Many of us are able to run with a project once we have a theme picked out and either a camera in hand or our photos already taken and somewhere in the process of being sorted. Some of us could use a bit of help sometimes, however, when we’re sitting at the keyboard waiting for a place to start and there seem to be a dozen possible projects waiting for us in our files or on the camera or memory card. Here are a few ideas to help if you’re sometimes stuck between projects and could use a few prompts to get your next project underway.
Pick a Person or a Place
Many of us work chronologically as we work our way through our books and get our most recent and important stories down, but it is really refreshing to get into a project without needing to structure the book based on the date the photo was taken. The beauty of working with a theme such as one family member, a pet, or a special place is that you are free to mix and match photos and journalled stories regardless of when the photos were taken or when the anecdotes occurred. Organize a page another way—by background colour, or number of subjects in each photo; by colour (colour, sepia, or black and white)—or by season, setting, or mood.
Special Objects and Places
If you choose a place as the central theme for your book, you can be as specific or as general as you want. Your project could be as general as highlighting all the moments in a city you love, or as specific as one special getaway you’ve returned to over the years—for example, a specific beach, a restaurant, campsite, or hotel. Your special object can even be something you usually take for granted but that shows up in many of your childhood photographs as well as your family photographs, such as a pool, a boat, a park, a car (or bike...or scooter...), school, playground, or backyard. If you have something that’s been in the family for several generations, like a cottage or trailer, sports equipment or other objects related to a certain hobby, ask around to see if relatives have photos you could scan and include as well. A variation on this is to choose a wider theme, like “toys that move” or “colours of the rainbow” for a toddler’s book, or something even less specific, like “animals” or “water” and then go from there. When you start on your layouts, stick with one large photo per page if you go for something very specific, say for an entire book about a favourite pet-- and to consider a collage, a mosaic, or strips of photos for larger projects where you need to squeeze in a large number of photos—say, for a photo book about holidays spent at the same place throughout the years.
