Bonnie and I recently took a fantastic online course with Maureen Kures called With The End in Mind.
Maureen is a retired oncology, hospice, and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nurse who was frustrated that people arrived at the end of their life without having their affairs in order.
That leads to confusion and fighting within the family related to health care decisions, legal permissions to handle affairs while still living, wishes for services and the body after death, and an executor for the will.
Create peace of mind for you and your family by getting all of your ducks in a row BEFORE your can’t anymore.
Maureen does a great job of stepping you through all of the considerations and steps to have all of your affairs in order. Relaxing about this may add years to your life:-)
You have sometimes looked at that mountain of boxes of old family photos and thought the D-Word.
Who is that?!?
Dumpster
Who would know? Right?
If asked, you would say something like, “‘Geez, I thought those were boxes of old Playboy (Playgirl, Sweet 16, Popular Mechanics, …) magazines you wanted me to dump.’
Still, you will feel like you have a reservation in that special place in hell next to people who commit atrocities or talk in the theatre.
Why Keep Them?
So you can’t just dump the photos, but why keep them?
Here are some of the reasons that may be haunting you:
The photos are a record of your life.
You have been entrusted to maintain the family heritage and legacy.
Ignoring or destroying the photos would dishonour your ancestors.
In the age of Ancestry sites and programs, many people would delight to know more about your family members.
Everyone has interesting lives and stories worth telling.
Some of the photos may have historical value.
Many of the photos trigger fun memories.
But I Can’t Store Them Forever!
Yes, just having them take space in your basement or storage unit until left to the next generation won’t fly either.
So you are stuck between a box and a hard place.
You have to do something!
Why not try to make it as fun as possible?
Transform Guilt into Fun!
Have a Fun Family Photo Party
Here are some ideas to turn the drudgery into a fun event for your family.
You can try the suggestions yourself or have us help relieve some of the drudgery and create an entertaining and enlightening experience for you.
Imagine the Party
You and your family members are sitting around a table or reclining in a living room with your favourite beverage in hand.
On a screen (the largest you have available), you are flipping through the scanned and restored photos.
‘Hey, that is Missy Springhorn! she was in my grade one class. She used to blow her nose into her sleave. Yuk!’
‘That is Uncle Bob, I think he lived in Cleaveland and worked as a blacksmith.’
‘That is Grandma and Grampa Gunderson getting married on 1897.’
As you discuss the photos, you can record the session and add titles and descriptions to the photos.
Imagine the Gratitude
You family and friends will love seeing the photos and sharing the stories. They will be glad that you helped make it happen.
What If Your Family Is Spread Around The World?
Zoom is a great way for family and friends from around the world to join the party.
The host of the Zoom session can record the comments and share the screen with the photos.
Your people can join in on a desktop computer, laptop, or mobile device.
Make it a fun family event!
Wait a Minute! There is a Catch!
Yes. There are a few important steps skipped.
How do you transform that mountain of photos into images to view and document at the Fun Family Photo Party?
There is no escaping the fact that it will take some equipment, strategies, and a lot of time to digitize your treasures.
Options For Digitizing Photos
Here are some ways of capturing your photos in digital format for editing and sharing.
Do the scanning yourself. You likely have a printer with a scanner built in. Dedicated scanners run from being small and inexpensive to being capable of scanning transparencies and larger images.
Take photos of photos permanently stuck in albums or framed on the wall.
Hire someone to do the scanning.
Have a trusted service do the scanning.
Consider Having a Scanning Party
You might invite your family over to have a scanning party.
Scanning can go quicker if you have someone doing a quick sort and handing the photos to the people running the scanners.
Warning: A few beverages and you might not make much progress on the photos.
Could still be fun, though:-)
How Tell Your Story Productions Can Help
There are a number of ways we can help get your photo party started, starting with free. See Resources For Doing It Yourself below.
Until then, here is how we can help.
Photo Scanning and Organizing Special
We offer a special package where we create a framework for scanning and organizing your photos.
The package includes us scanning your photos, though the framework itself is where most the the magic happens.
The special price is $297 for just the scanning and organizing if you are not yet ready to commit to a Fun Family Photo Party.
