Hello! It's Jennifer Larson again, sharing more about my process for creating vacation albums. Here's the schedule for the week again:
Monday: Memorabilia and journaling
Tuesday: Organizing the album
Wednesday: Selection photos
Thursday: Layouts
Friday: Alternate albums
And today I'll talk about how I go about organizing the album.
Though I take notes during the vacation day by day, I don't create an album organized by days. Instead, I open up my vacation photos in PSE and browse through them to see what I took photos of:
(Note: I do not tag any photos when I import them. I probably should, but I generally remember the year and month things happened, so I just scroll until I find those pictures. It may be a little more time consuming, but doing this sometimes helps me discover long-buried stories along the way, which makes me happy).
Once I find the photos, I scroll through them, taking notes of themes that I can turn into layouts. For example, in my camping albums, I often have a page about our campsite, plus ones of various hikes we went on, locations we visited, and any water activities we did. Here's how I have tentatively organized the vacation album I'm working on for Glacier/Spokane:
- Title page and contents (I always put a family photo on this page)
- The road out
- St. Mary's Campground
- Hike with Mel and Dean (this title will change; I have to look in my journaling for the name of the trail)
- Waterfalls (this will probably be a four-page layout because of the number of pictures and the depth of the story)
- Logan Pass
- Fish Creek Campground
- Bowman Lake backcountry camping (this too will be four pages)
- Polebridge (not sure this will be a spread, but it was memorable, so I have a placeholder)
- Mel's house
- Spokane (this might be 4 pages)
- Dean's house
- Looking back (on the last page I usually put a couple favorite photos, often taken from behind, with a quotation that seems to capture the vacation)
Now that I have decided the subject for each layout, I am ready to start selecting photos for each layout. I'll share my process for that tomorrow!