History behind our family albums

Prior to going digital I created photo albums that are really family diaries. Each page followed in chronological order of events. For example, a birthday is there alongside the arrival of a new puppy, and a garden makeover is followed by a trip to the beach, all in actual date order. The spines of each album are dated so the family can dive into any time in their lives.

The pages often have stories and details included. The family joke is that they are my hedge against Alzheimer’s but it is amazing how often the albums are pulled out by family to use as a reference to answer questions such as ‘when did we go to …?’ and to solve disputes such as ‘I did not wear your red dress to …’.

Anything that adds to the memory could end up in our family albums. Ours include invitations, tickets, torn off pieces of wrapping paper, newspaper clippings and more besides. The time our eldest daughter got her driver’s licence also has the examiners check sheet as well as the lucky coin daughter found that day.

All our albums are the type that has individual pages held together with adjustable screws or some other easily adaptable mechanism. This makes it easy to add in a plastic sleeve for holding all kinds of additional materials. Yes, it can make for a bulky album and yes, the bits do press into pages but in our family, no-one cares about that, it is the memories these things evoke that matters most.

Significant events such as weddings or major trips usually get an album of their own. The travel albums do bulge significantly as they have lots of additional brochures, booklets and other collectables included. I always try to keep a travel diary and these notes are then included in the pages. To pull out a travel album, look at the pictures, read the notes and browse through the materials is to take the trip all over again.

This is probably sounding a lot like the craft of Scrapbooking which came along after I’d started my albums and there are certainly commonalities. The major difference is in the degree of artistry. My pages are just album pages, full of photos and some stories with the occasional embellishment. They are functional rather than fantastic. Not even the kindest of viewers would suggest that any of the pages be framed and mounted on a wall.

Moving from physical to digital was relatively easy, although I am still adapting the way I do things. I was never afraid to take scissors to a photo so cropping was already part of my approach. The real stuff still gets sandwiched in between pages but now the small stuff such as tickets and wrapping paper is scanned and then added to the pages as images. In my printed copies many of those little things are physically added over the top. I share the completed pages out to family and it is up to them whether of not they print them and add them to their own albums. Some do, some don’t but all enjoy getting them.

I really enjoy the flexibility that going digital has allowed. It is now easy to edit text, crop photos, make adjustments to images to improve their looks and to play with arrangements on a page. A bad cut with scissors is now not a drama, undo is one of my favourite commands.

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Page Sizes

The size you choose for your pages depends on several things: the country you live in; the paper sizes your printer or printing service can handle and the final destination of your images.

For example, I live in Australia which uses the ISO paper standard, my home printer can handle up to A4 size and I put together pages an event at a time and they go into an insert display album. So my default page size is A4 (210mm x 297mm).

If you live in the USA then you are probably using the ANSI paper standard and if you are also using insert albums then you may be using ANSI A, aka US Letter (8.5in x 11in).

The scrapbooking community has embraced a square format with 12in x 12in as the most popular size. The movement into digital scrapping took this format with it and digital supplies are usually based on the 12x12 page. This requires a special printer so many digi-scrappers develop in 12in x 12in but print off at 8in x 8in. Fortunately the market is coming to the party and there are now lots of 8x8 insert albums available.

An increasingly popular destination for images is the photo book and the web abounds with services that you can use to create your own one of a kind coffee table book. The simplest way to use these services is to upload a heap of images and then move them around the pages, adding text and titles until you are happy. I like these services but I prefer to prepare each page fully on my own computer and then upload them to the book service. That way each page is exactly how I want it and I have complete creative freedom over what goes where on each page.

The book services have a range of page sizes on offer so if this is your final destination and you intend to create your pages in full before uploading then, make your page size decision at the beginning of the project. Many of these services use sizes that are related to traditional frame and photo sizes such as 8in x 10in. I'm now seeing many that offer the scrapper's square format as well.

For a full description of paper sizes, their definitions and also their history, go to Wikipedia's page on Paper Sizes where both ANSI and ISO standards are covered as well as the standard sizes used for photos.

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Some of my favourite software tools

Here are some of the software tools that I use when making digital photo albums and pages:

• Photoshop Elements - for image editing and page construction. Also used to create additional elements to embellish pages. Has a learning curve but there is lots of support and tutorials around to help out.
• PowerPoint - seriously, I use this when I am making up very quick pages for the home albums. It has some useful graphic capabilities that are well worth learning
• SnagIt - screen capture program that is getting more and more featured with each new version. It has a good editor and lots of features for enhancing images. I use it a lot when creating instructions and tutorials
• ACDSee - image organiser

None of these are free but all have been well worth the price paid.

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Managing your image files

If you are serious about getting your digital images into albums then you need to get them organised so you can find them. Here’s my system for digital photos coming in as new images, I’ll look at scans of older images another time.

The clip from my hard drive shows how it works. I create a folder for each event within another folder that covers a 6-month time period (1). Trips have their own yearly folder (2). Folders are named using a yy-mm-dd convention so that the computer’s filing system displays them in true date order.

As I create album pages for the events, their folders are moved into the Processed pics folder (3). When an entire year is processed, the folders are cut to DVDs to share around the family, an effective way to not only share but to create off-site backups as well. The folders are moved into the Annual Collections folder.

Files within each event folder are renamed using a yymmdd-event-nnn.jpg convention. The nnn is generated by whatever means I have used to rename the files in the folder. I usually do this with ACDSee but you can also do it in Windows Explorer although its method is a little odd at first. Basically, you select a range of files and use a Rename command; in Windows it is under the File menu and in ACDSee it is in the Edit menu. Specify the new name you want and how you want the numbering to be formatted. ACDSee gives you options about how you want the numbering to be done, Windows doesn’t.

Now you are ready to tackle your album pages.

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Get real! Adding ephemera to your albums

I love the word ‘ephemera’, it sounds like something made of gossamer and wisps of air. Ephemera is actually almost that. It is anything that is only meant for now, things that don’t last and that are of transitory value.  Things like ticket stubs, a handout at the school fete, a note or letter, the wrapping around a gift, the signed docket when you take delivery of a parcel… All of these are ephemera and a little ephemera can add extra value to the stories in your family albums, especially if your albums are like mine and are more visual diaries than photo albums.

For now I’ll just look at using notes, those scribbled bits of paper that were never meant to be kept but that are so much fun to look back on later.

Here’s an example from some years back.  We were visiting our kids who were living in Esperance.  While we were out exploring, our DGS took a nasty fall and his frantic parents raced him off to the local hospital.  We arrived home to find a worrying note on the door.  All ended well and the note was added to the page when the story was told in words and pictures.

Here’s another page with a note I kept.  DGS was having an extended sleep over and my super organised DD was making sure every detail was covered.  There is even an added scribble from my DSiL about the location of Jack's favourite cuddly. My favourite bit of this note is the last line ‘Quiche in fridge’.

And one last one, this time a post-it note.  Our DS living in the goldfields had trusted us with the task of picking out a new puppy.  He’d rung up and given my DH a list of things we had to check and DH had scratched it down on the nearest bit of paper – which I kept!  It is now part of the page that tells the story of selecting our beautiful grand dog.

All of these notes were scanned and the images added to the event folder.  If you don’t have a scanner, take a photograph of it instead.  You may need to use your macro setting to get a clear shot so experiment and see how you go.

I’ll talk some more about ephemera in future posts.

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