Photos only last if somebody looks after them. A phone can be lost, a cloud account forgotten and a hard drive dropped. Keeping pictures safe is mostly about simple, boring habits that run without you thinking about them.
Good to know: every Paperleaf book has room for thirty photos, so there is no prize for keeping more.
My mum reads the captions more than she looks at the pictures.
Leila, who writes every caption by hand
What we got wrong
The best system is the one you will still be using next year. Keep it simple enough that it survives a busy month.
Sharing is part of keeping. A photo that three people have is safer than one that only lives on your phone.
- Leave the cover for last
- Write a few words beside the best ones
- Star photos as you take them
Keep it simple
A good caption answers the question someone will ask in twenty years. Who is that? Where were we? Why is everyone wet? Write the answer while you still know it, even if it feels too obvious to bother with today.
If you share a camera roll with someone, agree on who picks which month. Taking turns means each book has a slightly different point of view, and nobody ends up doing all of the work every time.
I thought I needed a better camera. I needed a better window.
Tom Okafor, Paperleaf
One more thing
Quiet months are worth printing too. A month with no trips and no birthdays often turns into the book people return to, because it shows what ordinary life looked like before it changed.
Write the year on the spine. It sounds obvious, but without it a shelf of books quickly becomes a puzzle.
Good to know: every Paperleaf book has room for thirty photos, so there is no prize for keeping more.
What to look for
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.
Look back at last year’s book before you start this month’s. It reminds you what you enjoyed seeing again and what you skipped past, which makes this month’s choices quicker and kinder.
- Leave the cover for last
- Write a few words beside the best ones
- Pick a fixed day each month
When to stop
Do not be afraid of imperfect photos. A little blur or a stray elbow often tells you more about the day than a tidy, posed shot.
It helps to know what the book is for before you start. A book for grandparents wants faces and clear captions. A book for yourself can hold the odd corner of the garden, the shadow on the wall and the plate of food that only makes sense to you.
The book comes, and for one evening nobody looks at their phone.
Marcus, father of three
This is exactly the nudge I needed. My camera roll has four thousand photos from this year alone.