Write. Click. Scrapbook.

Aperture.Shutter Speed.ISO | The Exposure Triangle

Welcome back! Did you get a chance to try out playing with your white balance yesterday? One thing that I didn't mention, which was brought up in a comment by Laurie, is that apart from the built in settings, you can also set a custom white balance. How each camera does this will vary, but it basically involves taking a shot of something that is pure white, then telling your camera to use that as a reference point when taking photos. I tend to mostly use my built in white balance option, but if I am in a location with mixed sources of light, I try to do a custom white balance shot.

So today we're going to get into a bit more detail with exposure. Basically I am going to show you how you can shoot in manual mode. Eeek! Trust me it is simpler than you might think. If you bought a fancy new camera thinking that now your shots would be perfect, but are disappointed by the results you get from using the auto or P mode, then this will get you excited!

As we learned yesterday correct exposure is controlled by aperture (the opening) shutter speed (how clickly it is closed) and ISO. These three together are comonly known as the exposure or photography triangle. Your camera will have buttons and dials to help you control these three things. Since every camera is different, this is where you will need to go get that manual! (Note, I will address point and shoot cameras a bit later on).

The first thing you need to do is set the photo mode dial at the top to M

Source

Now look through the view finder and you will see a set of numbers at the bottom that looks like this

The number at the left is the shutter speed, the next one is the aperture. Then comes the exposure scale. For the moment I only want you to pay attention to the little arrow in the middle of the scale, and the black bar at the bottom, what I called the sliding bar. This little bar is what tells you that you have correct exposure. When it is in the center as shown that's when you press the shutter to take the shot!

So here we go. Choose a well lit but shady spot and a subject, be it a person or object. Set your white balance to shade. Set your ISO to no higher than 400. Point your camera at the subject. Adjust your aperture to 5.6. Look to see where that little bar is. Now adjust your shutter speed until that bar is bang snack in the middle. That's it,take your shot!

It will probably take you a while to get used to all these manipulations and you will feel clumsy at first, but it will get better! The more you use the buttons and dials, the easier it will become. Now for your second test I want you to change your ISO, either increase it or decrease it. Leave your aperture at 5.6 and make a note of what happens to the shutter speed value in order to once again have a correct exposure. What did you notice?

If you're comfortable, now go ahead and use a different aperture OR shutter speed and then adjust the other to get correct exposure. That's it! You're shooting in manual!

But Francine, you ask. What if I don't have time for changing all these settings? Well this is where you ask your camera to do some of the work for you.

 

Aperture Priority

You can set your camera to aperture priority (Either A or Av on your dial) and you choose the aperture you want, and the camera will automatically select the shutter speed to get the correct exposure.

What aperture to choose? Well if you want those lovely, buttery soft blurry backgrounds use a low number. I tend to use 3.5 or lower whenever I can, to get that nice blur in the background. If you want to take a photo that includes a clear detailed background use a higher number.If I am shooting a landscape then I will use 11 or 16.

 

Shutter Priority

If you are photographing an active child, pet or sports, you might want to use the Shutter priority setting (S or Tv). In this case you select the shutter speed and the camera will automatically change the aperture for a correct exposure. As a general rule of thumb the lowest shutter speed I've found that will freeze action and not cause blur is 160.

Where does ISO come in? If you played around a bit with changing the ISO, you might have an inkling what role it plays. Because this is already a lot of information to absorb, I will talk more about ISO tomorrow.

 

Point & Shoot Cameras

If you have a point and shoot camera you can also achieve better photos by taking your camera off auto. Lets look at the dial again.

Yours won't have the  letters, but you will have a bunch of different symbols.These are the ones you should find on any camera.

The head in profile is the setting you can use for portraits, and this is the one to use for getting nice blurry backgrounds.

The mountain is the setting for taking landscape photos or if you want to capture a clear detailed background.

The flower is for macro shots: getting close to stuff! Pay attention to your focus though!

The running man is for fast moving subjects

The moon and star is for taking photos at night.

Some cameras include even more symbols, so be sure to check your manual to discover what they mean and how you can use them.

I think that's enough for today! Please do leave any questions in the comments.

Click.Click.Click - It's Photography Week!

