What to do with too many photos

I'll confess right now, I'm not a great photographer. To make up for that, I take a ton of photos. Many I delete before I print, but sometimes I still sit down to create a layout and have to weed through a pile of 15-20 photos. Sound familiar?

With any pile of photos, there are many stories you could tell.

• The story of the action in the pictures
• The story leading up to the action in the pictures
• Your feelings about the action
• Another person's feelings about the action
• How these photos are part of a tradition or a break from it
• How these photos show a personality or relationship

The list could go on. You could tell any of these stories about one photo (much less a pile of 15). So how do you deal with that pile? I start out by spreading them out on my workspace.

Usually a few photos really catch my attention either because of the photo itself or because of the way it captures the moment. I look for the story I want to tell with these photos and save the rest for later.
In this set, a few things stood out to me:

• a photo of my daughter wrapped in a towel - this will be a story about her personality and what she was like that summer
• a series of 3 or 4 of my son pouring water - another personality layout
• a few (3 or 4) of my kids playing together in the pool - this will be about the action in the photos - the pool, the summer heat, the two playing

This breakdown made my pile seem much more manageable. Now I wasn't dealing with 15 photos of one event. I was dealing with three different stories and the photos that went along with them. Each story by itself was very manageable - just a few photos, one layout.

I put aside the photos that didn't fit with any of these stories (like the ones of my feet in the pool.) I may come back to these photos later and find another story I want to tell. Then I created the layout about the kids playing in the pool. Here's a sneak preview:

Check back next month for the full reveal!

Next time I sit down to create, I'll be ready to work on one of the others. If you are saving photos for another scrapping session, I suggest you separate and label your groups of photos. It is frustrating to find the pile of 15 all bunched together again and not remember the decisions you've made. (Yes, I am speaking from experience.)

This story approach is only one way to deal with the pile of 15 photos. You could also create an interactive page, print the photos in a collage, create a mini book, but those are topics for another day!