Good photos are mostly about seeing, not about settings. Before you lift the phone, notice where the light is coming from and what sits behind your subject. Those two things decide most pictures.
Before you start: make sure your phone is backed up. Deleting is easier when nothing can be lost.
The book comes, and for one evening nobody looks at their phone.
Marcus, father of three
Make it a habit
Try this at home first, where you can take your time. It soon becomes a habit you use without thinking.
Small changes in where you stand make big changes in the picture. Move a step before you change anything else.
- Leave the cover for last
- Pick a fixed day each month
- Hand the camera to someone else
What we got wrong
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.
Ask someone else to look at your shortlist. They will spot the photo you were about to drop and the one you only kept out of habit.
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
Take one photo before the moment and one after. The before and after often say more than the moment itself.
Watch the light at different times of day in your own home. Most houses have one window that is lovely for an hour every afternoon.
Before you start: make sure your phone is backed up. Deleting is easier when nothing can be lost.
When to stop
Hand the phone to someone else at least once a month. It is the only way the photographer gets into the book.
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 a few words beside the best ones
- Include at least one place, not just faces
- Star photos as you take them
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.
Set aside a fixed time for it. The last Sunday of the month works for a lot of readers because the week is quiet and the month is complete.
Picking is a skill. Like any skill, it gets faster.
Priya Nair, Paperleaf print room
What to look for
Do not forget the in-between moments: the car park before the party, the coats piled on a chair, the walk home in the dark. They are the parts of a day that nobody photographs on purpose and everybody recognises straight away.
If you miss a month, do not try to catch up all at once. Start again with this month and fill the gap later if you feel like it.
Before you start: make sure your phone is backed up. Deleting is easier when nothing can be lost.
Keep it simple
Make a cup of tea, sit somewhere comfortable and put the phone on do-not-disturb. The job goes faster when it does not compete with messages.
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.
- Include at least one place, not just faces
- Hand the camera to someone else
- Back up before deleting anything
One more thing
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.
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.
The book comes, and for one evening nobody looks at their phone.
Marcus, father of three
Start with what you already have
If a month feels thin, look again at the photos you took without thinking. The best ones are often hiding there.
Faces matter, but so do places. Include at least one picture of the room, the street or the view where the month happened.
Good to know: every Paperleaf book has room for thirty photos, so there is no prize for keeping more.
Why it works
On the second pass, look for variety. A month of the same room and the same faces feels flat, even if each photo is lovely on its own.
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.
- Write a few words beside the best ones
- Pick a fixed day each month
- Back up before deleting anything
Make it a habit
Back up before you delete anything. It takes a minute and removes the fear that stops people from clearing out at all.
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.
My mum reads the captions more than she looks at the pictures.
Leila, who writes every caption by hand
Any tips for doing this with twins? I end up with two of everything.
We tried the one-photo-per-day rule last month and it made picking so much easier. Thank you!
This is exactly the nudge I needed. My camera roll has four thousand photos from this year alone.