Good Monday morning everyone! Are you ready to talk about photography with me this week? I love love love using my camera to capture our daily life, as well as things in our wider world. It's a raging passion, and one of the things that people know about me is that I will always have my camera where ever I am. I've learned a lot, and improved my photography over the last several years, so I thought it would be fun to share some of it with you this week.

 

While I don't think perfect photos are necessary for scrapbooking, I do know that I am more excited to scrapbook my "better" photos,  and I know that my team mates at WCS (and probably you too!) feel the same way. As is stated in our raison d'etre

 

We believe that understanding photography and design make scrapbooking a little more fun.

 

So let's start off with some photography basics shall we? I know, I know, but my photography really took off when I started paying attention to the technical aspects. Camera manuals aren't fun, but it is important to learn how your specific camera works. Here are five important terms that I will be referring to this week.

Exposure: The amount of light that your camera captures when you take a photo. Getting a correct exposure means that your photo isn't too dark (underexposed) or too bright/blown out (over exposed). Exposure is controled by the following three things.

Aperture: The size of the opening in the camera lens. A large aperture means lots of light gets in. A small aperture means less light gets in. Think of this as a door opening and closing. A wide open door will let more light into a room, than a door that is ajar.

Shutter Speed: How fast the aperture closes to stop the light from entering the camera, thus effectively taking a shot. To continue the door analogy, you can close your door quickly (fast shutter speed) or slowly (slow shutter speed)

ISO: The light sensitivity of your film, or these days your camera sensor. A low ISO like 100 means low sensitivity to light. A high ISO like 800 means a high sensitivity to light. In practical terms you use a low ISO when there is lots of light, and a high ISO when there is very little light.

Tomorrow I will delve deeper into these three things and how they work together to control the final exposure of a photo. For today I'd like to focus on the first thing that really helped my photos get better.

White Balance: This setting controls the warmth or coolness of your photo. Most modern cameras will have a range of options for your white balance. Common ones include: Sunny/daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten and  Florescent. Adjusting this setting depending on the kind of light you are shooting in, will make a world of difference to your photos.

Have you ever taken a photo indoors under artificial lighting and wondered why it was so yellow, or so blue? Unlike our eyes camera sensors cannot adjust how it sees light, unless we let it know what kind of light we are shooting in. If you only take one thing away this week, let it be that you start adjusting your camera to have the correct white balance. Here's an example of what I mean, two photos of our cat Mozaique.

In the first photo there is a yellow cast, which I corrected in the second shot by changing my white balance to Tungsten.

Here's another example showing the opposite problem. In the first photo the incorrect white balance resulted in a photo with a blue tinge

Once I chose the right setting, the next photo I took was nicely warmed up and the colours are true to life.

Both these photos are straight out of the camera with no editing. Amazing what a difference changing that one setting made!

It is also important to change the white balance for outdoor photos as well. Light on a cloudy day is not the same as light on a sunny day. And light in a shady spot is different too! During vacation this past summer I took this photo of our cheese safe hanging from a tree in a shady spot.

As soon as I looked at the LCD screen I could tell it was too blue, too cold. I quickly checked and saw that my white balance was set to sunny. I changed it to shade and took a second shot

Ahhh, much better. Now that looks more like a lazy summer day in France!

Your assignment for today (yes, there will be assignments) is to go dig your camera manual out from where you stashed it and learn how to adjust the White Balance setting. Take some shots using the wrong setting, then correct it to compare! Many digital cameras will be set to Automatic White Balance by default. Take a photo this way, then change it to the correct one, and see what a diference it makes.

Until tomorrow: Happy Shooting!

P.S. if you have any questions please ask away in the comment section below.

 

Sunday Photo + Words

write.

"We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from continuing."

That idea comes from one of my favorite books about writing, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. I think it applies to all kinds of writing, even scrapbook journaling, because honesty and openness are qualities that create good writing. Coming to love the details—including lots of specific ones—does, too, and that’s our topic today: getting the details into the stories you tell.

Details make your journaling come alive because they give the reader something specific to imagine. They give us a place to attach our senses, making the reading experience that much more vivid.

What do I mean by "details"? I mean getting the specifics down, and using the word that comes closest to capturing the true meaning of what you want to say. It means including words that appeal to the things we can experience with our bodies—the way a thing tastes, for example; not just good watermelon, but juicy watermelon, or sweet, or ice-cold, or even watermelon made salty by the sweat on your lip.

