I’ve been posting recently about how important it is to actually have printed photos of your family and not just rely on digital images and Facebook to be around forever to tell the story of your life, and in  this blog I’d like to offer four tips on how to start with creating your own Family Yearbook.

I know I’ve always enjoyed looking through photographs in boxes and albums at my grandparent’s house. My grandma’s handwriting is on the back of most of those photos, listing off who all the people are, dates, locations and sometimes an anecdotal word or two.

I have a system for backing up my personal digital images However, we all know that time marches on, technology fails and it is possible that one day the way I currently store digital images will become obsolete. New technology will march in, and there is really no way to guarantee that digital, non-printed images will ever be available in the future.

So….back to where I started this long-winded monologue from….I’d like to remind everyone to PRINT YOUR IMAGES!! I do print a lot of display images for around my house. I mean, as a photographer I’ve got oodles and oodles of stuff to pick from. My child basically has miniature photo shrines located throughout our house. However, there are so many photos I snap on my phone that aren’t the quality I’d want printed for my house or even as a 4×6 print to stash away in some archival photo box. Still, these phone photos tell the story of our daily lives, and I don’t just want to lose track of them.

Here is a quick tutorial on how I make my own Family Yearbook:

1. Take Photos: Sounds simple enough, but the truth is that most of us forget to photograph our daily lives. I’m talking teeth brushing, playing Legos, eating a grilled cheese—the building blocks of our existence. Getting images from holidays, birthdays and family events seems to be a bit more intuitive. The other thing I try to record are milestones. Think your child learning to ride a bike or eating their first ice cream cone, like these images of my son from last summer: In addition to photos, some people include their children’s favorite quotes from the year; favorite Facebook status updates; scanned kids’ artwork; blog post entries, etc. For the first album I did (which was 2013) I stuck with just photos, but as my son is now becoming more verbal and such I’d definitely like to incorporate some of his little sayings and maybe his drawings.
   If you find it difficult to get yourself in photos, I feel your pain. Don’t forget that you can always find a photographer (like myself) to do a family lifestyle to capture some of your every day memories that actually include you!
2. Organize:  I have a regimented process of organizing my digital files (I keep everything separated out by months). In addition to the photos I take with my “real” camera, I also take the time every few weeks to upload my phone photos and put those into the appropriate folder.

3. Cull: Not everything needs to make the cut in your family yearbook. Once the year has wrapped, I go through each months’ worth of photos and pick the best of the best to go into our family yearbook. I don’t erase the “lesser” images—just keep a separate folder with an additional copy of your favorite images and work out of that for your yearbook.
   

4. Design and Print:  Because I have design experience and enjoy fiddling around in Photoshop and Indesign, I go the route of doing this all myself. However, I know there are many people on Etsy who sell templates where you can just plug in your photos and go. I also use a professional album printer (the same one I use for my clients albums), but there are plenty of great options out there that may not be suitable for me to offer my clients, but certainly get the job done for personal use. In fact, I’ve heard great things about Blurb as they are quite affordable for the quality (and you can have nearly 200 pages!) so I may even try them out this year. If you’re tech savy enough to create .pdf’s of your album pages then you can even upload them to a free site like Issu and create a digital copy of your yearbook to email family! Such a great way to keep relatives in touch.
   Some ways I’ve divided up the yearbook is by devoting specific spreads to our vacations; I did one spread with a collage from each season (think photos of us swimming, photos of pumpking painting in the fall and sledding in laundry baskets in the winter); and I always devote at least one spread to my phone images.
   

I have to be very selective about the images that go into my yearbook, as I do have limited funds and professional albums are quite pricey. I am able to order when my lab puts albums on sale, but even so I have to be quite restrictive. I can never have enough pages!! I think as I begin designing my 2014 album I may order separate, smaller coffee table books so I can more prominently feature special events like vacations.

My end goal is to have a yearbook for every year, and I have a little corner in my office where I want to place a display shelf so they are easily accessible for anyone in our family or visitors to browse through at leisure.

Best of luck in starting your Family Yearbooks!

XO

Heather

H. Parker Photography specializes in newborn, baby and child photography in Trophy Club, Texas and surrounding areas including but not limited to Dallas, Ft Worth and Roanoke.