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Pictures and Stories

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Salt Lake City, Utah
801.906.0609
your life. in a book.™

Pictures and Stories

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How to Email a Full-Resolution Photo

April 14, 2014 Alison Taylor
 Here's the scoop on emailing a photo from your computer, smart phone, or tablet at its original resolution.

 

Here's the scoop on emailing a photo from your computer, smart phone, or tablet at its original resolution.

What is the point of having a camera (or digital device) with ginormous giga-megapixels if you're only going to put it on Facebook, anyway?

Because someday you might actually want to print something, that's why.

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In pictures
16 Comments

3 Design Tricks to Make Your Book More Readable

April 9, 2014 Alison Taylor
 A compelling book design will draw your reader in to the story.

 

A compelling book design will draw your reader in to the story.

I'm feeling generous today, so I'm going to give away three professional book design secrets that anyone can use to improve the readability of any book.

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In pictures
Comment

How to Choose Pictures for a Memoir or Family History Book

March 31, 2014 Alison Taylor

You've written your narrative, and now you're ready to choose what photos you want to go with it. But how do you choose the gems from the stacks and boxes of slides, photos, and documents? Here are a few things to consider:

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In pictures
1 Comment

Family Mementos - Keep or Toss?

March 28, 2014 Alison Taylor
Are your mementos bringing you joy or weighing you down? (Photo by Julia Freeman-Woolpert)

Are your mementos bringing you joy or weighing you down? (Photo by Julia Freeman-Woolpert)

Making decisions about our "family history assets" can leave even the neatest of the neatnicks among us paralyzed with fear. 

What do we do with the accumulation of photos, objects, and other memorabilia that have been handed down to us or that we have collected ourselves? Keep it and burden yet another generation with boxes of stuff? Toss it and face the possibility of losing something of true sentimental or monetary value?

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In pictures, stories
Comment

A "Story Genealogy" Book - By the Numbers (Part Two)

March 26, 2014 Alison Taylor
In this book we created for a client, we started with a couple about five generations back and included all their descendants to the present time. This chart shows the couple's eight children, each of whom are numbered. We used their birth order as …

In this book we created for a client, we started with a couple about five generations back and included all their descendants to the present time. This chart shows the couple's eight children, each of whom are numbered. We used their birth order as the chapter order for the book. 

In the last post we talked about creating a story book about your ancestors, starting with yourself (or your subject) as number one and going back in time.

You can also create a descendancy book: start with an ancestor a few generations back and movie into the present time, highlighting each of his/her descendants.

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In pictures, stories
Comment

A "Story Genealogy" Book - By the Numbers (Part One)

March 24, 2014 Alison Taylor
Want to create a book about your ancestors, but don't have a clue where to start? Start with a simple pedigree chart.

Want to create a book about your ancestors, but don't have a clue where to start? Start with a simple pedigree chart.

At Rootstech last month, a woman stopped me in the hall after my presentation and told me she wanted to create a book about her ancestors, but she didn't have any idea how to organize it. How many generations to include? What if she had more information about some ancestors and very little about others? What order should she put it in?

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In pictures, stories
2 Comments

A "Thank You" Book for Mothers/Fathers Day

March 20, 2014 Alison Taylor
A tribute book can be a great way to honor your parents, grandparents, or other loved ones. You can put one together in a relatively short time.

A tribute book can be a great way to honor your parents, grandparents, or other loved ones. You can put one together in a relatively short time.

I've been thinking about my grandmother lately, as March is the month of her birth. This amazing woman, born just after the turn of the last century, lived to celebrate her 100th birthday and passed away just a few months later in 2006.

As a birthday present for her milestone, I made a little book for her, which I brought with me when I went back East for her birthday party. 

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In stories, pictures
1 Comment

Reluctant Subject? How to Write a "Tribute" Life Story Book

March 12, 2014 Alison Taylor
You want to write a life story book about a loved one, but he's not so hot on the idea. What to do?

You want to write a life story book about a loved one, but he's not so hot on the idea. What to do?

You want to write a life story book about a loved one, but he's not so hot on the idea. What to do?

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In stories, pictures
2 Comments

Tips for Photographing Sentimental Objects

March 10, 2014 Alison Taylor
Using a clean, uncluttered background and natural light will show off your item to best advantage.

Using a clean, uncluttered background and natural light will show off your item to best advantage.

If you are working on or contemplating a family history or life story project, here's some food for thought: why not include photographs of special memorabilia? It might be your grandmother's favorite tea cup or your father's watch, your favorite childhood doll or even the car you drove on your first date.

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In pictures
2 Comments

The Funnel Method for Scanning Photos - Infographic

March 3, 2014 Alison Taylor

This concept is crucially important in digitizing photos, whether you will use them in a life story project or just to protect and share them. And yet proper scanning seems to be the hardest thing to explain to our clients and students. So here's my attempt at a real-live infographic to explain it. 

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In pictures
6 Comments
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    • Oct 31, 2016 3 Steps to Writing a Story About Your Life

HERE'S OUR INSTAGRAM FEED

Thanks, London, for making us feel so welcome. We'll see you again someday. #epicfamilyhistorytour #rootstechlondon
Oxford, vertical edition. As much vertical as Instagram will allow, anyway. #theylookbetteronfacebook #epicfamilyhistorytour #rootstechlondon
A beautiful fall day at Oxford, landscape edition. #epicfamilyhistorytour #rootstechlondon
Final day at #rootstechlondon, then rush to the V & A for the last hour before it closes! Then a walk across the Millennium Bridge for a glimpse of the Globe and the city at night, plus a beautiful poetry/video art installation, projected onto St
Long, fun day at #rootstechlondon! 4 presentations down, one to go... Celebrated with dinner at a 500-yr-old pub where Dickens used to hang and which is now owned by Gandalf. #epicfamilyhistorytour
We're here! Tom's up first today, with "Capturing Family Stories in Video Clips" at 14:00. I'm here early to attend the first class, I'm so excited. What a great conclusion to our #epicfamilyhistorytour ! #rootstechlondon #picturesandstorie
Hello, London! So excited for Rootstech. #epicfamilyhistorytour #rootstechlondon #picturesandstories #yourlifeinabook
Our host showed us these amazing travel scrapbooks his mother made in the 1930s and '40s, complete with hand drawn maps and illustrations. We will miss this place! London, here we come...
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RootsTech 2025
Mar 3, 2025
RootsTech 2025
Mar 3, 2025
Mar 3, 2025
Speaking at RootsTech 2024
Feb 28, 2024
Speaking at RootsTech 2024
Feb 28, 2024

We are so excited to be back at RootsTech live this year! Come by and see the Pictures and Stories booth (#1609) and see some of the many new books we’ve helped our clients create. Alison is giving two in-person classes: The Seven Deadly Sins of Building a Digital Archive, and Making a Genealogy Story Book. Hope to see you there!

Feb 28, 2024

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