Selecting photos for a family slideshow

What makes you dig through old photos? I am not even sure “makes” is the right word. What inspires, or motivates, or sidetracks you to start to dig through your shoe-boxes or old family albums?  For me it was a project – my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary. A year earlier I had gathered all the family photos and scanned the collections, but now I had the daunting task of selecting the photos for the family video. If you are thinking of creating a video you might find these steps helpful when selecting your photos:

1. Decide on a timeline. Think about the key events in the lives of the people you are featuring and identify those photos. This might go on for a while so make sure you have some food and drink close by. It is also helpful to write down your timeline and then share it with others involved to make sure you have the right order of events.
2. Decide on the length of the video – this along with how long the photo is on the screen will be the way you will decide on how many photos to use (warning – this may change)!
3. Equal representation – Ok maybe this will not be the case for you – but I wanted to make sure all of my siblings and their kids felt like they got a fair amount of screen time. Since I was the designer I obsessed about this way too much. I watched the video a couple times and felt like my daughter got short changed on screen time but I was just going to leave it. However, I asked her to watch the video (not because I wanted her opinion on this, I did not even mention it) but to see if the caption text was large enough on the title and ending slide. What she reported back to me was “Yes” the text is fine and “How come I don’t have as many photos as my brother and cousin?  I laughed and she immediately picked the additional digital photos she wanted to add.
4. Enjoy – By the end of the process I was tired of the video. That is to be somewhat expected. However, watching my parent’s reaction and seeing their excitement about the photos was all worth it.

The above photo should have been featured in the hairstyle section of the video – (no there was not really a hairstyle section) but in retrospect that could have been a funny component to the video – and believe me there were enough photos to round out such a section. I am going to keep this idea in mind for a future post!

Schedule a 20 minute complimentary phone consultation today! We would love to help you create a fabulous slideshow for an upcoming celebration!

rita norton

I am the momma to two children and was an Oregonian for the past 25+ years. A job transfer for my husband (in the summer of 2016) resulted in a cross country move and now I am a Massachusettsan. I confess, I had to look up the demonym! The birth of my son 20+ years ago was also the start of my entrepreneurial adventure. Photos have always been at the core of my businesses and continue to inspire and drive my passion to create beautiful keepsake photo collections for my clients.