Journaling in Scrapbooks and Photo-Memory Books

If you shy away from writing, or journaling, in your scrapbooks and photo-memory books, I’m extra glad you’re here because you are going to come away from this article empowered! You’ll be adding an incredible amount of value to your photos by writing about them. So let’s jump in!

Pictures, it turns out, are not actually worth a thousand words.

We are all familiar with the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but the statement is not as true as we might think. A photo without its story is actually not worth very much.

Writing, or journaling, when you preserve your photos is an absolutely crucial part of preserving your photos. Printing photos with some text next to it is the most accessible way to do this, but metadata can work, too, as long as it’s accessible and everyone knows how to find it. (Learn more here.)

So, why isn’t a picture worth a thousand words after all? Take, for example, this photo:

It doesn’t mean much to you, does it? It actually doesn’t even mean anything to me without knowing what this is and why this photo was taken.

When my mother was 5 years old, her family had a house on the Columbia River just north of Portland, Oregon, in a city called Vanport, with a garden and a beautiful view of Mt. Hood. She was five years old on May 30, 1948, when a levee on the river upstream failed, and the whole town was–quite literally–wiped off the map by nightfall. My mother and her family evacuated in less than 35 minutes, driving south to her grandparents’ house. My mom remembers rowing out in a canoe with her dad and older sister to see the house, and eventually, when the water receded after several weeks, they went back to find that the garage, pictured here, had been lifted off its foundation, resting on some barrels.

As it turns out, what looks like nothing up there in that photo, is actually a valuable piece of our family history–but we only know the value of this photo because we know the story with it. We need those “thousand words” for this picture to make sense, for it to mean something, and for it to be a part of our family’s story.

“Photo Books” are Glorified Shoe Boxes

If your photos are in “photo books,” be sure they are really photo-memory books. Make sure there is a place to write the stories that belong to the photos. If not, a photo book is just a glorified shoe box full of unnamed photos.

Did you know that the first “scrapbooks” were where families stored mementoes and keepsakes, such as locks of hair and photos? Family Bibles were often the family scrapbooks. As pictures became more affordable, families had more and more of them, so photos needed their own books, and photo albums were born.

In some cases, however, as I’m sure you are aware, photos didn’t make it into a book but were kept in shoe boxes.

In the 1980’s, photo albums got a facelift when “scrapbooking” was born. It became creative, embellished, and niche, with a good number of women enjoying the process. Somewhere along the way, however, many women felt that if they weren’t “scrapbookERs,” they couldn’t preserve their photos. (Which is absolutely not true, of course.) When digital photo books came along, that seemed the perfect solution. Click a button and put your pictures in a book. Ta-da!

Except there’s one thing missing: the thing that makes the photos valuable. Their story. Your memories. In writing.

In some cases, this is the fault of the book design, but in some cases people believe the “I’m not a writer” myth.

And that can leave us with a wordless photo book that COULD be worth a thousand words but isn’t worth much at all because we don’t know who is in the photos, why the photos were taken, and the story behind what’s going on in them. The photos, even in a nice book, will have the same value in 20 years when the stories have been forgotten as that 1948 photo of my mom’s childhood home’s garage (until you knew the story, anyway).

So don’t be fooled into thinking that just because a photo is in a book it is preserved. The value of the photo isn’t preserved without some text–the story behind the photo.

How to Write in Photo Albums

If you struggle with writing in photo albums because you don’t know what to write or get stuck at some point along the way, I have a few tips for writing in photo albums and digital scrapbooks that can help. However, if you believe the “I’m not a writer” myth, you should first start with a mindset shift. Adam Grant said it well:

Here are my five tips for writing in photo albums:

1. Let go of perfection. Sure, proofread your photo-memory book before you click the “submit for printing” button to make sure your message says what you meant it to say, but be OK with being human.
2. Use your own voice. If you’re a long paragraph person, just write long paragraphs. If you’d say, “It was super cool,” then just write “It was super cool.” You don’t need a thesaurus. Don’t worry about trying to come up with an alliterative phrase. Use or own perspective, wit, wisdom, or favorite quotes. People who look at your albums (say, a great-grandson) will be glad that you have shown your readers YOU.
3. Write as if you’re talking to a friend. If you went to a family reunion or vacation and showed those photos to a friend, you’d certainly tell your friend what’s in the photos, why you took them, the background behind them, and the memories you have of them. Just write what you would say!
4. Don’t overthink. There’s not a right way and a wrong way to write in your photo-memory books. Write in first person. Or, write in third person. Write in past tense. Or, write to the future. Just do whatever feels natural to you. It’s not wrong.
5. Don’t forget to include details. We just got back from a family reunion, and in 30 years someone reading my digital scrapbook may or may not know who these people are and how we are related. You don’t need to do so on every page, but now and again, add details, such as “my brother Jordan” or “Evelyn is almost 3.” Imagine your great-grandchildren looking through your book. Tell them what they need to know.

So start writing about your photos. And then always write! Find your voice and keep sharing it. It brings your photos to life and gives them value today, tomorrow, and for generations.