Pictures and Stories at RootsTech 2014

We are both excited to be presenting at the RootsTech conference next week!  RootsTech is the largest genealogy and family history conference in North America and will be at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City Feb 6-8. Tom is teaching two classes: "How to Interview Yourself for a Personal History" and "45 Stories in 45 Minutes." Alison is teaching two classes: "How Not to Bore Your Family and Friends: Storytelling 101" and "From Chaos to C.A.L.M.--Organizing Digital Photos for a Life Story Project."

Some of these classes will be broadcast live at www.rootstech.org, including Tom's "Interview" class. You can see the online broadcast schedule here.

If you will be attending the conference, we will be in the "How to Save Your Life" booth in the Vendor Hall, so be sure to stop by and say hello!

The Worst Advice We've Ever Heard About Writing a Memoir

We don’t know who first said it, but somebody must have, because most every person we meet who is writing about their life tries to do it this way:

"Start at the beginning, and write in chronological order."

That’s why we have so many of our clients come to us for help after they’ve finished one-and-a-half chapters and quit in frustration. Why is this a bad way to write your own life stories?

You guessed it—because you don’t actually remember the beginning of your life. It requires research. Even if you’re just calling your Aunt Milly to see who else came to the hospital, it’s still research, and gives you one more thing to procrastinate.

Also, your birth is not usually the most interesting event in your life either, unless you were born in hurricane or a taxi or Paris.

That’s not to say that a memoir shouldn’t be a chronological narrative—you just shouldn’t write it in that way.

So if you’re working on a memoir with or without professional help, we’ll give you a little FREE instruction:

Start with the low-hanging fruit. Er, stories.

First, jot down as many memories (in short phrases that will recall the incident to your mind) as you can on a chronological timeline (we will talk more about this in future posts.)  Circle a few that are the most important for you to tell.

Then pick the easiest one to tell and write it down. (Put it aside, you’ll edit it later.)

Then pick the next easiest one and write it down.

Keep going, from easiest to hardest. You will gain confidence as you go along, rather than getting bogged down from the very beginning.

Pretty soon, you’ll have a little collection of stories, which you can then put in whatever order you choose (chronological, thematic, flashbacks) and do some editing.

Taa daaaa! Before you know it you will have magically created a rough first draft of your entire narrative, which will make you feel a lot cooler than having one and a half unfinished chapters in a drawer somewhere.

JPEG, TIF, PNG - What you need to know about file formats

There are a gazillion articles on the internet that explain all the gory details of photo file formats. But we know you don’t have time to read all that stuff, and probably aren’t interested in compression algorithms anyway.

So, if you are in the midst of collecting and scanning photos, creating a family history book, or just trying to get them organized, here it is in a nutshell:

SCAN TIF FOR PRINT wherever possible. TIFs are the highest quality, and the biggest file size. If you ever want to use any of your photos in print (like in a book or to hang on the wall), our recommendation is to scan your originals as .tif (or .tiff) files. They are uncompressed, which means you get to keep all your pretty pixels and won’t have to see artifacts (blocky or jagged edges) in your printed photos.

JPEG IS FOR WEB USE. Jpegs are compressed files, which means they are smaller and will load faster for electronic uses, like the internet, email, etc. If you are only ever going to use your photos for a website, period, jpeg is your baby.

“What about my digital camera/cell phone photos, you say? They come as jpegs.”

There is nothing wrong with a jpeg photo, if properly used. Here are the rules of JPEG:

Always capture (take the picture), save, or scan your photo on the MAXIMUM or highest quality setting, if you might ever want to print it. Anything smaller may look great on a computer screen but will look fuzzy or blocky when printed.

Don’t edit and re-edit a jpeg. If you want to edit your photo—autocorrect the color, crop, draw on a mustache, whatever—saving and re-saving your jpeg will compress (degrade) the image each time. If you are going to edit a photo, make a TIF copy and then edit it. Then you can save a copy of the edited TIF as a JPEG for web use.

OUR RECOMMENDATIONS:

Scan as TIF, or at least a maximum quality JPEG if that’s all your scanner will do.

Capture as maximum quality JPEG. Then make a TIF copy for editing.

Share (upload, email, text, etc.) as JPEG. After you have a high-quality TIF scan or maximum JPEG capture, then make a smaller JPEG copy to upload to your family blog, Facebook, Ancestry.com or Family Search, etc. (With most photo-editing software, you can convert a whole folder of photos from TIF to JPEG in one fell swoop.)

What about PNG files? PNGs are usually used for the web, but they can handle transparency (dropping out a background, etc.). Don’t scan photos as PNGs if you ever want to print them, as they can sometimes cause problems with print drivers. Scan as TIF and then make a PNG copy if you need one.

That’s it! Any questions?