Welcome to my blog. I've been wanting to try my hand at writing for a while now and I'm finally getting around to capturing some of my ideas and sharing them. This will be an opportunity for me to share some photographic tips and techniques with you. However, I hope to go beyond that and provide ideas for projects that will be fun, attractive and useful.
In my first series of articles I am going to talk about creating a family history book. We all have vast archives of photographs stored away in shoe boxes in the closet. I'm going to show how you can turn those old archives into a meaningful family history book, or perhaps a photo-collage that you can hand of the wall or give as gifts for Christmas or birthdays.
Please join me in this new adventure. Your comments are always appreciated and welcome.
Chapter #1
Most of us regularly take pictures at birthday parties, anniversaries, sporting events, vacations, etc. In many cases we look at the pictures, pledge to put them into a photo album "when we have time" and then stuff them into a shoe box in the closet. Very few among us ever put the photos into an album. Some truly creative people actually produce elaborately crafted scrapbooks from their photos.
The advent of digital photography has opened up possibilities to the average shutterbug that were never before possible. We have choices that go beyond traditional photo albums and scrapbooks. We can share photos over the web using any one of a number of photo sharing services (Flickr, SmugMug, Shutterfly, Picasa, Photobucket...) or create computer/DVD based slide shows with music. We can print our images on almost anything; greeting cards, magnets, mugs, stamps, t-shirts, etc.
Many of us have dreamed of someday publishing a book of our photos; visualizing ourselves as a modern day Ansel Adams or Eliot Porter. It is now possible to inexpensively produce, high-quality, press-printed, hardbound photo books. These are available from any number of online and retail sources and range in price from $30 for 20 pages to up to $350 for professional quality coffee table style books. There is something very satisfying about "publishing" your own hardbound photo book.
As I was toying with various options for my first photo book I hit upon the idea of producing a family history. To be honest about it there is much about my family's background that I don't know. I wanted to capture as much of this history as I could but do it in a way that would tell a story with pictures. The book would center on my parents, telling the story of their ancestors, their life growing up and their lives together up to the current time. In the end, Cathy and I produced two histories, one for my family and one for hers. In this series of articles I'll explain the steps I went through to create the book, to help you create your own.
I broke the book down into the following parts:
- Ancestors
- Parental autobiographies
- Family life and siblings
- Adult life
- Other Topics (i.e.: pets, travel, special events)
The most difficult task, but one of the most rewarding, was getting both parents to write the story of their life. Needless to say, this is a daunting task for anyone to undertake. However, with patience, persistent badgering and a few months, both sets of parents created very interesting, short autobiographical sketches. Some editing was required but every attempt was made to keep the story in their own words.
The other major task was collecting the photographs and other documents that would go into the book. This involved going through many old albums and shoe boxes of photos, selecting the most interesting and then scanning them into the computer. In some cases we came across precious old documents that were also scanned. These added to the texture and depth of the story.
A book of the type I am describing is meant to be shared. One of the major problems with most albums, home videos, etc. is the failure to understand that "less is more". We've all had the experience of sitting through excruciatingly boring slide shows of someone’s latest vacation. I was determined that this book should contain only the "best of the best". All content must tell an important part of the story. The old adage of "leave the audience wanting more" applies here. Editing the number of photos down was one of the most difficult tasks in the project. The topic of photo selection will be covered in a future chapter.
Here is the exact sequence that I used to organize my families' history book:
- Title Page with photo of my parents
- Diagram of the Pemberton family tree
- My fathers story
- Photos of paternal ancestors
- Photos of my father's life and family prior to marriage
- My mother's story
- Photos of maternal ancestors
- Photos of my mother's life and family prior to marriage
- The family years – Mom, Dad, my sister and myself
- Photos of my sister from infancy through her teen years
- My sister's wedding and her family
- Photos of my formative years and marriage
- Treasured pets from our childhood
- Current group portraits of the family
The entire book was 40 pages long when completed and contained 86 photos. Cathy's family history book was slightly longer at 54 pages with 106 photos. Shutterfly published both books for us. The finished product was beautiful. Everyone who has seen these books has enjoyed them. If you would like to see representative pages from our history books click the link at the end of this post.
In the next chapter, I will discuss more about picture selection, some of the technical requirements for the scanned photos as well as the important topic of photo restoration.
Mark
