Because...

1.  it displays important photographs and tells the stories that go with them.

2.  the informal, everyday moments in our lives are important.

3.  it can be as simple or as jam-packed with photos and writing as you like.

4.  it can be about a house, a person, a celebration, a place, a pet, a lifetime, shared histories, or a dream.

5.  it can chart an hour, a day, a month or decades of our lives.

6.  it says “these memories are worth keeping and talking about”.

7.  it includes photographs, words, memories, thoughts, images and quotes about favourite things.

8.  you choose the size and format.

Cooking Up a Storm:  Recipe Photo Book Projects

When most of us think of photo book projects many common themes often come to mind first—books made to celebrate family life; books celebrating weddings, births, and special milestones; photo books documenting travel to local or far-off places or sometimes a weekend getaway or retreat with family or peers.  Something a little out of the ordinary but equally fun to make is a family recipe book.  I’ve been gathering materials for a project like this for several months now—it’s “in the works”, which really means I have most (but not all) of my materials together and can’t wait to actually lay out the scanned and digital photos in the book alongside recipes I’ve either typed out, scanned from originals, or written out by hand and then scanned and saved.

There are almost endless variations on a family recipe book—you can take it as far as you like--for example, making it into a larger genealogical project and including heritage family photos, anecdotes, and even newsworthy items from the years the recipe circulated in your family.  Or else you can keep it very simple, gathering recipes you already have on hand (or can jot down over the phone), complimenting this with a few photos taken whenever you have a chance to make the recipe and enjoy it with your family.

In pre-photo book days I once attended a wedding where the bride and groom had put together recipe books, bound by hand, for each guest.  I still love that idea.  Theirs was called “Recipes from the Heart” and it is one of the most memorable and durable favours we’ve ever taken home from a wedding or other special event.  If you don’t have the budget to make a book for each guest, then consider using digital photo book software to make a series of postcards you can have printed then tie together with ribbon—a thoughtful thank-you memento for after any special event, from dinner party to shower to graduation or retirement.

One of the best things about recipes is that they are so often shared with friends and even more often amongst family members.  Working digitally saves hours and hours of time that would previously have been spent copying and recopying information.  Instead, how wonderful that we can now spend the time making one unique book of recipes, interspersed with family photos or photos of the food itself or meals that have been shared.  I sometimes suggest that friends print hardcovers for themselves (and one or two close family members—those who would appreciate it most) and then print less expensive soft cover photo books for extended family.  I’ve also heard of individuals who share a copy of what they’ve created, and then have others request copies.  One of my friends made a heritage book and her grandfather ordered almost a dozen copies to give as gifts to all the grandchildren.  Of course, you don’t need to be a grandparent to make use of this idea!  I’ve seen simple versions of these done for parties, holiday gift-giving, and for bridal or baby showers as well.

A friend of ours who was a babysitter for almost twenty years once told me with both laughter and a hint of exasperation in her voice that she had a bin full of photos of babies tucked away in a cardboard box somewhere—and after the passage of so much time she had absolutely no idea which baby was which.  If you don’t have a specific theme such as this overflowing in your storage container (if you do, you will need to sort more methodically in that one area) then I have a fairly simple way to get started on the massive job of sorting old print photos.

The first thing to do is to try not to worry!  Choose a few themes or sort chronologically, then don’t worry too much over each decision you make when sorting into the various bins or piles.  I think the best way to work is to divide the job into at least two steps.  First sort into piles but wait and save organizing the photos into specific projects for another occasion.  To hearten others facing their large unwieldy piles of photos that may very well span several decades, I can pass along something my mother said to me recently:   if you’re not on top of things right now, at least you’re further ahead than you were yesterday!