Here’s another example of including details. You might write:

We had such a good time when we went out to dinner to celebrate Amanda’s birthday. Good food plus good friends equals a great birthday celebration.

Basic journaling there; it conveys something about the event. But it’s hard for a reader to picture the event until you write with specific details:

We celebrated Amanda’s seventeenth birthday by going to dinner at her favorite little hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant, NYCP. Gabby was there, and Sophie and Tyler and of course her boyfriend Chad. Fettuccini Alfredo, garlic bread, and cannolis might not be the traditional way to celebrate, but an evening laughing over good food with awesome friends is perfect.

Sure—the second example is longer. It might take up a little bit more space on your layout. But the details (the name of the restaurant and guests, the food that was eaten, and the year of her birthday) help paint a much more complete picture for the reader.

It really is all in the details!

Inspired by September's gallery, here are some layouts that use details to tell the story more completely.

The journaling on Katie's layout, "Little House," is full of specific details about her grandparents' house: the foods they ate, TV shows they watched, celebrations they had. Her writing makes the little house come alive with memory; it left me itching to write about my own house:

 

In my journaling, I wrote about both what I wish I could change about my house and what I wouldn't change for the world, and about the intersection between house & home. Some of the details I included: the year-to-date count of Christmases we've had in this house (19!), the list of changes I wish I could make, the fact that I planted my daffodil bulbs the year I was pregnant with my daughter and the tidbit that my irises came from my dad. The details give a more complete image of my emotional connection to my house; the types of details you include will always lead back to the emotions you have about your topic.

 Vivan's layout, "A Day to Remember," includes the details about long-ago vacations to the beach when she was a child. The little snippets of story—the sand in the sandwiches, the seaglass collecting, the digging of sand mansions—relate entire summers' worth of simple vacation memories. Her layout made me want to make a layout about my own childhood vacations, but until I can get some photos from my mom I made a layout about a slightly more recent trip:

This is about a family trip to San Diego we took almost six years ago. I took a broad approach to the trip, trying to summarize it all on one layout, but I still used specific details. I wrote about one memorable thing from each place we went to, focusing in on one small piece of a much larger picture. Then, in the narrow journaling space, I wrote the Sorensen-family-favorite "good samich" story, using details like where and when we were eating and the exact menu item that inspired all that cuteness.

Lastly, I was inspired (and touched!) by Celeste's lovely "Here's the Story" layout. She writes about her parents' experiences with cancer and how they have affected her life as well. Medical issues are hard to journal about because they are so wrapped up in how we feel about our loved ones, but they are still important to document. (Even if you only look at it from a medical history perspective.) Using specific details—dates, the name of the diagnosis, the doctors, or the medical facilities—along with the truth behind your response to the experience helps you work around the fear a little bit.

Emily S. shared this layout, about her daughter's early medical experiences:

Her use of the specific names of tests and procedures that were performed helps give us an idea of what was happening, and her response to them helps us see what she learned from what happened.

In this layout by Jennifer:

we read about specific places, medicines, and treatments for her son Rowan's reoccuring bouts of croup. Those details help us imagine the medical situation through Rowan's eyes while others (the toys she brought, the knowledge she gained) give an image of Jennifer's connection.

I finally scrapbooked about my son Kaleb's heart condition, nearly two years after his diagnosis:

The specifics I included were the family history of aortic valve troubles and some statistics about it, as well as the doctor's name, the date of the diagnosis, and his probable prognosis. Even though it likely will never be a problem for him, Kaleb's bicuspid valve makes me anxious, but journaling about it helped me feel like I have a better grasp on the situation.

So! Here are three journaling challenges. Sometime or other during the upcoming week, write some journaling about the following three topics, trying to focus on adding specific, concrete details to the story:

1. Journal about a house
2. Journal about a trip you took at least five years ago
3. Journal about a medical condition or a disease

Notice I didn't challenge you to make a layout—just to write the journaling. Save it somewhere and make a layout when you're ready. And, as always, let us know, we love seeing what you are working on!

PREPPING FOR A GOOD YEAR day five: birthdays

Funny thing, birthdays. They come once a year. On a specific day. Bringing with it a specific age. (For most, that is. Mine hasn't moved in a long while. Do you think I need to bump up to 35 this year instead of my usual 29? Nigel is going to be 14 which makes me think that 29n needs to become 35b. Oh, how that math is keeping me honest'ish!) Coming once a year means you can count on them (for better or worse), which makes birthdays prime candidates for pre-planned pages!!

