Capture Your Days || Step Four: Choose your End Product

What will you do with your pictures and words? It would be a shame to spend a day taking notes and photos without recording these in some tangible way. Having your end goal in mind is helpful when deciding your timing, camera and notebook. Perhaps this post should have been first in this series. My end goal almost always determines which camera and which day I choose for a session.

Some recording options include:

- Social Media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc)

- Blog Post

- Photo Album (photobook or scrapbook)

My first session was posted on Instagram live. I have since done a few on Instagram and on this blog. I enjoy the live feedback from Instagram but prefer the quality of photos taken with my DSLR. Each has a very different tone: The iPhone/ Instagram posts are picture heavy with very few words; I tend to focus on a theme like "hands." The DSLR/ blog posts are higher quality pictures curated from a large group of photos with words detailing our activities in a fuller, more journalistic narrative.

Whatever your end product is, be sure that you edit your work. 

Curate your photos to the ones that best tell the story of your day. 

I chose to use a photo highlighting one of August's toys rather than an adorable, smiley picture of August in an oversized chair. The abandoned toy on the floor tells a better story than the posed picture of my son. I had a nice posed photo of Brandon and August when Brandon came home from work. I opted for the picture of the dump truck ride instead. I love the posed pictures and they will be in our photo albums but not as a part of our Capture the Day session.

   

Refine your words to tell a compelling story.

I made Brandon read my recent session post to be sure it was interesting. I want to write our story in a way that honors the details of a life lived well. These mundane, ordinary days are very important to our development as a family. Our story deserves to be told in an engaging manner. When you edit your notes, write your story in a way that highlights its importance to you and your family.  

Thanks for following along with this series. Please let me know if you have ideas to share or any questions. 

To view all of the posts in this series, click here.

Capture Your Days || Step Three: Choose your Notebook

Choosing a medium for note-taking is important. You will want to keep them all in one place so they are easy to locate when you are ready to compile and curate your documented day. You can jot notes throughout the day in a designated notebook or in a notes app on your phone. Even non-smart phones normally have a notes app of some sort. (I use the Simple Note app for iPhone.)

Journaling tips:

Take quick notes throughout the day when you take a picture, change an activity or every hour, on the hour. In the moment, just write enough to remember the details. You will edit and elaborate these notes at a later time. I recommend editing your notes within a week of doing a Capture the Day session. You don't want too much time to pass if your note-taking was in shorthand. 

Here is an example from my notes during our summer session:

Unedited

1:30 pm: lunch of last night's leftovers. greek chicken on pita wtih cucumbers tomatoes and peppers. iced coffee and chatter with Mum. 

2 pm: Play on living room floor. Mum brought pics so we look and talk about New York. August cranky while playing in space mobile.

Edited

1:30 pm: Mum joins us for lunch of last night's leftovers: Greek chicken on pita with cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers.  

2 pm: We dessert on iced coffee and visit for a bit while August plays with blocks and his spaceship. Mum brought pictures of August on the MG so we look and talk about her upcoming trip to New York for Rutledge's wedding. He gets cranky for a nap. 

The edited version is not longer but it is easier to read complete sentences with proper punctuation.

To view all of the posts in this series, click here.

Capture Your Days || Step Two: Choose your Camera

Pick your Camera

Decide which camera you want to use. Any camera will work, of course, but keep your end goal in mind. If you want to share your pictures on your favorite social media platform, use your phone camera so you can quickly edit and upload during the day. If you want high quality images to turn into a photo book or print for a scrapbook, pick up your digital camera (point-and-shoot or DSLR). If you enjoy shooting with your film camera but don't pick it up often enough, this is your chance. These sessions are as much about stretching ourselves as they are about memory keeping. 

You can use different cameras throughout the day, but I find it is best to stick with one designated camera. Each camera produces a different type of photo, and I want my session to have a cohesive feel.

Take Pictures

It is easy to get in a picture-taking rut. Here are a few ideas for different, creative pictures:

- Please get in the pictures with your family. I am so passionate about this- our kids need to see the way we smile, the way our eyes light up in their presence. They need our joy to be captured and reflected upon in the future. Embrace the camera! (For more information and tips, read this.)

- Take pictures of your children (duh)

- Take pictures of things, especially rituals. Do you make coffee every morning? Snap a picture. Do you restack the board books every night before bedtime? Grab your camera. Is your counter lined with drying baby bottles? Document it.

- Play with angles. Stoop low to your child's eye level. Stand on top of a chair to get the bird's eye view. Tilt your camera on an angle so your subject is diagonal.

- Hold up an ordinary, everyday object against your wall (coffee cup, toy, car keys, pruning shears, favorite book)

I am always looking for a new way to view the ordinary. Please share your favorite camera perspectives with us in the comments section.

To view all of the posts in this series, click here.

Capture Your Days || Step One: Choose your Timing

Pick your Day

The first Capture the Day session I undertook was my first Mother's Day (2013). The second session was Thanksgiving 2013. The third and subsequent sessions have been on random, ordinary days. Whether you choose a special day or an ordinary one is irrelevant. I recommend choosing a day when your activities will be conducive to cameras and small moments for journalling. Perhaps a day at a water park or on the beach or snow skiing is not the best day to lug a camera around with you. I also like to pick a day that doesn't involve a lot of errands since I'd likely forget to take pictures while grocery shopping. Don't let that stop you though! I bet kids loaded in a grocery cart amongst cereal and vegetables would be an amazing memory to capture. 

Decide your Time Increments

You will want to divide your day in different increments. I prefer hourly or morning, afternoon, evening. If you choose hourly, you could note the specific time (ie- 4:09 am) or just the hour range (ie- 4-5 am). Morning, afternoon, evening is a great way to document the overall tone of your day. I think this method works really well if you do an activity (ie- homeschool, soccer games) for several hours in a row. The practicality of the day's events help determine which increments of time you should choose. 

There is not often a rhyme or reason to when I choose to do a Capture the Day session. I take things one hour at a time because the clock is a great reminder for me to check in. Every hour I try to take notes. Each time our activity changes, I snap some pictures. At the end of the day, I have a full camera card and small details journaled and ready to be edited. 

To view all of the posts in this series, click here.

Capture Your Days || Introduction

Recently, I shared one of our Capture the Day sessions and it occurred to me that a short series on the subject might be nice. I have said this before: we are the memory keepers for our families. When I was younger, my mother recorded a cassette tape of my brothers' conversations. Sadly, the tape has since been lost, but the idea inspires me. Wouldn't you like to know what you did during a normal day from your childhood? Let's do this for ourselves and for our children.

It occurs to me that all of my memory keeping (photography and journaling) is 100% from my perspective. When August looks back on his life, he will see his father's perspective in short films and my perspective in our family albums. When August is older, I hope to have him journal a "day in the life" feature. I hope I remember that idea years from now. If any of you try this with your older children, please share a link to your results in the comments.

Because we are more likely to remember (and photograph) special days, normal ones need documenting too. If you are interested in doing your own #capturetheday session, I highly recommend it. The key is to just start: start snapping and start writing. I've done this on special days and on ordinary days. Pick a day and start. Hopefully, you will find great beauty within the mundane routine of your day.

Starting tomorrow, I will be breaking down each step over the next month. Here is what you can look forward to-

Step One: Choose your timing

Step Two: Choose your camera

Step Three: Choose your notebook

Step Four: Choose your end product