Susie L., one of Shutterfly’s talented writers and creator of NED Design, tells us about storytelling from a shorter perspective.

I’d like to introduce you to our very own Tracy B., Shutterfly’s Senior Director of Product Management. Tracy is an avid photographer and digital scrapbooker who loves to travel and create memories of her adventures. In this article, Tracy lets us in on the technniques she’s developed for telling effective photo book stories. Since I’m a big fan of Tracy’s work, I am definitely going to give these tips a try.

Sam F. is Shutterfly’s Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives, and an avid photo book maker. In this article, Sam tells us about himself, and shares his secrets on how to come up with creative photo book ideas and make them come to life. Today it’s all about the food.

My life is filled with “stuff”. Stuff to do, stuff to think about, stuff to handle. And this means sometimes I don’t make time for fun. In other words, sometimes I don’t make time for my friends. “I’m too busy” I tell myself. “I saw her last month” I rationalize.

There’s something about the slowness of summertime that is giving people the time to tell some stories in photo books that cover many years.

SharonC15’s “The Story of You…” is the first I saw. It’s a gift to her 18 year old daughter as she heads off to college. BeckyS549’s “

Like most of us photo book makers, I plan my photo books around events like vacations, outings, birthdays, etc. And this is a good thing. Important family events need to be recorded, and I like doing it.

However, sometimes I find myself getting a little bogged down with not-so-inspiring photo thoughts like, “must take traditional snapshot of everyone at Thanksgiving dinner table because sister wants one” or “need to capture image of Mom opening present because we do that every year”. And it starts to feel like work.

So how do I snap out of my “recording events” mode and start having fun with my camera?