We help facilitate your Photo Party from start to finish, including:
A Discovery Session with you to see what photos and other materials you have, what you want to achieve, how many family members you want to invite to the party.
A Family Photo Party Roadmap that outlines the steps to make the party a success.
Setting up a Photo Framework System for collecting and organizing the photos, including:
A place on Google Photos where the photos will be stored.
Create Google Drive documents for collecting stories and biographical information.
Create a Photo Index to list the photos available.
Best Practices Guides for labeling and documenting the photos.
Scanning and digitizing photos that we can access.
Coaching your family members who want to help with scanning. This is perfect if you have family members spread around the world with different sets of photos.
Processes for having your photos and possibly video digitized by trusted services.
Preliminary organization of the photos in the cloud.
Editing, cropping, and restoration of key photos.
Planning and Facilitating the Fun Family Photo Party. We will host the party using Zoom.
Transcribing the audio from the Zoom recording to collect the names and stories.
Update the labels and descriptions with information from the transcription.
Make all of the collected photos and information available to family members for continuing the process.
Provide sharing links that you can send to friends and family.
Provide a Story Production Roadmap to provide some ideas about what you could do next with the photos and stories.
Above all, the end result of preserving and sharing your priceless family photos and stories will be something you will cherish for generations.
Are You Ready to Transform Your Photo Burden to a Fun Photo Party?
We are offering a special price of $597 for a limited number of families. Various payment options are available to make it easy for you.
Let’s talk about creating a fun and lasting experience for your family.
Contact us at info@tellyourstory.productions to book your Fun Family Photo Party Special.
You can also contact Greg Dixon at greg@tellyourstory.productions or 604-762-6410.
Resources for Doing It Yourself (DIY)
We can’t possible help every family who needs help throwing a Fun Family Photo Party, so here are some resources for doing it yourself.
Google Drive is a great place for collecting and sharing family information. There are other services available, but Google Drive is a good place to start.
Zoom and Google Hangouts are good for hosting the Photo Party and also for collecting stories one on one.
Want Us To Make Your Fun Family Story Party Happen?
Contact us at info@tellyourstory.productions to book your Fun Family Photo Party Special. You can also contact Greg Dixon at greg@tellyourstory.productions or 604-762-6410.
Do you have boxes of photos and shelves full of photo albums that you want to do something with even if you are not yet sure what?
We help with process of scanning and organizing your photos.
Once you have a better sense of what you have, you can plan what to do do with them.
Once digitized, you can decide of you have the space to store the photos or not.
Here is how we can help with this Special Offer
Review to see what photos and clippings you have.
Create a Scanning and Organizing Roadmap to help guide the process.
Scan up to 100 photos and clippings. Additional photos are $1 each. We will come to your location if possible.
Do minor photo editing such as cropping, color correction, and some restoration. Some photos may need a lot more restoration than offered here. We can revisit once the whole collection is available for review.
Upload to a place in the cloud grouped by galleries where you and family members can view the images, add titles and descriptions to the photos. This will allow use the collective knowledge to fill in the gaps for everyone.
Provide instructions for your friends and family to upload related photos they may have.
Provide a Story Production Roadmap about what to do next with your photos and stories.
Special Price ~ $297
We can offer this in areas where we are located, which is currently the regions of Vancouver, British Columbia, and Vancouver, Washington.
Other locations possible with some planning.
Contact us at info@tellyourstory.productions to book your Scanning and Organizing Special.
Want help deciding what kind of story production is best for you and how to go about creating it?
This is one of our Story Productions
Sign up for a free discovery session where we discuss how to create a personal, family or business story production.
As a free gift, we will provide a written Story Production Roadmap report that you can use to create the story production yourself or as a starting point to have us work with you through the process to deliver a stunning story production to share with your friends and family.
Contact Greg Dixon at gregdixon@tellyourstory.productions to book your free discovery session and receive a Free Production Story Roadmap..
Personal Story Production. This could be a biography or profile of you, a friend, or a family member. The end result could be a video shown at a birthday celebration, memorial, or other special occasions. Other media can be shared as part of personal history.
