Whether I went on vacation, did geocaching or stayed home and just took pictures of the kids playing in the backyard, I always like to share my photos with friends and family. Photographs are a great support for memories. They remind me of conversations I had, anecdotes I encountered, funny reactions from the kids and more. However, those memories are mine only, and my photos would often bore you since you would only see images and miss the story behind them.

Preserving the stories is only half the fun; sharing them comes with it. It’s very easy to share my photos since they are mostly digital; either taken with a digital camera now, or scanned from older printed photos. I can email them to relatives, add them to an online photo sharing gallery or post them on my blog or Facebook page. But do I want to share the photos or the stories? I bet my friends and relatives are more interested in the stories that go with the photos than just images that might not mean that much to them!

Scrapbooking is about documenting and preserving those stories that were only partially captured in photos. It is a way to note where that picture was taken, the exact date, who that “stranger” is, but also to add those details that made that day something so memorable. Why are my socks so dirty? How did I manage to wash this paint mess? What did my son tell me he would do when he grows up and why did he pile up snow in cardboard boxes? I remember those now, but I might forget them eventually.

Digital scrapbooking allows me to share my stories with everyone. Using Paintshop Pro, I just place my photos on a digital page, add text with the whole story (especially the funny parts), scan and add memorabilia, doodle fun details and layer some embellishments. Depending on the page and the creative inspiration, I might include brushwork, textures and other effects. That is how I become a storyteller and an artist all at once. That is when my photos become much more interesting to look at because everyone can now understand the story, and feel like they were with me. I also don’t have to repeat the same thing to everyone asking “why did you take a photo of that stranger?” because the story is right there, on the page.

Of course, some photos will speak for themselves, and will not require that much of a story. That is when I want to share the photo just for the photo, because it is an exceptional shot (which is rare for me). But most of the time, there is a story behind the photo, and I surely love to share that. It might be a funny story, a sad story or a surprising story, but it is a story nonetheless. Don’t you want to read about it?

Don’t bore your friends with your bare photos. Don’t just collect nice looking pictures that don’t carry meaning for years to come. Tell stories instead. Make it more fun to share with everyone.

Do you want to start digital scrapbooking using PaintShop Pro? Check out the Scrapbook Campus and join Cassel in this fantastic journey of memory keeping…and sharing.