The Photo Scribe: A Writing Guide / How to Write the Stories Behind Your Photographs (Paperback)

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..." (more)
Key Phrases: cameo narratives, indirect dialogue, Limited Lifelist, Aunt Mary, Extended Lifelist

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Having been a diligent scrapbooker for over 25 years, I felt that I was already capturing the meaning of the photos in my albums, but The Photo Scribe has inspired me to new levels of photo-journaling. This practical step-by-step guide can enable anyone to discover the depth of her memories." -- Rhonda Anderson, co-founder of Creative Memories, providers of products and classes dedicated to photo-safe preservation

"The Photo Scribe is an effective way to make sure your pictures will share your precious memories with generations to come." -- Michael Benard, Director, Communications and Public Affairs, Vice President, Eastman Kodak

Product Description
The best guide available for remembering and writing stories that turn regular photo albums into lifestory photo albums. 128 pages of helpful text, hands-on exercises, and lifestory examples. The Photo Scribe helps to recall the stories of your life and will show you how not only to write better captions but to go beyond captions into lifestory writing. Your albums can go from being just lovely pages to telling your story and the story of your family.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 127 pages
• Publisher: Soleil Press; 1st edition (October 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0961937343
• ISBN-13: 978-0961937348
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #649,770 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended, March 27, 2001

By	"[e-mail]" (Moorpark, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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.

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent guide helps you write the stories behind the photo, July 21, 2000

By	Gwyneth Calvetti (West Salem, WI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to journal the stories behind your photographs., June 15, 2003

By	A. Ryan "Merribelle" (Westminster, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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 memories.
-Andrea, aka Merribelle.