This year, if all goes well, we will celebrate 5 in house birthdays. We sometimes travel to family for a birthday or two, but this week is about planning for scheduled events, which means I am going to ignore the potentials, and stick with the for certains.

Let's get starting planning our layouts.

 

COLOR

Each child in our family has a fabric birthday banner. A few years back I was inspired by Pottery Barn's fabric birthday banner, so I made one for each of my girls. Then Nigel asked for one, too, so he didn't feel like a second rate citizen (hahaha! hard to be 6 years older than a princess or two!). Their banners come out every year the night before their birthdays and then stay for the week. Poppy's is purple, Lavender's pink, and Nigel's blue, green, and grey.

Last year, we added a personalized poster for each child. It stood next to their gifts on the table, and now sits atop their shelf in their bedroom. Here are the girls' posters.

You can see that the colors match their banners, which means the color palette for their party decor is well set!

 

DESIGN

My littles still have parties, with 5ish friends that come help celebrate. They have already picked their themes and activities which will help me know what to expect for their layouts. Further, I usually try to get a horizontal group shot, and then vertical individuals of each of the party goers. I will see if I can fit everything on one page, but realize I may have to venture into the two page layout category.

Nigel hasn't done an official party for a couple of years. Instead, he opts to take a friend to the movies. And now that phones have cameras I can get a picture while we are there. (He is much less bothered by my snapping a phone pic than hauling out my big camera.) His layout will just need room for one phone photo which means it will be more square than usual.

Richard's party will be a family affair with dinner, presents, and cake. His photos will include a food shot, a cake shot, and then some present-opening photos. These are the highlights for his birthday. A few years ago, I realized that I wasn't very good at buying him presents, so I began a new tradition of thematic gifts. His presents are small, low-budget, and must fit within the theme. The first was "As Seen On TV." Others have included "Go Go Kitchen Gadgets," "Dinner & a Movie," and the least successful, "Welcome to Hollywood" (which was tooth whitening and sunglasses!). Knowing that the presents play a fun part of the day, I am going to plan for a five photo layout: four presents, and a kids n' dad photo. I will let the food/cake shots be their own layout.

I am not a big center of attention girl, so my party will be a family dinner of grilled steak and seasoned potatoes. With a gluten free brownie for dessert. (Oh, how I miss my baked goods... sigh... ) My gifts are homemade cards and a Yagoot gift card (my froyo of choice). There are only so many Yagoot layouts a girl can make, so my birthday layout will just need room for a picture of the meal and my family.

 

LAYOUTS

The Birthday Person

The first three layouts that I put together will incorporate the subway art and a vertical birthday photo. My kids each have their own books, so I went ahead and made them each the same. Even if they all went in one book, they would be separated by a month each, so that they are the same isn't too crazy, right? I left the layouts relatively plain as the subway art has lots to read and lots of different fonts.

The Birthday Celebrations

Now, we need some birthday celebration layouts! Remembering all the planning details, let's put together some layouts. In order of appearance on the calendar...

And with that, all our birthdays will be recorded on time and in cute ways!! Who knew I had it in me??

 

I hope that you have had a fantastic week. I have appreciated you comments and your input. Hopefully you have gained a new strategy for completing some of those pages that we know we can count on year after year.

Additionally, I have long understood that organization in my home frees my spirit. This week I learned that the same is true of my scrapbooks. Fear of event layouts has a way of weighing down my spirit and causing me to hide from my photos. But with all that we have accomplished this week, I feel fulfilled and ready for all those layouts that I love to make! Please tell me if your experience is the same.

I hope you have a wonderful autumn. Amy will be here tomorrow for some journaling love and Francine will be here Monday to start a new week!! Thank you, dear friends and readers, for stopping by!

PREPPING FOR A GOOD YEAR day four: holidays

Happy day! I am so glad to have you back!! I really appreciate your company this week. I hope that you are having fun thinking about ways to stay ahead of your event photos! I cannot believe that I am going to have a football season captured, 10 school events taken care of, and by the end of today's post, 9 holiday layouts! That's right, today is about the holidays.

