her photography + creativity blog and I knew I had to share it with you.

A few points that stand out to me:

By being creative we fall in love with the world. When we are in love with the world, we are the best we can be and can do the most good.
Magic happens when you combine learned skills with your intuition and creative passion.
Beauty and inspiration is out there every day in everything we do to infuse us with creativity and with love.
As the communicator, the story-teller, the photographer, it’s up to me to recognize and show the beauty where it’s not always obvious — through my words, through my art, and through my lens.

Tags: Creativity
Posted in Photography Tips | 13 Comments »

The Most Important Word for You to Learn This Year

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

anime_trinity_2
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.

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

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.

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. . .
Screen shot - Metadata

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.

Screen shot 2011-01-19 at 12.11.03 PM

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:

Lightroom Instructions

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!

Tags: family history, geneology, Journaling, memory keeping, metadata, photo tips, Photography, Scrapbooking
Posted in Photo Stories 2012, Photography Tips | 71 Comments »

Scrapbooking Photography Tip – Matte VS. Glossy

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

abiding_time - Mesa Arts Center
Which do you choose?

I prefer one but I actually use the other.

Why I Prefer Glossy

I definitely prefer glossy. You get a clearer picture with better color, in my opinion. I would love to print my pictures this way.

Why I Print Matte

There are two reasons why I finally switched to matte, even though the visual difference is obvious to me.

Glossy photos are much more prone to glare when you’re trying to photograph the layout.
It’s almost impossible to put a fingerprint on a matte photo. On the other hand, it’s almost impossible to prevent fingerprints on glossies!

These two issues may not be a concern for you, though! You might be better than I am at keeping your photos print-free. And good images of your layouts may not be so vital to what you do the way it’s vital to this website. In that case, I suggest you compare the two for yourself if you haven’t already. You might prefer matte better, but I definitely miss my prints being glossy.

About the photo

I love that picture of Aiden at the Mesa Arts Center, waiting for his sister’s dress rehearsal for her dance recital. I want to credit the photographer. Actually, it was a cinematographer who took it — Izzy.

I pulled this screenshot from one of his videos and turned it into a photo. I love being able to get photos of things that I actually missed myself. I also love being able to leave my camera at home sometimes because I know I can use Izzy’s video footage.

Want to learn how to turn good video into photos you can scrapbook? Izzy made a tutorial for the Paperclipping Members a while back — it’s episode 138. For this and many other helpful video tutorials, please take a look at our Membership Information Page!

Posted in Photography Tips | 10 Comments »

Photo-Capturing Your Important Places

Friday, January 14th, 2011

Arizona
On the Paperclipping Roundtable, I talked about my change of heart as I rolled into the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, on my way to moving here after years of swearing that Arizona was the one place I never wanted to live!

It was the saguaro cacti that did it to me first. I remember driving between the canyons and feeling so much awe at all the tall giants pointing to the sky. I have yet to figure out how to capture the majesty of the saguaro in photos!

I’ve been trying for a while to tell the story of how the Sonoran Desert makes my heart feel — to tell it through photography. I’m an amateur, but above and below are a few of my captures so far…

Near Usery Pass

Arizona

Trails Near Usery Pass
This is one of the trails Izzy and I bike on Fridays. It’s the same trail where Aiden encountered the jumping cactus when the only way I had to remove the ball of hooked thorns from his fingers was to claw it with my entire hand. It was one of those moments when you realize you’ll do anything for your children — which is another of the many reasons my soul is so wrapped up in this place. It was a good kind of pain.

You can see what the jumping cactus looks like in the second photo from the top. They are the spidery-looking ones with a yellow glow. They’re exotic and hideous and beautiful all at the same time.

Closeup

Lately I’ve been focusing on trying to get isolated shots of the interesting plants around here and getting a little bit of art inspiration in the process.

Arizona

saguaro

Agave

Mesquite

These shots will be part of the story I’m assembling in one themed scrapbook about home that I’m excited to eventually share!

