While it’s certainly true that there is an abundance of great stories penned by wordsmiths, there are also many unique and personal tales that are told via the medium of images beautifully displayed in stylish and luxurious photo albums.
If you’re someone who loves to snap selfies, and to capture special moments in life with your camera or mobile device, there’s really no reason why your photos can’t do the talking for you. Your favourite photographs are the perfect tools for you to use to tell a story and paint a bigger picture.
Consider Purpose
Before you get stuck into the task of sorting through your vast array of selfies and snaps, to show off in a collection of elegant photo books, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the purpose of your creative project.
Knowing the purpose of your photo book will help you to shape its theme, visual style and narrative. You may want to create a unique personalised display as a legacy, for future generations of your family to treasure and enjoy. Or maybe you’re feeling inspired to create a special one-of-a-kind gift for a loved one’s milestone birthday? Whatever your reason may be, it gives your photo book a purpose and provides you with a guideline for what type of images to feature in it.
Define Your Timeline
When using photo albums to tell a story, it’s essential to define your timeline. Although you can choose to arrange your favourite photos from childhood years alongside images that capture milestone events throughout your lifetime to date, you’re under no obligation to display them as a single collection.
Your photo display doesn’t have to be stretched over years and years. You can choose to define your timeline as a short period that includes a single or multiple events. If you like, you can create a series of themed photo books that preserve memories from a day, a week or a year. The timeline you choose will help you to remember key moments to include, and to create your visual storytelling structure. You’ll then find it easier to select and arrange images in a chronological order that does the story telling for you.
Create Storytelling Structure
Conventional storytelling traditionally follows a familiar structure. There’s always a beginning, middle, and an end. When creating a photo album of your favourite images, to gift or to keep as a future family heirloom, it’s worth considering creating a storytelling structure that is out of the ordinary.
Not all storytelling narratives follow in a chronological order. Sometimes the story pauses to take a detour, or to introduce new characters, places or situations. Dividing the pages of your photo album into chapters allows you to include dedicated sections that feature key people or other important elements in your story.
If you’re creating a special photo book gift for a loved one, you can split the pages into sections that highlight a variety of their personal interests or your shared experiences. If you want to curate a legacy collection of selfies and images for future generations of your clan to browse and enjoy, plan dedicate pages for photographs of each family member.
It can be helpful to create chapters that are named, before jotting down a list of fond memories and special moments that you associate with them. Doing this will also help to speed up the process of sorting through your huge piles of photos, in search of the best ones to feature in your story.
Add Text
The addition of descriptive text that perfectly matches your photos can effectively bring your images to life, and greatly enhance the viewing experience for the browser of your photo albums. A chronologically displayed selection of your favourite images can make these special moments feel as if they happened only yesterday.
To add an extra dimension to your storytelling, consider adding text, captions and comments to every photo on display. Paint a bigger picture by describing the scenes in as much detail as you can recall. Share your fond memories of the moments that you’ve captured by incorporating fun facts and other interesting information. If you have any anecdotes add them too, to inspire reminiscing.
If you associate some snaps with songs from the past, it’s fun to add text in the form of lyrics. Famous quotes and lines of poetry can also be used to enhance your arrangement of selfies.
You can also save a page at the back of your album to list an index or roundup of the images you’ve featured. Your friends and family will love reading all about the moments in time that they’ve long forgotten.
Include Mementoes
To make the stories that you tell via pictures in your beautiful luxury photo albums even more visually interesting, compelling and unique, include a collection of paper mementoes like tickets, maps and flyers. If you still have diaries from your younger days, you can scan some of the pages and add them to your storytelling display.
Your bestie or sibling will be over the moon to receive a lovingly curated photo book gift that features gorgeous captured images, embellished with mementoes of your share experiences through the passing years.
When you’re using a photo album to tell a story, mementoes can really help to jog the memory, and to make your thoughtful treasure trove collection more personal and keepsake-worthy.