If you have a mix of photos from both sides of your family (two parents’ relatives) then begin by sorting by family.  You may need an extra “miscellaneous” pile for photos of people you don’t know or can’t quite place, or for photos you have questions about.  Resist the urge to call up or invite over Great Aunt Millie or Old Uncle Steven right away to identify who’s who and to reminisce.  Focus on your sorting task, and get all the stories down later.  Some people use envelopes; others use boxes, clear page protector sleeves, or file folders.

If you don’t want to work by family groupings or chronologically, here are some ideas for sorting photos by theme:

Travel

Thankfully for most of us, the vast majority of our printed photos are well out of the way in storage and are not something we have to worry about very often these days—unlike in the past, when we seemed to always be developing, hunting down negatives, and running out to get albums to store our never-ending supply of photographic prints.  These days we hardly ever think about all our prints and I am happy that now instead of sorting prints I have the much quicker and much more straightforward task of importing or uploading digital images for use in our photo book projects.  Still, since I was an avid photo-taker before things turned digital---and because I’ve been the one in our family to inherit most of the old family photos—I seem to always have a lot of organizing and scanning to do before I can actually use many of these photos in my digital projects.  Here are a few tips I hope will help others like me who are avid photo takers and documenters of everyday life and who want to use some of those print photos in current digital projects.

Bins:  I am a big fan of boxes and bins, and encourage you to quickly sort print photos into a series of bins before scanning and digitalizing your images for use in photo books, canvas prints or posters.

I like the small-steps approach.  No need to file by year or month or branch of the family tree just yet—simply sort into bins or compartments, using whatever criteria you like.  For example:

Sort by family (i.e. split photos into “mom’s side” and “dad’s side” of the family tree), then continue to sort by decade or special event.

Keep aside the photos that belong in more than one category or that you know you want in more than one photo book project—once these are scanned they can be used in several projects.  Hooray for not needing those duplicate photos my parents always used to get made every time we sent our photos in to get developed!

When scrapbookers first switched from paper albums to working digitally I sometimes heard people say that itseemed like the social aspect of scrapbooking had pretty much disappeared.  After all, we were used to piling all of our materials into a bag, box, wheeled luggage, or other sturdy (and absolutely jam-packed) container and lugging it to a friend’s house for a weekly or monthly crop—or for an evening, whenever we could fit it in (and wherever had stairs that weren’t to steep for us to lug our wheeled personal supply warehouses to!).  For those of us who still continue to work in tandem on digital and paper scrapbooking projects, we can vouch for the fact that working digitally on canvas prints or photo book projects has been a revolution in terms of supplies.  We can now travel light—very light—the only things we now need are functional electrical outlets, a laptop or home computer, a power supply and our memory card or other storage for our digital files.  Amazing!

What has happened to the social aspect of things, though?  What about all of that idea-sharing, the leafing through each other’s books as we spent an evening trimming, cropping, chatting, laying out page ideas, and adhering photos and embellishments to our pages?   Part of what makes using digital scrapbooking software so much more convenient than traditional paper-and-scissors album-making is that you can train yourself on the software or simply work by trial and error to train yourself as you go, so that you improve as you create.  You no longer have to wait for the monthly crop to get a whole bunch of new and interesting ideas for you projects.  The software is made so that there is lots of choice and also a great deal of room for creativity, but it’s also easy enough for even the most reluctantly Digital among us to succeed at quickly putting together the layout for pages that will in turn quickly become our next printed album.

Making a photo book certainly can be a project you complete on your own.  In fact, one of the main advantages of making photo books instead of paper albums is how easy it is to click and fill in pages with digital photos and digital artwork—no outside help or advice required.  And you can work anywhere you can use your computer and connect to the net-- but despite all of this it doesn’t have to only be a solitary activity.

Working with a friend, colleague or family member

The most simple kind of collaboration is to create a book with one or two other people.  This is fun for friends who’ve shared a vacation or weekend getaway, or for anyone who’s been invited to share in a celebration (baby shower or wedding shower, for example).  Best of all is that it takes minimal organization and commitment—just a phone call and a few hours of time to sit down together and create a photo book together!