The Photo Scribe: A Writing Guide: How to Write the Stories Behind Your Photographs

by Denis Ledoux

Book Overview

by Denis Ledoux (Author) Many of us can speak easily and even fluently about our experiences, but when we are asked to write them down, we suddenly become wordless... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0961937343
• ISBN13: 9780961937348
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Soleil Press
• Length: 127 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

*the who?what?when? STORIES* will please your Heirs most of all . . .*

The Photo Scribe is a 'how-to-book' for any of us who are crazy about doing more than flip through snapshots. As decades(!) pass, pictures may accumulate while one's filing system deteriorates. We save articles about archival care & materials while trying to hide the fact that our favorite receptacles are shoe boxes. Then like Superman, Denis Ledoux to the rescue! Your photographs, and snapshots for which "enhancement* is now available, deserve careful formatting with clever elegance. Experienced writer Denis Ledoux will answer your many questions and share his successes. A reading of Ledoux' book should give you/me/us more than a subtle nudge in the direction of establishing order. Heaven knows the death of parents, aunts, uncles, even siblings give an unmistakable elbow to the ribs - - to reinforce the pleas from grown children who claim their mess of pottage in the form of orderly (chronological, date-marked) photo albums. And what will please your 'heirs' most are the stories you tell about *who?what?when?* the pictures were being taken. When we finally acknowledge that the problem must be tackled, we opt to give it a Blue Ribbon treatment. And YES, today's county fairs DO award ribbons in a scrapbook category catering to the enthusiasm of those who are 'into' the scrapbooking craze. The cover & even the title page of "Photo Scribe" feature a perfectly replicated handwriting that gives a truly elegant touch because of the unreal evenness of the script. Although not mentioned in the glossary or index, this effect can be achieved by purchasing a FONT of your own writing or printing (or both). The book does include many sources for archival materials, although other proven suppliers (in Rochester & Syracuse NY) are not mentioned. Reviewer mcHaiku stresses that *THE EMPHASIS IS ON THE WRITING*. It gives your pictures a liveliness, and brings a value & validity to your efforts that cannot otherwise be achieved.

How to journal the stories behind your photographs.

What made you take those photographs in the first place? Why do you spend so many hours preserving them? Just what are you trying to express?At some point, you must have decided who your "audience" would be - guests in your home, for whom you write cute and clever quips as captions to your photos? You could create albums just for entertainment. A dry historical record of the names, dates and events you are preserving? Well at least you are helping the family genealogist at some future date. Or something deeper...perhaps a heritage for your descendants someday, in which you express your personal life's story?The Photo Scribe will teach you to do just that; to examine and organize your memories, building a file of "lifestory" experiences until you can journal the real stories behind your photographs. It is a process that you can't rush through quickly, which may be offputting at first to some who (like me) are used to speed scrapping or scrapping with the intent to display photos first and journal as an afterthought. You will learn that even those precious pictures are really just secondary players to the memories you are expressing in your journaling. Think of the lifestory you are writing as the cake and the photos as icing - mere illustrations. You could even journal and scrap a few pages of lifestory without photos at all, where necessary.I will admit to having some problems with these concepts when I started reading The Photo Scribe. The implication that I had breezed through my journaling impatiently and missed the entire point of scrapbooking was a bit depressing. For example, I had never examined my underlying goals for my albums when I started them. If I had, I might have realized that "Jake and Eric, July 2002. My Watermelon Patch Kids!" didn't go far enough in conveying the kind of thoughts and emotions I had while taking that photo of my children among the melon vines. The real memory I wanted to preserve was in how precious and fleeting these early years are and the pure enjoyment of playing in the dirt and sunlight with ladybugs and butterflies alighting on our hair. After my older child had recovered from a serious viral illness just two months earlier, the vignette of them playing together robust and happy that afternoon was what had really inspired me to grab the camera in the first place. If I had planned my page to focus on that, rather than a fun quip, it would have been quite different, not to mention more meaningful to me and to my children. Take heart, you don't have to redo all your old pages. There are ways to incorporate new journaling into existing areas, as the author explains later on. You can even create alternate albums to amuse and delight the casual onlooker and reserve the lifestory albums for your intimate circle of family and friends. The most important thing is that you are creating albums that satisfy not only your need to show off pictures, but the deeper need to share your thoughts and memo

Highly recommended

I have also read numerous books and articles on how to improve your writing skills and telling your life's story. This one is simply the best. It takes you through exercises that are simple, yet effective. I read the book once, and without consciously trying, my writing effectively quadrupled. A few more reads, and I now routinely write 4-5 pages to describe a day's event. Not only that, but the writing style is much tighter, and I have learned not to focus on the obvious, but to focus on the thoughts and feelings of the participants as well. Incidentally, I have also read Joanna Campbell Slan's book. It is different in focus, but if you must choose one, this is definitely the one. Everything else I've read is covered in this book, usually more thoroughly.Note to scrapbookers: this book is definitely useful to scrappers. However, it is *not* a layout book. This is a book about how to write, not how to compose your writing into your scrapbooks. Don't let that turn you off, however. This is easily one of the best purchases I've made.

Excellent guide helps you write the stories behind the photo

I've looked at several books written to help the scrapbooker improve the journaling in photo albums, but this is by far the best. Mr. LeDoux covers the basics of journaling styles, but goes well beyond these to inspire readers to really give some meaningful thought to what they want others to know about the experiences displayed in the scrapbook. He provides food for thought, as in his caution that "cliches will never tell you or your children's children the story behind the photograph." It is easy to caption a picture with such phrases as "oh, where's the sunblock." Go beyond these lines, and really tell about the events, feelings or outcomes of that trip to the beach. Mr. LeDoux's book will help you move toward truly thoughtful and reflective photo-journaling.

I highly recommend this book.

I bought this book after seeing it at a scrapbook convention. I had been wanting to add more journaling to my scrapbooks but was stuck on just what to write and how to write it. The Photo Scribe answered all of my questions. It is a very helpful book. It helps you figure out what information to include and how to structure your journal entries. This book would be helpful for anyone creating a scrapbook or keeping a journal.