So Many Photos, So Few Pages

Yelowstone trip, minus about 1/4 that I've already scrapbooked

It's no secret, I take a lot of photos. Like sometimes an exorbitant amount. Many are just slightly different angles of the same thing, or multiples of my kids in the same position (hoping that one of the 5 will turn out great.)I narrow them down a lot during editing, before choosing which ones to print and scrapbook. But it can be hard trying to decide which photos make the cut and which do not. And once I have decided printed them, I still usually end up with several dozen from each trip that didn't make the second cut into the book. If you take a lot of photos too, you know how hard it can be to make them all fit in the scrapbook! 

I really, truly like to put as many photos as possible on a page. I just like pages with a lot of photos on them, its just my style. Most of my pages usually end up with 4 to 5 to even 6 photos on them! Rarely do I have a page under 4 photos.

So when it comes time to put photos to paper - how do you choose? Sometimes all the photos just won't fit on the page and you are forced to eliminate some. 

First, try not to have too many duplicates. I try to choose the very best ONE of a particular shot/scene/area/person and use that one.

Second, cut them down. While I tend not to cut a lot of photos down, I do cut a lot of 4x6 photos down to 4x4. I almost always scrapbook with only 4x6 and 4x4 photos. By using 4x4s you can fit more photos onto the page and arrange 3 photos vertically or horizontally on the page.

Third, pick your favorites. Many times I've removed a photo from a layout that I really, really wanted to use - but only because I loved the other ones on the page even more. If there is no way to cut it down, or cut others down to make it fit, then you just have to pull it, or add another layout to incorporate those pictures that didn't fit. Since I tend to do almost all 2-page layouts, having a couple straggler pictures can force me to create another 2-page layout for them - which can be nice since you are then able to spread out the pictures over a multi-page layout.

My current project is our trip to Yellowstone, and here I have all of our photos from the Mammoth Hot Springs area. I have 62 pictures printed, and wanted no more than 8 layouts. I first layed out 16 sheets of 12x12 paper to make up the 8 layouts, then started putting the photos on the pages that I thought would go together.  

Once I had a general idea of what would fit together, and what made sense together (all of the town pictures together, all of the hot springs pictures together), I had 2 photos left over that I couldn't fit on any of the pages. I was pretty happy to only have 2 left, and since I had other photos that were similar or that I liked better, I was okay with leaving these 2 off. 

I cropped down several photos to 4x4 size, and began thinking about their final placement and layout.  After cutting them down, I was happy with the spacing and placement, and could start pulling out the patterned papers and create the final layouts!