Looking to my beloved google calendar, I listed the holidays that we will celebrate this year:

1. Halloween
2. Thanksgiving
3. Christmas
4. Valentine's Day
5. St. Patrick's Day
6. Easter
7. Mother's Day
8. Father's Day
9. Fourth of July

Event photos. Which means I am scared away and therefore fail to properly record. But in prepping for the nine holidays, I set aside my concerns and dove head first into creating some layouts. Because the approach to each layout is unique, we will evaluate their designs one at a time.

I am hoping that there will be lots of crossover for your holiday schedules, too, so perhaps we can both use up the layout ideas!

Let's get started.

1. Halloween

Halloween is a big deal at our house. I have nearly as many Halloween decorations as I do Christmas decorations!! Every year we go trick or treating, and all three of mine will dress up. Because they change their mind on costumes about 6000 times a day for every day in October, I decided to go with a basic Halloween color scheme. To best capture the costumes, the photos will be vertical. I usually try to get the same sort of shot for each costume, so I felt safe going with three similarly sized photos. I also know that a layout with three kids need equal representation lest one feel more beloved than another... For a three vertical photo design, I opened up to my sweet friend and inspiration, Jody Wenke! and found this which seemed perfect! I even opted for a graphic element for my title in honor of Jody's creativity!

2. Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving at our house is a food day. Turkey, potatoes, vegetables, pies, more vegetables, more pies. Every year, I end up with tons more food photos than people! And they tend to be horizontal so that I can get lots of food in each shot. When I was visiting Teka's blog, I found a layout that had a big focal photo. Making it a four photo instead, I now have room for the turkey, the trimmings, the pie, and a place setting. We have repeating decor that is traditional in its colors, so I just followed that palette for my layout.

3. Christmas

A few years ago, I put my camera away for Christmas morning, but now realize I can't remember much about the presents or the morning. So this year, I am going to get a few more shots of the kids and their excitement. Knowing I will have several photos, and knowing that I am not very comfortable with two page layouts, I went looking for a sketch. I found this one at SketchSupport.com. I took a few elements off, but stayed otherwise relatively true to the sketch. I kept it whimsical and light as our morning photos will be in our coordinating pj's!

4. Valentine's Day

When I was peeking at Jody's site, I saw my favorite layout and thought it would make a sweet Valentine's layout. Each year, the girls get a love shirt for the day, and we make homemade Valentines for their class. I figured this page could go either way. Or maybe it will house a picture of them reading the love note that I promise myself every year that I will write. Maybe this will be the year I do!

5. St. Patrick's Day

St. Patty's day at our house is mostly the hat and shirt! We have a giant tall Suessian hat in two tone green. I think it will match these colors well. Thinking that the hat is tall, I left room for a long skinny photo. And I will squeeze a little journaling in there, too. I didn't want it to be too plain, so I added a little subway-art effect on one of the rectangles. Do you like the bit of pizzazz?

6. Easter

I am realizing as I type this, that we dress for our holidays. Halloween costumes, Christmas dresses, Christmas pj's, Valentine's tees, St Patty's tees, and now, Easter dresses. Goodness, I suddenly feel so shallow. Thank heavens for Old Navy and Target so that the budget survives!!

I digress... Nigel is past cute shirts and ties, having moved into the land of white shirts and a dark suit. So I thought this page could focus on the girls. I picked traditional Easter colors, thinking the pastels will allow Lavender to still have pink on her outfit, and Poppy with her purple will fit right in! Again, the photo needs to capture my apparent need to shop and dress, so the photos will be vertical. I had a journaling square, but then wondered how much I would say about their dresses? If necessary, I will add one back in later.

7. Mother's Day

I have talked about my Mother's Day present before--a complaint free trip to the park for mom and kid photos. For this one, we sometimes go in Sunday dress, sometimes come home and change. And if we do that, everyone picks a favorite outfit that allows their personality to shine through, so the colors may be varied. To maximize my chances for success, I prepped with a grey page with elements neither too formal, nor too casual. I could have gone vertical or horizontal on this one (I will have both) so I just picked horizontal for fun! I did round the corners to soften the look. And I made sure to change up the direction of the shadowing so that it didn't have funky in between spacing.

8. Father's Day

We love Father's Day at our house! It means we grill a juicy steak dinner for Richard and he is good to make a big scene when he opens the kids' homemade cards. I wanted a layout that could be flexible for either of these photo ops, both of which would be a horizontal shot.

