Yearly Photo

I saw this idea on Flickr a few months ago (I made this in March), but recently I've seen several different variations floating around Pinterest.

For a yearly photo that records a little more information than a picture alone, you want a photo of your child against a solid colored background.  This is a blue door in downtown Lebanon.  Position your child so that you have a good bit of blank space in the photo.  In this one, my negative space is to his side, but you could also position your child sitting and then leave blank space above them.  They could even be holding some balloons to the side.  Or if they are really into a certain object/activity you could include that in the photo.  For example, my son could have been sitting with a toy tractor.  But overall, I think it is best to keep the photo pretty simple to focus on the words. 

Here's my original photo, so obviously I did some enhancements in photoshop. I think the only critical thing would have been to remove the door knob and crop out the door frame on the side.  You could do that in most of the free photo editing programs, or if not you just want to make sure you position your child against a space without anything like that which would have to be removed.

For the final step, I just used a few different fonts and typed over the photo.  I am really unfamiliar with anything but Photoshop, but I would think this is possible in the other photo editing programs?  If not, Photoshop Elements is not that expensive and well worth the money!!! I made my travel cards with it (posted last week), I use it for digital scrapbooking, and of course I edit all my photos with it (and sometimes I use Lightroom too).  You can download a free 30 day trial from the Adobe website if you're interested in trying it. Here is a link:  Adobe Photoshop Downloads

For the past 5 years, I've done a yearly family scrapbook and then 2 years ago started doing a book for each child on a yearly basis.  I will share those soon (when I get caught up!), but they are alot more work than this photo.  As moms, we always intend to record more memories than we are able to end up actually doing.  This is a great quick way to make sure you get some of the things about each child recorded yearly.