Our phones make it easier than ever to capture every moment, but sometimes they also keep us from fully living those moments. Take the picture, then put the phone away and enjoy the people right in front of you. Years from now, your family won’t remember how many photos you took nearly as much as they’ll remember that you were truly present with them.
As parents today, we have something no other generation in history has had….
A camera that’s always within arm’s reach (usually in our back pocket).
It’s incredibly convenient — and honestly, it’s wonderful.
We can capture birthdays, vacations, graduations, funny faces, first steps, family game nights, and random Tuesday afternoons without carrying a bulky camera around or scheduling an elaborate once-a-year photo shoot with a professional photographer.
But that convenience can become a burden.
When our phone is always in our pocket, it’s easy to start feeling like every sweet, funny, silly, or special moment deserves a photo… or a video… or a hundred.
Instead of watching our child score the winning run, we’re watching through a screen.
Instead of listening to everyone sing “Happy Birthday,” we’re trying to get the perfect angle.
Instead of laughing with everyone else, we’re making sure the camera is recording.
Sometimes we’re so busy preserving the memory that we never actually experience it.
Sound familiar?
If this hits a little too close to home, I’ve got a few tips to help you capture memories without missing out on the moments.
1. Give Yourself Permission to Miss Lots of Photos
Not every moment needs to be documented. It’s okay if you don’t photograph every sporting event, every trip to the park, every holiday decoration, every cute outfit.
You don’t need proof that your family had fun.
Your family already knows they had fun.
And sometimes the greatest gift you can give them is your full attention instead of the back of your phone.
2. Take Fewer but Better Photos
Ironically, taking fewer pictures often means you treasure the ones you do take.
Instead of snapping fifty nearly identical photos, just take three.
Instead of recording the entire dance recital, capture one favorite song and spend the rest of the performance simply watching.
Instead of photographing every activity on vacation, maybe you choose one or two moments each day that really capture the experience.
When your camera roll isn’t overflowing with thousands of nearly identical images, it’s much easier to actually enjoy and revisit the photos you have (and much easier to pick and choose if you want to create a photo book with the pictures).
3. Create a Monthly Photo Checklist
This was the game-changer for me about a decade ago… I created a mental checklist of photos I wanted to capture every month, in order to ensure I had enough photos for our family and individual yearly photo books.
This list will look different for every family, but here’s what I decided on for us:
- 1 family picture (could be a selfie, or with a tripod)
- 1 picture of the front of our house (to show how it changes through the years and seasons)
- 2-3 photos of all 4 children together
- 2-4 good photos of each child individually (at least 1 close-up)
- 3-4 photos of various house and yard projects
- 1-4 pictures of any special event, holiday, vacation, birthday party, etc.
There are some months when I take the majority of these pictures in one weekend, and then I don’t have to think about pictures for the rest of the month — unless something extra fun or noteworthy occurs.
It’s very freeing to know I can still document our lives in our photo books, but don’t need to have my camera on-the-ready all the time.
You Don’t Need Fancy Equipment
I have never had a fancy camera or any expensive equipment. I also wouldn’t consider my photos to be masterpieces or works of art… but they document our life just fine!
I’ve always just used my iPhone camera (usually an older iPhone).
The photos automatically upload to my computer, which makes it super simple to edit them and/or import them into my Blurb books.
We do occasionally use a tripod specifically for phones to take some of our family pictures, but that’s the only photography “tool” I have.
Are You Missing Moments?
Take some time today to look through your past few months of photos.
- Did you really need them all?
- Do you feel like you missed out on in-the-moment things because you were too focused on documenting every memory?
- Do you have a plan to create something with the photos you took so your family can actually enjoy looking at them?
Now, think through my mental monthly photo checklist and consider if something like that might work for you — giving you a “free pass” to not always have your camera ready and waiting.
Brittany says
I love this idea! I just had my first child in May and the amount of pictures that I take is overwhelming. This was just the inspiration I needed in order to not make me feel guilty when I delete some photos of her from my phone. I also love the photobook idea for each year of their life.
Jill says
Hi! How do you set the timer on your phone camera?
Andrea says
There’s a timer icon that shows on my screen whenever I open the camera. It can be either 3 seconds or 10 seconds.
Jill says
Mind blown lol! Never noticed that! Thanks!!!!
Andrea says
haha — you learn something new every day! 🙂
Avia says
I need to get that tripod. I always wait to get family pictures when someone else can take the picture. Which hardly ever happens. A few years ago I couldn’t find one family picture to use for our Cmas cards!
Andrea says
Yes, the tripod has been very helpful!
