Scrapbook photos are a big part of most journals or memory books. It's

a given that you'll need a few snapshots to fill out a page and tell

the story. Yet, it's also pretty easy to go overboard with your

pictures.

We all have that show box full of old photos, and snapshots. For some

of us it's lifelong goal to use everyone of them in a scrapbook but

this isn't always a good idea.

I remember many years ago when I attended a college photography class

the instructor made a point to tell us that not every picture we took

would end up perfect. Most in fact would not be usable at all and only

a few, if we were lucky, were worth keeping. I've since learned that

this is true, and it's always a good idea to crop the chaff from the

wheat.

With this in mind, don't feel too bad about throwing away some pictures

that you simply know your never going to use. We all have them. If

they're blurry or out of focus, or simply not a good angle of auntie

Jane, throw them out and you'll be doing you both a favor.

If they are special in some way you can always store them digitally on

disks or in archive boxes. In this way they won't get mixed up with

the really good shots that have potential in your pages.

In the old days, I shifted from prints to slides since I knew I would

only get a few good shots (maybe) out of a roll. These days with

new digital cameras it's a snap to save or delete what you want, then

download it on a computer and print it out on high quality photo paper

or take it to a developer as a disk. Photo technology is an amazing

thing!

Photo editing also lends a good deal of creativity to your scrapbooks.

Using a tool like Adobe Photoshop or other picture editor, you can take

one might look like a rather basic snapshot and play with the colors

and tones to make a unique picture. I did this with some recent photos

of my two daughters. They were simple posed head shots that we tinted

and created a colorful addition to their memory books.

Also remember that using a degree of spacing actually gives the really

great photos more attention and exposure. Don't just cram every photo

you have onto a page and fill it up. Mix them up with some simple

embellishments and details. This way you'll highlight them rather than

diffuse them into a collage.

Try to remember that as important as pictures are to our scrapbooking

efforts, they aren't everything. In fact, some of the very best pages

we have ever seen had few pictures on them. You can tell a story in

many ways. With words, with images, with accents and with color. Your

photos are just one of many ways to create that perfect page.

Kim Washburn has been scrapbooking for nearly two decades. She founded and continues to publish her scrapbooking resource site at http://www.scrapbookphd.com

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