Rochester NY Family Photographer | Need help with more than just your professional portraits? Check out this guest blog post from Living Joy Photo and learn about what she does to turn your everyday photos into tangible memories!

Hello, I am Jennifer and I have a photo organizing business- Living Joy Photo (www.livingjoyphoto.com). It is my mission to help people find JOY in their photo collection and make meaningful creations with those photos. Today I want to share some information on creating with your photos.

I am sure because you are here you are a fan of Teale’s photography. She takes beautiful photos of families and children, it’s these prized photos that are usually displayed in our homes telling of special moments and occasions in our family story. But… it’s not the whole story. It’s not uncommon for us to accumulate thousands of photos on our phones often documenting the little moments of our life, babies first bath, a special sleep over with grandma, exploring a nature trail with friends and so on. We take these photos because we want to remember the moment, we make the effort to take the photo but then what? They sit on our phone and eventually get lost in the sea of more photos.

I am here today to encourage you to think about creating photo albums! Taking your photos off your phone and creating something special and meaningful that tell your story. I love photo albums, as a child I loved looking through my parents’ photo albums and I have made many for my family over the years. It is known that having photos around our home for children to see has many benefits. It improves their self-esteem, and tells them that they are valued and an important member of the family. It helps reinforce their memories, helping children hold onto special moments that otherwise would eventually be forgotten. It can also deepen family relationships, even when family lives far away or has passed away, sharing photos and telling stories of makes them more present in the child’s life.

So yes, we’ve established creating with our photos is a good thing. Photo albums can have so many benefits, you can display many photos and it’s easy for even little children to pick up and enjoy. So, I have some photo album theme suggestions for you:

• A yearly photo album, this can just be photos or you could add some journaling. After the past year we have all had this would be a great way to remember how so much has changed in our lives and how we overcame the challenges of pandemic life.
• Vacation, did you go on a special vacation that you would like to document? Putting all your photos into one album is a great way to remember fun times adventuring. To take this a step further you could add in a map of your travels. You could also add pictures of travel tickets, brochures or memorabilia from your trip.
• Special milestones as children grow up. You could do a photo book of your baby’s first year. I did a special photo book for my children when they turned 13. I included pictures of them over the past 13 years and asked friends and family to write letters of advice and encouragement as my children entered their teen aged years.
• Graduation album. This is a very monumental moment in a child’s life. This is a great time to look back over the past 18 years and celebrate all they have accomplished and the future that lays before them. Including school pictures K-12 really shows how much they have grown.
• You can go beyond the formal wedding pictures and include everything from the showers to the rehearsal to the wedding and reception and the honeymoon.
• Special anniversary. This is an opportunity to show the growth of your relationship and your family in a way that tell the story of what makes your family special.
• This is the ultimate family story. Looking back over generations and documenting where your family has come from. If you enjoy genealogy research this is a good way to display what you have discovered to share with family.

So, you can get so creative with photo albums but sometimes in that creativity it can become so overwhelming that we become paralyzed. I have written a blog post over on my site giving you some easy steps if you want to start building your own photo album. It doesn’t have to be difficult or complicated. But if that is still too much for you, I can help! Part of my business in helping people tell stories with their photos through photo albums. I offer a few different types and sizes of albums. My clients send me the pictures they want in their albums and I design it, we can add journaling if wanted and then send if off to be printed. I do have an option for a family yearbook, you can send me all of your photos for that year and I choose the best pictures to tell your story. For more information click here (www.livingjoyphoto.com/services/)

Whatever you decide to do, whether you’re ready to start building your own photo album or you are ready to have someone like me make it for you or you just want to file this away as interesting but not today. I hope I at least get you thinking of how you can use your photos as tell your story.

For more information check me out on IG (www.instagram.com/livingjoyphoto) or FB (Living Joy Photo – Home | Facebook) or on my website. Drop me a line with any questions (www.livingjoyphoto.com/contact/)

_

Teale Brown Photography is a Rochester, NY based photographer specializing in newborn photography and family photography. She also loves to photograph maternity, senior portraits and those big milestones throughout baby’s first year. Teale sets herself apart by delivering not only stunning images, but also a superior customer service experience.