Jennifer says
This post is so helpful! I have so many pictures that either I post on facebook or send in texts… but otherwise nothing is done with them and I would really like to have physical copies to enjoy. I don’t think we take enough pictures for a monthly book- we only have one child- but a quarterly book would be perfect!
I’ve got two in progress in Chatbooks now, one for the family’s last couple of months, and one for my son’s baby pictures to be added as they come up in my facebook memories.
Thanks for the quality insight on your blog! Yours is my favorite, I “discovered” you a couple of months ago and I’m getting a lot of value combing through your posts.
Andrea says
Hey Jennifer — I just want to clarify that we do not order monthly books — we order YEARLY books, but I divide up the pictures by month. So each month has a “set” of pictures, and then we move onto the next month — however, I only actually order the book at the end of the year!
Jennifer says
Ah! That makes sense, thank you!
Andrea says
you’re welcome!
JJ says
You take awesome pictures!!!
Andrea says
thanks 🙂
Pixie508 says
Just like you, I’ve always made my kids a book yearly. I don’t so much have mental checklist, as I try to make sure I’m “aware” enough to remember to take pics in those moments I feel are photo worthy. Often times, family photos or photos of one parent and the kid are selfies, and I’m cool with that.
Also for organization – we’re Android people, so no Apple anything, haha. The last Apple product we got was an iPod my husband bought me when we were dating (circa 2004). All my phone photos auto backup to Google Photos. However, I use Shutterfly for my books, so I use monthly albums there, and only upload photos (plus a handful of spares) to my albums there – so it keeps the photos there to a minimum when I’m trying to make choices
Andrea says
sounds like a good (and very organized) system! Thanks for sharing how it works with your Android!
Linda B. says
My husband and I don’t have Mac computers, so we have to proactively download photos from our iPads and iPhones every once in a while. That’s not a big deal to do, but organizing them is a pain point for me. I am searching for a program or service that will allow me to actually MOVE photos from the main section where I download them into sub folders based on topic…dog photos, 2018 trip to France, etc. I’ve taken classes at the Apple store and basically been told that if I do that in the cloud, it creates another copy of the photo. If you then delete the photo from your main section (or your device), it also deletes it from the sub folder because everything is constantly syncing and if you,be deleted it from your device, they assume you want it deleted from everywhere. Well…that’s not what I want. The purpose is to move photos into the sub folders and off my device so I can free up space and I don’t keep running across them in my main section. I’m wondering if any of your readers have found any service that does what I’m looking for. Although my intent isn’t to keep thousands of photos for all time, I do need to temporarily organize everything into sub folders from multiple devices so that I can ultimately clear out the less desirable pictures and have the rest of them organized so I can then make photo books. Right now I’m at a stopping point based on not being able to locate a service or program that does what I want and my photos are just an electronic mess! I believe I looked st Fliker a while ago and there is a limit to how much you can store and I suspect that during the cleanup process, I’m going to have too many to store there.
Melissa Thorpe says
It’s just my husband and I right now and we’re in that “only 2 pictures in 2007 phase”. LOL. I really do want to be more purposeful about it. We’ve been together almost 7 years… married 3.5 and the majority of our pictures are from our wedding. Hopefully, I can start a mental checklist and it’ll be easier to remember.
Question about the pictures with iCloud. Do you delete them once they sync to your computer? iCloud only has 5GB storage free and I imagine you have way more than that? Since I know you regularly backup your computer, maybe you don’t need them all stored in iCloud forever?
Andrea says
Our pictures are all “shared” with our computers and phones via the cloud (i’m not really sure how it all works) but they are STORED in the “PHOTO” section of our apple products — so I don’t think they are actually stored on the cloud forever and ever.
We do not pay for more storage on the cloud and we’ve never gotten any message that it is full or we have too much stuff saved on the cloud. Again, I’m not exactly sure how it works, but I’m also not too worried about it because we have most of our pictures backed up on Flickr (for free), on a portable hard drive, AND within our Blurb photo book programs — so even if they did somehow get deleted from the Cloud, we wouldn’t actually lose our photos.
Crystal says
Andrea,
Do you include the photos of each individual child in your yearly family album or just the photos of all three children together? Also do the kids individual yearly albums have photos of them with their siblings and you and Dave or just photos of them? Just curious on your system.
Thanks
Andrea says
Crystal,
I include all the photos I listed in the family photo album. I think I linked to the post that shows my albums within this post — but here it is again; https://andreadekker.com/digital-photo-book-page-templates/
Hope this helps!
JJ says
Love this idea of a mental checklist. I have 3 Littles, and my husband came from a family of 3. When going through his baby and childhood pictures, I felt like he had a lot with his older sister but hardly any by himself. So I’ve made sure to get a lot of individual pictures of each kid. I understand that back in the day it may have made it easier, but middle children already have enough issues–haha! And speaking of birth order, based on your posts you can tell Simon isn’t overlooked. You’re doing a great job! If you haven’t read The Birth Order Book by Kevin Leeman, I highly recommend it! Especially since you have one of each–oldest, middle, youngest!
