What to do with photos of people who are gone

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.

This is how the two pictures sit together on one spread.

Make it a habit

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.

• Keep one photo per day at most
• Include at least one place, not just faces
• Pick a fixed day each month

A few small rules

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.

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.

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

Most people find the first month the hardest. You are learning what you like, and every photo feels important. By the third month you will notice yourself moving faster, trusting your first reaction and spending your time on the handful of close calls instead of on every single picture.

Try to include everyone. It is easy to end up with a book full of the children and none of the person holding the camera.

Good to know: every Paperleaf book has room for thirty photos, so there is no prize for keeping more.

Keep it simple

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

Back up before you delete anything. It takes a minute and removes the fear that stops people from clearing out at all.

• Write a few words beside the best ones
• Leave the cover for last
• Back up before deleting anything

What we got wrong

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.

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.

The book comes, and for one evening nobody looks at their phone.

Marcus, father of three

When to stop

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.