So what are your the important, soul-stirring, and meaningful locations in your own life-story?

Posted in Photography Tips | 14 Comments »

How To Choose Your Best Vacation Photos

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

Big Pinwheels
Hi, again!

How many photos did you shoot on your last vacation? I asked this on Twitter and answers ranged from 93 to 500, and all the way up to 1,800!

With all those photos as options, what is the maximum amount of pictures you’ll feel comfortable using in one scrapbook project for that vacation?

Will you do one scrapbook page? A vacation album? A mini book? Basic photo pocket pages?

Here are a few things you can do right now to help you with that often overwhelming decision:

Pick out your favorite must-use photos before you decide on your scrapbooking format. Count the number of photos.
Of those favorites, identify the photos that would make great focal point photos and need to stand alone on their own page
Decide which ones you would feel comfortable cropping into smaller sizes. How small could they be and still look good?

You should now have a solid idea of which of those format options will work best for your needs (scrapbook page, mini book, etc). Of those remaining options, you can just choose the one that sounds like the most fun! The hard part is that first step of whittling a large group of photos down to a manageable, usable amount. Instead of asking, “Which ones can I do without,” I usually ask . . .

Which are the ones that best tell the story?

There is something about that question that helps me identify photos I most want to work with, and still feel okay about not including the others in my scrapbooks. Of the 114 photos I took on our recent trip to San Diego, I chose fourteen pictures in one quick sitting, thirteen of which I shared on my personal blog here and here.

What makes one photo stand out over another? Here are some of the characteristics you can look for when choosing which to print for your next scrapbook project:

Makes you pause

It doesn’t matter if the picture is technically great or not — if it catches my attention in a different way from the others, if I get a little feeling in my heart, if I catch my breath when I see it, even for just a second, or find myself wanting to gaze at the picture longer than the others, then it’s usually going to land on my scrapbook project.
Aug10 788

Shows emotion

You might say that any picture of someone smiling is showing an emotion. But a posed smile is not the same as a genuine belly-laugh smile — genuine emotion prompted, not by a camera, but by life itself.
Aug10 780

Captures a quirk or demonstrates a personality

Aiden’s shorts kept falling down and he spent most of the beach time with his hand trying to hold them up. I love having this subtle but humorous capture . . .
Aug10 772

Has energy and movement

There’s just something about those legs, mid-walk to the water, along with the excited faces, that made me love this photo.
Aug10 762

Makes a statement

Posed shots are not my favorite but there’s no denying, my daughter Trinity is photogenic. Her confidence, the boogie board, plus the lines of her body intersecting with the ocean line all add up to one strong, confident statement. It makes you stop and look. And that just feels good.
Aug10 742

Shows a relationship

In this picture, Izzy is showing the kids how to catch a wave with their boards. I love pictures of two people doing something together.
Aug10 791

Gives a different perspective

It makes for great variety when you have one good shot that either comes in close or zooms way out to show the setting.
Aug10 847

Captures the action that is happening

Again, these types of shots are great for genuine, un-posed story-telling. They’re also more interesting because of their energy.
Aug10 833

Tells the missing parts

Let’s face it: if we only use our favorite photos, much of the story will be missing. Sometimes the only shot I have of a person that was present at the event is not a great one. Once I’ve chosen the photos I love, I sometimes add one or two that are lower on my love-list, because I need them to complete the story. I don’t have an example of that kind from this particular trip, but you know what I’m talking about, right?

Putting Your Finger On It

While you’re getting used to assessing WHY certain photos grab your heart, another more general guideline is to pay attention when you find yourself saying, “There’s something about the way she . . .” or “There’s just something about his . . . “ In other words, learn to notice the feeling that signals a photo is better than most, and with some analysis and learned skills, you may eventually learn to identify the reasons and get those great shots more often!

Tags: Newsletters, Photography, photos, scrapbook, vacation
Posted in Articles, Photography Tips | 10 Comments »

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