Memorable Annual Photobooks for your family – how to write your child’s biography
Why is it that January seems to offer us a fresh start? We could choose any day of the year, any week, any month, to start something new, but somehow there’s nothing that quite matches the annual televised chiming of Big Ben for turning the page and starting things afresh.
I want to talk about something I do each year for my family, which I start in the first week of the year, but I add to little by little throughout the months and get printed each January.
I’m talking about Annual Photobooks, filled with amazing family photos.
Where do we come from?
We’ve all seen the adverts on telly for Family Tree and genealogy sites like ancestry.co.uk and 23andme.com, and there’s a reason they’re popular: we all like to know where we come from!
“Oh, doesn’t he look like his dad!” or “Aww, she’s the spitting image of you as a baby!” are the type of comments new parents get bombarded with in those first few days and weeks after their baby is born, sometimes accompanied by well-meaning relatives bearing old family photos!
We’re humans – we’re curious! Despite both his parents and his older brother being brunettes, one of my sons has bright blonde hair, so where did that come from? Or why is it that my dad and I both see situations in the same rational and practical outlook?
Our children are no different – as they grow older they want to know about their childhoods, what they did, who they looked like, what their first words were… and they want to see photos of their family life!
My two year old loves looking back at pictures of himself as a newborn baby even now, whispering in the high pitched squeaky voice he reserves for cute baby animals: “Look at the baaaaby Lewis!”
We are responsible for writing their biography
I can remember when I got my first camera – I was 10 and we were off to Paris for the day, to visit a French market. I was so excited to be entrusted with my first (extremely chunky) camera to document the day.
(It was somewhat ruined when my spending money was pickpocketed out of my camera bag while I was taking a photo, but that’s a story for another day!)
I love the photos I took that day, and I remember well the importance I felt of being trusted with expensive photographic equipment, the thrill of pressing the shutter and knowing that in a few weeks time I would get to see my images in print (via a trip to Boots to have them developed – this was back in the olden days!)
But imagine if I didn’t have a single photograph of my life, prior to that day at 10 years old? I don’t know about you, but that thought terrifies me. I’d be genuinely devastated.
I joke that the first thing I’d save if my house was burning down would be my photographs – it wouldn’t, I do love my children and my dogs! – but they’d be the first non-breathing thing I would choose.
As parents it is our job, our responsibility, to document our children’s lives for them, so that they have their own story to enjoy, to reflect on, and to help them understand where they come from.
What is an Annual Photobook
Each month, I select a handful of photos that I really love of each of my children, and the whole family. Some of them are candid portraits, others are of them doing something fun, and still more are of them with people or things that are important to them.
If you’re anything like me, you probably take hundreds of photos of your children each month. I find it’s really helpful to go through them on a monthly basis so that it’s a really manageable task, rather than being faced with a seemingly insurmountable job come the end of the year. I simply save my favourites, and then come the end of the year they’re sitting there ready to be compiled and printed.
Each January, I then collate all the photos from the previous year and collate them into our family photobook. Each March I do the same for Lewis, and then each October it’s Matty’s turn.
These photobooks represent the year just past in photographs – for our family, and for each of our sons. They are a treasured reminder of the fun they’ve had, the new experiences they’ve enjoyed, and the joy, love and laughter that wraps around them each and every day, like a warm cosy blanket.
It’s so easy to take photographs of your family and then never do anything with them, whether that be on a USB drive, a computer, or a smartphone memory. Goodness me, I have over 30,000 images on my iPhone, and growing! But this way, my boys each have a tangible book for every year of their lives, that they can look back upon whenever they want or need to do so.
Where do I start?
It all depends how much time and inclination you have. My job is photography, along with my expertise and experience, so for me it’s obviously not a daunting task to put together a photobook or album.
If you want a user-friendly interface and the best quality available without going to a professional photo lab, then photobox.com is my recommendation, but go for a matt finish as it looks and feels more luxurious than the gloss.
I also have families who come to me each year for family portraits, getting beautiful professional images that they can then print and display on their walls. One of my favourite approaches is to display these in a wall art collection that grows each year as you add the latest image to the wall.
I practice what I preach in this regard – every October/November we go to a local photographer and have a family photograph taken. This then gets added to our family photo wall, and also goes on our Christmas cards come December.
So whether you want to produce a detailed photobook with collated images from the whole year, or you’d like to start a collection of formal portraits that you update annually, there are lots of ways to take and display beautiful photographs for your children to treasure. It’s simply a case of choosing the approach that’s right for you and your family.
One of my favourite quotes is
“The best time to start was yesterday. The next best time is today.”
So whichever direction you take, there is one thing I would urge you: don’t delay – start today!