Andrea says
haha — yes, I love Birth Order information!
And yes, one of the main reasons I made my mental checklist is because I wanted to make sure I got individual pictures of EACH child on a regular basis! My youngest sister has almost no pictures of “just her” 🙂
Pixie508 says
JJ – we try to do at least something with each kid individually on a pretty regular basis, so we take that time to take a pic of whichever kid is out doing the “thing” – this helps to make sure we have individual photos. Like last week, I chaperoned a school field trip, so it was a natural time to grab a few of just that kid, and a couple of him and me together.
Jennifer says
Every time I see your great family photos I remind myself we need to do the same. I take all of our pics and all of them are of our son and nature scenes with occasion snaps including my husband. We don’t get many pics of us as a family, actually almost never. The rest of the family does ask…so I need to try harder.
I would love to know if you have any tricks/techniques for taking your great iPhone photos. I know there are iPhone camera functions that would make pics look better, but I get woozy with tutorials online and would love to read one of your posts on the subject. (Hint, hint)
Andrea says
Thanks Jennifer.
Believe it or not, I don’t use any special Apps or programs or tutorials at all — just the basic camera App that comes standard on all iPhones. I do edit the photos with PicMonkey (a free program) so that’s where I can crop them, lighten them, sharpen them, etc. But the camera part is all very basic!
Jenny says
I had never heard of PicMonkey so searched for it, and it says it’s not free- looks like there is a monthly cost of $7.99?
Andrea says
hmmmm… I have been paying for the pro version for several years now, so I just assumed they still had the free version. I’ll have to look into that and update it in my post. Thanks!
Avia says
This is brilliant and I will be putting some thought into what my checklist will be. I feel like I always need to have my iphone with me so I don’t miss the “perfect shot”. I think this is a great way to not only limit the amount of photos to weed through but to be more present.
Andrea says
yes, I get a few GOOD photos every month and leave my phone in my purse or pocket a lot of the time — it has been very freeing for me!
Karen says
Your system is a great one! I wish I had started organizing our photos years ago………I’m going to go back and read all your posts. I have an Iphone ~ how do your photos automatically download t o your computer? Off subject……….I always thought James looked like you, but that photo with him holding a Q`tip ~ totally you 😉
Andrea says
Thanks Karen — and I guess I should have clarified… our iPhone upload the pictures automatically to our MAC computers. They won’t do that with any other computer. Everything is synced through the “cloud”
Also, yes, James definitely favors my side of the family (he looks almost identical to my dad’s baby pictures — and he’s ironically named after my dad!)
Melissa says
What service do you use to make these books? I need to make a few for my girls artwork from the past few school years and I used to use qoop.com and they went out of business and so far I can’t find a decent comparable place. I’d live softcover, basic books, nothing fancy. Maybe I’m just not looking in the right places….
Karen says
Have you checked out Chatbooks? They are soft ~ $8 ~ softcover and free shipping.
Andrea says
Yes, I’ve heard of chatbooks — but I like to be able to customize all my layouts and and I use WAY more than 366 photos 🙂
Also, the books are only $8 for 30 pages. The prices go up if you add more pages — and my family books are over 200 pages!!
I think Chatbooks could be an awesome idea for someone who just wants to get a few pictures printed in a cute book, but they aren’t exactly what I’m looking for in a photo book.
Andrea says
I use Blurb — I believe I linked to that post in today’s post, but here’s the link again: https://andreadekker.com/digital-photo-book-page-templates/
Melissa A says
Thanks to you both! I’ll check out Chatbook and Blurb. I’m only trying to make books of art and the older they get the less art there is, so 30 pages might be enough…
Pixie508 says
Melissa – also checkout Shutterfly. I sometimes wait til they offer a free book where you just pay shipping. Makes the price very reasonable
Ann says
I like how each of your books has a similar layout for the cover. It is so easy to see at a glance how much changing and growing has occurred!
We take a photo every Christmas wit hour 4 kids in front of the tree each holding up fingers to indicate the year. (The oldest holds up two fingers, next holds up a fist for zero, 3rd holds up 1 finger, and the youngest will hold up 6 fingers this year.) I use this photo as my book cover every year. It is fun to watch the changes! (It goes from oldest tallest down to youngest to now the oldest is shortest and the line grows up to the youngest!) Grandkids have been added in as necessary.
Andrea says
Thanks Ann 🙂
Love the idea of the 4 kids holding up the number for the year — we might have to figure out a way to do that too!