I didn't have a particular idea in mind for the design, so I went browsing online, and found this layout. I loved the vertical rectangles--they gave the feeling and warmth of a pieced quilt. To maintain that thought, I selected colors and patterns that would feel collected. Curated, if you will. I mimicked the stitching, too, for that added sense of a quilt.

9. Fourth of July

The final holiday layouts is the Fourth of July. We have celebrated our last three years in Utah. So while I don't love traveling that far, chances are, we will be there next year, too. Which means we will go to Day's Market, buy a package of fireworks for the kids, and then head over to the church parking lot to light them. And while I may go vertical for photographs of big (real) fireworks, our parking lot show is more smoke bombs and snappers, making nearly all the photos horizontal. And plentiful. Which meant I could do a repeating grid. Adding in some patriotic colors, and we have ourselves a festive and fun layout!

 

Wow. Who knew that event layouts could be so fun? I had a great time picking out colors and hunting for designs. In fact, I realized as I was making these layouts, that I needn't fear event layouts. They are a terrific excuse to use iconic colors and patterns, and don't need to be any fancier than any other layout I create. I am certain that the lack of storytelling and the multiple photos have been stumbling blocks for me. But in making these 9, I realized that the photos can carry a bulk of the story weight, and that is okay. Just because a holiday photo doesn't come with a particular story, doesn't mean the photos can't be scrapbooked. Nor do I have to pick just one great photo. I can use grids to add lots of photos. Repeating successful strategies isn't boring, it is brilliant! Grids work and they fit my design aesthetic, so they are awesome. 

I hope you will all take an evening to put together your holiday layouts, too. Especially if event layouts have scared you like they did me. I have been scrapbooking for more than 13 years, and putting these layouts together as a group has taught me so much about my perceived deficiencies. I really feel like I made a breakthrough!! Thank you for taking the journey with me!!

Tomorrow will be our final day of our "Prepping for a Good Year" week. I hope you will join me for one last set of ideas and layouts!

Have an incredible day!

 

PREPPING FOR A GOOD YEAR day three: school

Welcome back to our week of planning! Thank you for all your kind comments yesterday! I hope that yesterday sparked some ideas for you and helped you think of new ways to tackle repeating events, sporting or otherwise!!

Today we are moving on to another set of pages that could be preplanned: school events. My children's school puts out a yearly calendar that includes all the classroom, PTA, and extracurricular events added by date for the entire school year. As I was dragging and dropping said events into our personal calendar, I made a list of things that would be going on for my kids. Here is that list:

1. day one
2. meet the teacher
3. book fair
4. fall party
5. winter party
6. valentines party
7. spring concert
8. teacher appreciation
9. field day
10. last day

I know that I will bring my camera to these events, and that I will want to document their details. So I am going to build ten layouts that can sit and wait for their photos.

But how will I know what the photos will look like? Well, chances are most of my photos will be horizontal. And having been through a couple (or more!) school years, I have a pretty good idea of what the pictures will be. As for color choices, each of my kids has their favorites, which means their clothes are pretty predictable as well. Further, the parties will match the seasons. I think this gives me enough to get started, and I can make some some small changes or additions later if necessary. Of course, if I know the colors on the layout, I can always dress them accordingly, right? heehee!! (so not above that one. so not above.)

Now, I hear a few of you wondering why not wait for the event to happen and then scrapbook it with pictures in hand? Well, remember yesterday when I noted that event layouts are neither my forte nor my favorite? Well, I'm quite sure that without these ready to go pages, the photos will sit in well organized folders waiting for their day. And despite my good intentions, history has proven that fear of event layouts trumps intention. Nearly without exception.

Until now! Because I have taken this understanding of my weakness and embraced it and figured out a way around it! Hooray for me! Hooray for nearly done pages!!

Here we are! Ten layouts ready for their closeups, Mr. DeMille.

1. day one


2. meet the teacher


3. book fair - For this layout, I looked to Lisa's layout for basic design and structure


4. fall party - I created this one based upon an August Becky Fleck Pagemap


5. winter party


6. valentine's party - this one is from a layout of Deb from the same post as Lisa's layout I used in #3 (I love the weekend posts... You, too?)


7. spring concert


8. teacher appreciation - I recycled an old layout for this one! sneaky...





