Real time is great but the secret to telling a story is to select what to show and when, in a sequence, to show it. Doesn’t matter if it’s a historic event (like my wife’s Holiday time family reunion ) or a more “daily life” story (like my daughter’s Pollock painting project ) you will still have to choose.

The first thing to know is that you will have to throw out some great shots to make the story work. This is affectionately known as “throwing out the baby” in video editing. Look at the deleted scenes on a DVD. Often times they’re great scenes, but they just don’t fit into the overall story. A great example is the sub-plot about the henchman who gets flattened in the first “Austin Powers” movie. It’s a very funny sequence, but it would have slowed down the entire movie- so it got tossed.

To focus on a moment say to yourself “what does this image say”? And imagine how what text you could add to provide a context. This is effective whether the book is for you alone, or to be shared with others. I have dozens of images from the sequence of shots of Miranda painting like Pollock and with each one I was looking at what was unique about her expression or action pose – and what did it say about her and her obvious commitment to her project.

Really look closely at the images and pick them apart in your mind. Look at the angle, the action, the expressions – and grade each in your mind’s eye for how they express something real and clear. What you will treasure is how editing turns something simple into something eternal.

If you have similar shots you can use them all to underscore the essence of the moment, but many times you will want to choose just one. Look at each one, one at a time, and gauge (and this is very tricky) which one makes you feel right. It could be the lighting or a twitch of a smile – but once you choose, let the others go.

The next insight I can give is how to order the shots from an event. Yes, running in chronological order is good, but sometimes the mood of a sequence of shots is more important than when they were taken. An example is the book I made from the family reunion. I introduced the characters with a group shot and then single images of each family member. Then I grouped pages around the activities that happened during the long weekend when we were all together. So I have the nature walk, the walk on Drake’s beach, the ping-pong marathons, and the quiet (but intense) board games. You will see a mixture of people hugging with incidents from throughout the weekend. The body language and obvious affection everyone has says so much about the joy of this event. For me, this kind of thematic selection says more about how 14 people who have only been together once before interacted during a magical time.

Finally, I pick shots that are fun. Sometimes they are blurred or not the most perfect images, but I like the energy or the way they look next to each other. For my book about our family trip to New York, New York Trip 2006, I knew that not every image was perfect, but the whirlwind nature of the trip is perfectly captured by the “run and gun” shooting style- communicating the intense but thrilling feelings of the trip. But mostly, they’re just the most fun pictures I took.