curating family photos

This post is intended to be helpful for those just getting started putting together a photo book / zine as an annual family yearbook. It’s perfectly acceptable and logical to simply add your images in chronological order from the beginning of the year to the end. If interested in a few tips on adding to the aesthetic of the book, you may find this post helpful.

This is in follow-up to my previous post about selecting images in preparation for putting together a photo yearbook for your family photos. Now that you have made the selection of which photos you plan to include in your photo book, it’s time to determine in what order they will appear.

Print and shuffle: One way I’ve utilized for smaller project books (fewer images) is to do a printout of the photos on photocopy paper. I print 4 to 6 images per page, cut them out and, like a deck of cards, I can then move the images around to see which ones go best with one another or look best on opposing pages.

This gentleman demonstrates what I mean by print/cut/shuffle. He actually makes a mock up of his book, but all a person needs to do is simply shuffle the photos together. If you watch his video, it’s really the first 3 minutes that are the most pertinent to this point.

Since the very nature of a full year of family photos, even though already edited down to only the most significant can add up to be a great number, there are other ways of seeing how photos will look together.

Software shuffle: Most photo book software offered by the majority of the companies allows users to move or rearrange the ‘pages’ before hitting the publish button. This is the ideal way to begin, especially if you’ve never done this before. Add all your images in chronological order to the software of the company you have chosen. Then, take a look to see if there are any images that perhaps might look better arranged differently either on the page itself or on opposing pages. For instance, you may have two images on one page that ‘fight against’ one another. Perhaps one is a lake landscape but the other one shows a bunch of people at a party/BBQ/dance. You may want one of those to stand on its own or paired with another of a similar theme. Sometimes colour may be a consideration — two photos with the same or similar colours/tones will look good together.

Tip: If the photos have been run through online/phone filters, it’s best to use the version withOUT the filter. The most important reason is because in most cases, images that have gone through third party filters end up being lower in resolution and may not have enough resolution to be printed in the photo book. The other reason is because filters are not natural and will look out of place with the rest/majority of the images. And, of course, just as with most fads, they may seem cringeworthy when looking at them in the future.

As you’ll see in this example of a recent photo book I was putting together for a project I’ve been working on, I’m able to see how the photos look on each of the pages that face one another (I only use one image per page). I’ve paired images that worked well together such as the orange & rust wheelbarrow next to the boat with the rusted deck. Also the “catch of the day” scale image facing the fishing boat (plus both have the same colour tones blue/grey). Or where I have an image focusing on concentric ripples facing another image with concentric ripples. One thing I did end up doing was changing up the pairings in the last set seen on this screen. The image on the right ended up going at the end of the book and I used an image that had more of a connection to the image with the red boat. The example below is a photo of a computer screen which is why it’s not the best quality but you should get the idea. I finished adding the rest of the images, including the front/back covers after taking the screen shot, and the book is on its way.

Below I’m showing how I’ve taken actual printed photographs and laid them out in pairs to see which ones best went together (or not). The two flowers on the left worked well together because the value of light was the same in each image and both had flowers of light pink. The middle pair are both taken in neighbourhood gardens and again have the same tones and similar theme. The pair on the right both were at marinas with lines featuring prominently however these two did not end up together because I had images that were better suited for each one. These images made their way into previous photo books but, because I had some of the same images in print, it was easy to see which worked best with one another either because of colour, tone, theme, line/shadow, etc. These were not taken as if trying to work as illustration for a magazine — they are photos of photos sitting on a desk in front of a bright window. Purely illustrative to this text.

Although the images below show a zine I made for my family as a memento of their visit, the value of having those images in print is just as priceless as a family yearbook. I hope this series serves as inspiration to get those photos off your computer/phone and into print where they are easily accessible and serve as treasured memories for years and decades to come. Feel free to share either or both of these posts with others as well.

PS: As mentioned at the top of this post, this is the simple get-you-started suggestions for a basic family yearbook. There are many more aspects to sequencing / curating images in a photo book that are not covered here. For any photographer looking to put together a photography book, to learn more advanced sequencing there are several useful YouTube videos on the subject.

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If you enjoyed this why not share it with a friend or post about it on social media. Thank you for reading and sharing your time with me. — Diane