9. field day - This layout is based upon Valerie's page in our Summer Lovin' gallery





10. last day
    
    

How about your school year? Have you checked your calendar to see what pages you could make ahead? Feel free to copy mine if you would like. I'd be honored that you might want to! I would love you to be this excited for a school's year beginning!! And if you have no school kids, yet or no longer, perhaps just having 10 new layouts is reason for happiness??

I hope you will come back tomorrow for another day of planning and prep! Don't you love the feeling of success on the horizon??!!

A demain! (until tomorrow)

PREPPING FOR A GOOD YEAR day two: sports

Welcome back! I hope you enjoyed your Labor Day yesterday (by not laboring--the irony of which has never ceased to make me giggle!). Are you ready to  roll up your sleeves, dig in, and get dirty? If you missed yesterday, you may want to pop back over there to read the backstory for our week. Go now, we will wait for you...

Did you have a moment to think about your upcoming scrapbooking goals and opportunities? I hope so! I also hope that some of your life will overlap with mine so that we can lean on each other for ideas and inspiration this week!

Today we are going to tackle sports. It is a prime candidate for preplanning as it comes with a schedule.  Which is where we are going to begin.

 

THE SCHEDULE

As we plan to scrapbook a sports season, let's evaluate the season. I am going to chart out our football season. Would you like to take a minute and sketch out your season, too?

Here's mine:

Indoor training begins in February and runs through the last week of school. Then there are two weeks off. And then conditioning begins. Twice a week. Until mid-July. And then becomes daily. Mornings until school starts and then moves to afterschool. Once school begins, practice is four times a week after school. Games are weekly. For about 8 weeks. Then there is an end of season get-together. And then we breathe until February. (Well, actually just turn our sights to soccer...)

 

THE PHOTOS

Sports photos will follow the events. Let's take a minute and pair our expected photos to their events. Here is my list:

For indoor training, there won't be any photos. (It starts at 6:15 in the morning which is hours too early for me. (Besides, it takes place in the gymnasium at school and I have learned to allow my children some boundaries. (hahaha!))) There will be a couple of pics from conditioning. A handful from practice. And tons from the games. We will also order the official school team and individual photos. Oh, and a few from the closing night social.

 

THE PAGES

Now, let's anticipate the pages we will make based upon our knowledge of the photos we will take.

You know I don't love scrapbooking events. But that seems like a necessary evil if I am going to do something with all those pages. But I really don't like making event pages--there's just so little to say. So what if I made a minialbum or a photobook? You know I love those!! And I can build it on a template which seems like a terrific help in saving time and actually getting the photos and memories recorded. I am hoping the minialbum can also be the place where I record the indoor training, conditioning, and practice schedules. I think the official photo, and closing photos would work well here as well. I am going to consider the minialbum the keeper of all things pertaining to the season.

Behind the events, there are going to be pages. Touching ones about life lessons, overcoming obstacles, and having fun. For these, I can use training photos, or unrelated-to-football photos, or borrow from game day photos (knowing I will have so very many!). The scores can go in the photobook. The behind the scenes stories and memories can go on individual pages.

 

PREPPING FOR SUCCESS 

MINIALBUM

Embracing my digi love, I am going to go with a photobook. But I really believe this could be reproduced with a paper mini.

Because I know the schedule, I can go ahead and build the whole book. Here is the format I think I can follow:

1. cover
2. official photo
3. training schedule
4. game schedule
5. game pages
6. closing party

Color will be easy as I will opt for school colors. Pages 2, 3, 4, and 6 will be individual but with consistency. Page 5 (a through g) will be for game days. They will need lots of photos and a few details. 

Let's get started.

Cover

For the cover, I decided to re-cycle a subway art I made for Nigel for his season last year. I updated it a little and will tweak it if I need to before I send the book in for printing. I am hoping, too, that perhaps this could become an annual book with a repeating cover, complete with updates, of course.

Official Photo

I measured the photo from last year so I knew the dimensions. I used the same general format as the cover. And borrowed the gold color from the color of the boys' pants. Page two will be the team photo.

Schedules

I am going to have to find the schedules to add them in, but I did build the pages. I kept the same framework and colors. And am thinking I will add in a little extra stuff when I get the calendar done.

