And Summer is Here!

Summer.

What does it look like for you? Is it your busy time of year filled with ballgames, visitors and travel? Or is it truly the lazy days, spent by a pool, enjoying time at home and sleeping in whenever you get the chance? No matter your approach to summer, I'm betting that there are more photos taken this time of year than others.

Many of my favorite photos are from summer trips. Every few years, my parents would take us on epic 2 week long road trips. We would bring our cameras and snap photos of the mountains, historic buildings and monuments, Disney and the beach. Plus the shenanigans at the hotel pool and the insanity of the car rides. Sometimes we would use THREE WHOLE ROLLS OF FILM. That's like 75 photos over the course of a couple thousand miles and 10+ days.

The trips I take with my little family are a little shorter. But the number of photos we take is much, much higher. We took a 4 day road trip with kids in 2016, our first "big" car trip. I count 145 photos from that long weekend.

Shedd Aquarium = 47 photos in a little under 3 hours

A quick stop to see Sue the dinosaur and another 21 photos

If you grew up using film, you may see these numbers and pause for a second and wonder "What in the world do we do with all of these photos?" The answer is the same for digital as it was for film. We put them in albums.

Digital albums that sort and divide our photos by event and category are a quick and easy way to look through just the photos we want to see.

Printed photo books are my favorite for vacation photos for several reasons.

1 - You can pull them off the shelf, sit down with the kids and flip through the pages and reconnect with the event without the distraction of a phone.

2 - Captions and titles can be added to the photos, labeling the places you visit so the details are not forgotten.

3 - My favorite reason to make photo books is that you are forced to make choices. Only the best images make it to my photo books. It's a fulfilling way to force organization and eliminate the duplicates and extras that aren't needed. You end up with everything you need to tell the story of the trip and nothing you don't.

Lakeshore photos were condensed onto 1 page

As I said in my last blog post about school photos there is something very special about looking at printed photos vs digital images. Keeping them backed up in a digital format is always the way to go. But pulling out the best photos and saving them in a book makes them accessible and important in a way that digital cannot.

I love to make photo books and will be running a summer special on photo books starting in August.

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School's Out!

Can we take a moment to appreciate the timeless tradition of school photos? Not just the awkward photos from the school portrait photographer, but the snapshots from the first day of school and on. Class parties, programs, sports and activities, dances and finally graduation. They serve as more than just a snapshot in time; they show the chapters of growth, friendship, and memories.

Is that really you mom?

School photos connect us to our past and bridge the gap between generations. We all have the awkward photos from 6th grade. All of us, Grandparents, parents and our childhood best friends sat on that stool, tilted our head and smiled that forced smile. Even the worst school photos create a feeling of continuity, allowing us to glimpse the younger versions ourselves in the faces of our children.

The first day of preschool is already forgotten by him, but this photo will always bring back a flood of memories for me.

In this digital age, where most memories are stored online, there's something undeniably special about holding a physical copy of a school photo or thumbing through the pages of an old yearbook. But transferring these photos to digital is important. Keeping these images safe and accessible will ensure that they will continue to do what they were meant to do. They will continue to make a connection from one generation to the next, showing us that while we change, we keep so many things the same.

Your photo organization will undoubtedly include school photos. Do you buy the school portraits every year but never print them out? Or if you do print them, do you stack the new one inside of the frame on top of last year's photo? What about all of the photos from school parties, concerts, dances and activities? Are they only to be shared on social media and then lost in our digital shuffle?

Let's get these school photos saved and organized. Before you know, it you'll want to create graduation slideshows or send that first day of school photo to their high school yearbook for the perfect senior tribute. Wouldn't it be nice to know exactly where these photos are when you need them?

I would love to help you with your photo project. Let's get started with scanning, organizing, printing, framing or creating photo books.

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It started with this photo

My mom and I are going through our family photos. We started in February and have already spent many hours at my dining room table with her carefully arranged family photo album. We are so lucky to have many photos of her side of the family dating back to the 1920's and even more lucky to be able to put names with these faces.

My great great grandparents on their 50th wedding anniversary.

As I remove the photos from the album pages, we look for dates, names, locations that are written on the backs of the prints. My grandma did a great job with naming everyone but the dates are not as easy to come by. So we're guessing and piecing together. "This looks like the same front porch. She is wearing the same dress in this photo too." I enjoy this sort of photographic detective work.

Then my mom fills in the details with memories and stories about personalities, traditions, mannerism and family dynamics.

My grandma and her parents. My great grandfather Otto took a lot of photos. We owe the first pages of our family photo album to him.

Next, I get to work on the laptop with Adobe Lightroom Classic, adding what information we have to the files we just created. Each photo is now an image file with the capability of carrying tidbits about dates, names, places and more. And the facial recognition and prediction that we are used to on our phones is available for these sepia toned images.

A search for great great grandpa August shows me 4 photos.

However, with the number of twins in my family it is still best to rely on grandma's handwriting when it is available. Or my mom's ability to remember that they would have Esther hold a handkerchief in her right hand while Hulda would hold it in her left. Or was it the other way around?

Our photos have stories to tell.

They may be from the 1920's or 2020's but I believe that someone, someday, will want to hear them.

If you have a photo project that you're planning to get to "some day", please get in touch with me soon. My summer is filling up with print and digital projects that are finally getting their some day.

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