Step 1:  Photograph!  Take photographs of  your daily life as well as important family events. Get in close.  Capture expressions, relationships, proud moments and day to day activities.  Consider photographing your family memorabilia such as your children's artwork, ticket stubs, report cards, programs and more.

Step 2:  Organize your photos.  Develop a system that will work for you each time you upload photos to your computer.  Use iPhoto or other photo software to organize your photos by date or keyword.  Consider using a folder for each month of the year.  I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to catalog my photo database.  The software automatically adds date and other camera information during the upload process and I can add keywords as desired.  Keywords can be used later if I am looking for a specific event, person or item.  If you have time each time you upload your photos, delete obvious mistakes and duplicates.  Don't forget to upload your camera phone photos!

Step 3: Condense!  Choose only your favorites for your Family Yearbook.  This may be a difficult process but less is more in this case.  Choosing only the best and most noteworthy photographs will highlight them and give your book the most impact.  Using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, I initially give 5 stars to my favorite photographs and then continue to condense the number of favorites until I have a workable number of photos for my book.  I usually end up with about 500 of my most favorite  photos that will be included in the book.  Don't panic!  Remember, you don't have to delete the others from your database.  They just will not be included in the Yearbook.  

Step 4: Choose a publisher and design your book:  I use MyPublisher for my photo books mainly because I am always extremely pleased with  the quality of the final product.  I love the lay flat pages, the thick, high-quality paper and the absolutely true to life color.  The color, clarity and contrast of the photos on my computer are reproduced perfectly on the pages of my book.  They have a free downloadable Photo Book application that will create your book for you or give you more creative control as desired.  Other popular photo book publishers include Snapfish and Blurb.  All will allow you to use pre-made templates or design your own. Add journaling to your book as desired.

Step 5:  Backup your favorites!  Businesses like Mozy and Carbonite provide automatic cloud backup for your computer files.  Other options for on-line photo storage include Shutterfly, SmugMug, and Flickr.  I use Zenfolio for my on-line photo storage and for sharing my photos with friends and family.  I also have an external hard drive for at-home storage of my photos.  After the completion of my yearbook, I add the folder full of yearbook photos to my external hard drive and upload it to Zenfolio.  

Step 6:  Enjoy sharing your favorite moments of the past years with your favorite people!  

Love this idea but don't have the time to complete the project?  I can create your Family Yearbooks for you!  At home Family History organization services are available for the Fredericksburg, VA area.  Not local to the Washington DC area?  No problem!  Open a free account at Dropbox, upload your family photos, and share your folder.  I will organize your photos and work with you to create Family Yearbooks that you can't wait to share!   Contact me today to get started on your Family History or Family Yearbook project!