Game Pages

Because I know the schedule, I can go ahead and build the game pages. I knew I would want room for lots of photos and few details. So I came up with this basic design:

I already have all the teams and dates filled out on layered templates waiting for game day! Here is how week one looks all filled in:

(I changed a couple of the subheadings to better match the notes Nigel made for me.) I am so excited to have a way to document the details of the game, and to include lots of action shots. But my favorite part? Feeling like it is going to be successful due to the preplanning!! Woohoo!

 

So far, we have two weeks of games behind us and I have both weeks already documented and ready to go. Which means I am miles ahead of last year. Ooh, having a plan feels so good!

Remember my list of photos? We are all there, with the exception of the closing party. I think it will follow the structure of the game day pages for photos, so I am going to wait to make it.

Just a couple of random thoughts... Were my book not digital, I could make an envelope page for the schedule pages, in lieu of writing out the schedule. Further, I realized in the making of this book, that I really want some practice photos. I am going to take a long lens and hide behind some trees and to get some pictures to help make a better looking schedule section.

 

I really like the idea that the whole season of events is put in one place. From training to season end. And I really love that I already have two weeks done. But most of all, I love that in asking Nigel to write his thoughts on the games, I had a little extra time with him and had a chance to bond with him over something very important to him. And now he knows that it is important to me, too.

 

What do you think? Will a mini or a photobook would work for your sport?

EXTRAS

We encourage sports for our children as it builds both their bodies and their spirits. (And for a teenage boy, it provides a lot of conversation starters!!) The lessons, successes and silliness will all be recorded in the kids' regular albums. Here is one I made after his game last week.

Honestly, there's not a lot of preplanning that can go on with these pages, but when I take out the game day photos and madness, it makes the rest feel very doable.

 

I hope this gives you a couple of ideas for handling the stack of sports photos growing as fast as your little athletes!!

I also hope you will come back tomorrow for another way we can prepare to scrapbook those planned events for our new "year!" See you tomorrow!

PREPPING FOR A GOOD YEAR day one: intro

Hello! Welcome back to our regularly scheduled programming! This week we resume our week-long author weeks, and I have the pleasure of starting us out!!

I love September! I grew up in a family filled with teachers and September is our January. It is the month of new shoes, new clothes, new pencils, new patterns. And new resolutions. For me, January is the middle of a year, the middle of a season, the middle of many things. Which doesn't make it conducive for making changes, for me. September, on the other hand, seems ripe with opportunity and promise. Even during those in between years with no school (finished college, no school age kids yet), I still felt the urge for change nudging me each September.

This year is especially wondrous in our home as Lavender began kindergarten. For the first time in 8 years, I am home alone for 4 hours every day. My scrapbooking life is thrilled! Three years ago when Nigel began football, my evenings suddenly disappeared. Add to that piano, gymnastics, ballet, homework, church activities, free play, eating, and bedtime routines, and well, my evenings have evaporated and my scrapbooking hours have dwindled increasingly.

But suddenly I am going to have a few stolen hours! It made for an exciting September brainstorm this year! As I sat with pen and notebook in hand brainstorming my lifeplans for this next year, including my scrapbooking goals, I had so much fun knowing that I had a guilt free silent period!!

When I sit to map out the year, I try to not only make plans for success, but to honestly, and frankly, write down some observations about life as it currently exists. I do this topic by topic, activity by activity. I find it helps me figure out my goals, and to recognize my limitations. Failed grand plans cause me extreme heartache--honest doable plans are much more likely to be successful, both for outcome and mental/emotional health!!

Here are a few observations about my upcoming year of scrapbooking:

I have limited time. I have many repeating events and therefore repeating photos. Lots of our activities are scheduled so I know in advance what I will be scrapbooking. (This is in direct contrast to the tiny baby years where we had NO schedule and no idea of the pages I wanted to create.) I want to maximize my success. (And for right or wrong, sometimes success for me means pages completed. Not always, but for some photos, absolutely.)

 

For the next four days, we are going to talk about ways to plan for those repeating events, and those scheduled events in our lives and scrapbooks. Hopefully, you will find some ways to get ahead of the calendar, so we can have a terrific year of scrapbooking! And if September is not your time for change, but January is, please bookmark our week together and return when the time is right for you!

I am looking forward to a wonderful week of planning and prepping! Until then, I will leave you with a little bit of printable love!

You may download it here! Enjoy! And I will see you tomorrow!

Sunday Photo + Words

Should you shield the valleys from the windstorms, you would never see the beauty of their canyons.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross