Children are the most photographed people on earth and the hardest to photograph well. They move, they hide and they pull faces the moment a camera appears. The good news is that you do not need them to cooperate.
The clip below is what we put on while sorting. It runs long enough to get through a month of photos.
What we got wrong
Forget the perfect portrait. Aim for pictures that show what this age was really like.
The photos you will treasure most are rarely the posed ones. They are the ones where the child forgot you were there.
- Keep one photo per day at most
- Back up before deleting anything
- Leave the cover for last
A few small rules
If you have too many photos of one day, that day probably mattered. Give it a spread of its own rather than cutting it down to one.
Keep a note of what happened that month as you go. A few words beside a photo are worth far more than you expect a year later.
We don’t take more photos than we used to. We just look at them now.
Ana, a reader since the first year
Why it works
Leave a little space. Not every page needs to be full, and an empty corner gives the eye somewhere to rest.
Think about how the photos sit next to each other. Two busy pictures side by side can fight; a busy one beside a quiet one usually works.
Reader tip: one family keeps a paper list on the fridge of moments they want in the next book.
I printed our first book after reading this and my daughter has not put it down since.
That is lovely to hear. Say hello to your grandmother from all of us.
We tried the one-photo-per-day rule last month and it made picking so much easier. Thank you!
Thanks for asking this, I was wondering the same.
This is exactly the nudge I needed. My camera roll has four thousand photos from this year alone.
Such a simple idea and I had never tried it. Doing it tonight.
Thank you, that really made our day.
Such a simple idea and I had never tried it. Doing it tonight.
This is exactly the nudge I needed. My camera roll has four thousand photos from this year alone.
Saving this for the end of the month. Last Sunday it is.
That is lovely to hear. Say hello to your grandmother from all of us.