Storytelling Through Photos

Celebrate live by learning about storytelling through photos. Life is made up of many moments. Remember doing show and tell, or writing essays or stories in English class? They had a beginning, middle and end. This is what we want to help you do when making your photo album. We want you to learn how to do this with your photo album too.

Who is your audience?

First of all, you have to think about who is the audience of your photo album. Who is this photo album for, or who is most likely to look at these photographs over the next few years and decades? At first you may be making the photo album for yourself to keep, but many other people end up looking at it. So let’s learn how to use storytelling through photos.

We encourage you to lay out your photos in the order you want on your table. Then, notice if you can explain the full story or need extra photos in between to help with your storytelling. Also, just like an essay is ineffective without words, so are your photos. Storytelling through photos can be very fun and encouraging, as you relive your story or event. Write down on small slips of paper details about what is going on in your photos. Then, you can transfer those words to nice craft or construction paper to use next to your photographs. As the saying goes, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How

Show your friends your photos. Do they understand what is going on in your storytelling through photos? Remember having to find the five “W’s” and “How” in your essays in English class? Now transfer that idea to your own storytelling through photos. Answer these questions when you write down what is happening in your photograph. When you or your family get older, it will help them remember this great memory in the photo.

Baking a Cake

When storytelling through photo, think of it like the process of baking a cake. There are ingredients first (the photos), then directions (step by step order of the story) to make something good, tasty, and beautiful (the cake or photo album). It is a great day when your notes on your photos are so detailed that a family member who had Alzheimer’s or Dementia, can remember what happened in your photos. So, tell who is in the photo, what is happening, when it took place, where the photo happened, why the photo was taken, and how the special moment happened (Birthday, walking in a park, other celebration, etc). You could even have ticket stubs, or other flat souvenirs that you can save and put next to the pictures to help with your storytelling through photos. Save your photo album in a Baby, Wedding, or “Any Occasion” DIY Time Capsule, seen here, to give to future generations to look at. What a priceless gift.

In our next blog, we will discuss more about storytelling through mementos. These are the tangible mementos that do not fit in a scrapbook or photo album because they are not flat, but rather three dimensional. We hope this blog helped you get started today making a more meaningful and lasting photo album.

What do you do in your photo album to help tell a story? Comment below.

Making Milestone Moments Count,

– Marcie