Pick the cover last

Picking is the part nobody warns you about. Taking photos is easy; deciding which ones deserve paper is where most monthly books stall. The trick is to make several quick passes rather than one slow one, and to decide before you start how many photos the month actually needs.

Here are the photos that made it into the book. Tap any of them to see it larger.

Why it works

Start with the photos you would rescue from a fire. There are usually five or six, and they make every other choice easier because the month already has its anchors.

Do not compare every photo with every other photo. Compare each one only with its neighbours, keep the best of a small group and move on.

• Write a few words beside the best ones
• Star photos as you take them
• Back up before deleting anything

A few small rules

Some readers keep a short list of rules on a sticky note beside the computer. Ours says: faces first, then places, then anything that made us laugh. It is not scientific, but it stops the session turning into an evening of second-guessing.

If two photos are nearly the same, keep the one where someone is doing something. A raised hand, a turned head or a half-finished sentence gives a picture life that a perfectly still pose rarely has, even when the still one is technically better.

We don’t take more photos than we used to. We just look at them now.

Ana, a reader since the first year

Try it this month

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.

Try not to edit every photo. A little brightening is fine, but heavy filters date quickly and make a year of books look uneven when they sit together on a shelf. Let the light of the day show.

Quick tip: star photos on your phone as you take them. Picking takes half the time at the end of the month.

Keep it simple

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.

Keep the rejected photos somewhere safe for a while. Tastes change, and a picture you passed over may be the one you want next year.

• Pick a fixed day each month
• Leave the cover for last
• Keep one photo per day at most

One more thing

Faces matter, but so do places. Include at least one picture of the room, the street or the view where the month happened.

Hand the phone to someone else at least once a month. It is the only way the photographer gets into the book.

I thought I needed a better camera. I needed a better window.

Tom Okafor, Paperleaf