This past Christmas there was a special gift under the tree for my parents and sister. A photo book of our family story – starting with my parents’ early years of dating, following through our family years and ending with highlights of life since we left home. It was a BIG project that was completed in several phases. Today I’m sharing 5 tips I wish I could have told myself at the onset of this project…

Tip #1 | The beginning is not glamorous, but it is satisfying

The process of gathering, sorting, organizing and digitizing 50+ years of photos can be overwhelming to say the least. This was the longest part of the project for me, spread over several years as I visited my childhood home, reviewed slide carousels with my parents and salvaged printed photos from decaying albums.

Unearthing long forgotten gems, hearing stories from my parents and knowing I was breathing fresh life into these old memories was what kept me going.

Tip #2 | Divide family story into logical sections

I struggled while thinking about how to best organize our family story, but once I was working with the digital files in Lightroom, logical “chapters” for my photo book began to emerge. I noticed groupings of images from different phases of life and was able to easily create the outline for my book.

Once our family of four had all shown up on the scene, the number of images increased and I moved to yearly chapters…

Dance and music were a big part of our family story so I also dedicated sections to each of these areas and included all of these images in one place instead of sprinkling them throughout the years. For you, it might be a sport or a beloved family vacation spot that it makes sense to group together, out of chronological order, to tell a more complete story.

Tip #3 Determine your audience

As I sat down to create this family album I quickly realized I needed to get clear about the who and why I was telling this story. Was it for my parents? My kids? My future grandkids? There was enough content (1,219 photos to be exact) to risk becoming too long and boring that no one would want to read the book! It was about this time, while I was mulling over how I would structure this album, that I read this quote:

Northwestern theater professor Rives Collins was asked this question: “If you had to give one piece of advice to help people tell a better story, what would it be?”

Know why you’re telling the story, and that will guide you as to what to leave out.  My father-in-law, whom I love a lot, tells brilliant five minute stories.  The problem is it takes him about 30 minutes to do it.  In the same way that a sculptor would chip away the things that aren’t necessary, the good storyteller knows what he can chip away until the parts that are left are valuable.

These words captured the essence of what I was hoping to do with this book. I wanted this book to convey the feeling of our family life, the joy of my childhood and the values instilled by my parents. I wanted it to invoke a happy sense of nostalgia and gratitude for the wonderful family life created in the blue house up on the hill. It did not need to be an exhaustive documentation of everything I had done as a kid.

Taking time to think through your “who and why” will provide helpful guideposts throughout this project. Working backward to consider what I wanted people to know, see and feel after reading this book helped shape what I did, and did not, include.

Tip #4 | Decide your voice

When thinking about the text for this book in the abstract, I wondered if I would write in the first person, third person, with a certain reader in mind? And then once I started writing, it was immediately natural to write in the first person – I couldn’t have done it any other way.

Tip #5 | Just start, even if these decisions/answers aren’t obvious

I over analyzed most of the things I mentioned above.  And in each case, when I sat down to actually begin designing layouts, writing text, creating the cover etc., just doing it led me to an answer much faster than sitting and thinking about it.

And that, folks, is the story of how I handed my parents 50+ years of photos in one album. Hard work? Absolutely. Worth it all? Without a doubt.