You’re headed to the family reunion, camera in hand. You’ve taken on the important role of Scrapbooker for the reunion. Yours is a critical job, since creating a photo collage or digital scrapbook can help keep the memories of those special family moments from fading.

Creating a photo collage not only helps preserve those treasured moments forever … it can also be a fun project. You may have returned from the reunion, but your digital camera’s card can bring you back just as many times as you wish to view your digital scrapbook.

Families today are discovering that the easiest, most innovative and enjoyable way to preserve their family reunion memories is through a digital photo collage. Many busy families lack the time, space, materials, money and patience to create paper scrapbooks. Moreover, in our digital age, we want to download our digital pictures and share them over e-mail with faraway family members. A photo collage or digital scrapbook makes it easy to share photos with your extended family, no matter where they live.

Ideas to Consider When Planning a Scrapbook of Your Family Reunion

• Have trouble with names? Take notes at the reunion so you don’t get Great Uncle Ed mixed up with Great Uncle Fred. Perhaps Uncle Ed is bald and Uncle Fred has hair. You’ll be grateful for your notes when it’s caption time!
• Distinguish individuals.
• Who is the oldest family member?
• Who is the youngest?
• Who has attended the most consecutive reunions?
• Who are the youngest grandparents?
• Which couple has the most children?
• Which couple has the most grandchildren?
• Who traveled the least and greatest distances to attend?
• These will make interesting captions when it’s time to create the digital scrapbook.
• Consider creating a family chart to display all the family members how they are related. Start with the ancestors and show all the cousins, aunts, uncles and other relatives. You can even add pictures of family members if you have them.
• Ask guests to write down their e-mail addresses, home addresses and other contact information so you’ll have it handy when it’s time to share your scrapbook.
• Ask other family members who are taking pictures to e-mail you their favorites to include in the scrapbook.
• Photographing Your Reunion to Optimize Your Digital Scrapbook
• A digital camera is most conducive to making a photo collage, although you can use a still camera and then scan in your photos later. Be sure to charge your camera’s battery before you go and bring a charger or extra battery, camera bag and at least two camera cards with plenty of shots available.
• Take a mixture of candid as well as posed shots. Of course, you’ll want snapshots of the whole family as well as individual family members enjoying reunion activities. Often these will comprise the premier images of your photo collage.

How to Make an Impressive Photo Collage

After the reunion, keep the following tips in mind as you embark on your digital scrapbook:

• If possible, create your photo collage while the reunion is still fresh in your mind.
• Import your photos onto your computer and put them in one folder.
• Create a subfolder of the best pictures from the reunion; name it “photo collage” or “scrapbook pages.”
• Adjust lighting when necessary and delete fuzzy, unflattering, uninteresting, redundant and poor-quality photos.
• Edit your pictures to zoom in on attractive faces and crop out uninteresting backgrounds. Cropping can also conveniently erase saggy bellies and Uncle Ed’s bald head in the corner.
• Consider whether your relatives will like their photos before featuring them in your scrapbook pages and sending them to the family. Your family’s photo collage should be shared and enjoyed rather than be a source of embarrassment!

Create several scrapbook designs to ensure that each member of your family can appreciate at least one photo collage. Choose scrapbook layouts that are most likely to be universally favored by your family of all ages and genders.
When you feel satisfied with your photo collage, it’s time to share your reunion memories with your family—those who attended the reunion as well as those who didn’t.

If you have not included the place and date information about the reunion in the scrapbook itself, be sure to include it in the subject line or somewhere in the e-mail. And by all means, don’t forget to print copies of your scrapbook pages for the older generations and others who may not have Internet access.

Being the scrapbooker of your family reunion can sometimes feel like a daunting job, but with the help of today’s digital scrapbook and photo collage programs, it will be easy and rewarding.