Anniversary Story Production. Celebrate your anniversary or that of family and friends with a story production. The video could be played as part of the anniversary celebration and shared with friends and family after. S
Family Story Production. Every family has a fascinating history with many juicy stories. We can help you collect and present the history and stories of your family.
Business Story Production. Companies like Microsoft, Apple, McDonald’s, Ben & Jerry’s , and Disney all have stories about their origins and values. You probably can recite the stories of many of these companies yourself. We can help you craft and present the story of your company. What is your business mission?
Story Production Starter Package
Here are the foundation elements of all of our Story Production packages. We help you through the process to create stunning Story Productions.
Story Project Roadmap. We create a project plan to cover the process of collecting, documenting, crafting, and producing the story production.
Collecting Media. We help assemble and document photos, clippings, and other media related to the Story Production.
Media Cleanup and Editing. We restore, crop and correct photos and other media for use in the Story Production.
Cloud BasedAssmbly Area. We create a special area for the project where we can review and document the assets that go into the project. Some of the online tools include:
A place for family members to review photos, add names, make notes in order to capture the collective knowledge.
A place to brainstorm connections and stories.
A spreadsheet to collect biographical details.
Interviews. We will conduct a series of interviews with people related to the Story Production. This could be in person with a video camera and audio recorder or over Zoom sessions. Zoom is a great way for people around the world to provide information and stories.
Story Crafting. You may already have a good idea of the story you want to tell. Great! We help you craft the story.
Story Production. We do the editing and assembly to create the Story Production.
Story Publication. We make the story production available to you in the following ways.
Video clip on Vimeo. We can put privacy restrictions on the clip or make it public for easy sharing and embedding.
Multimedia eBook. We create an eBook that can be viewed as a flip book that contains the text, photos, and video of the Story Production.
Custom Sharing Page. We can create a page with the story, embedded video, and photo gallery for easy sharing among family and friends.
USB Thumb Drive. We put the video, photos, and other collected information and media on a thumb drive for your use and as an archive.
The price for the Story Production Starter Package is $997.
We take payments in three installments with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. You can cancel at any time during the process and get a full refund.
Contact Greg Dixon at gregdixon@tellyourstory.productions to book your free discovery session and receive a Free Production Story Roadmap.
Printed Book Production. We can put to in touch with a book design specialist if you you are interested in adding a high-end printed book to the project.
Podcasts. We can consult with your to provide the stories in audio format.
Gift Packages. We can design a package to give to interested parties. This could be a custom bound package containing the photos, video, stories, and text with a combination of printed pages and a USB thumb drive.
Custom Website. We can create a custom website that features the material and stories collected , such as YouFamily.com.
Marketing. In the case of a Business Story Production, we can help you make use of social media and other platforms to get maximum promotional value out of the Story Production.
Video of Reunions, Anniversaries, or other Special Events. We can arrange to shoot your event with multiple still and video cameras, providing media for the next Story Production.
Contact Greg Dixon at gregdixon@tellyourstory.productions to book your free discovery session and receive a Free Production Story Roadmap.
Do you want to preserve and share your family history and stories?
Do you have aging relatives with fascinating stories and experience.
We help you explore and capture your family stories to create Family Story Productions.
We are offering a special Story Production Package.
What You Will Receive
We will help shape your personal, family, anniverary, or business story into a stunning Story Production that you can share with friends and family.
Preserve your personal or family heritage for current and future generations.
We are offering $997 value of services for the special price of $497.
We offer payment options and a money back guarantee.
Free Discovery Session
Contact us discuss what your would like to preserve and share with family and friends.
Contact us at info@tellyourstory.productions or Toll-Free at 1-833-333-1969 to discuss Your Story Production.
The Process
We will work with you to develop and create a memorable Story Production.
Here is how we can work together:
Initial discussion with you on a video Zoom meeting.
Create an initial plan:
How to collect materials.
Do research.
Conduct interviews.
Craft the story production.
Determine final media for sharing.
Review the plan with you and other interested parties, such as other family members.
Conduct interviews using Zoom.
Provide information about how to send photos, video, documents, and other existing to us for editing and inclusion in the Story Production.
Give tips for how to scan and organize photos
Provide tips on how conduct video interviews with smartphones and small cameras you may already have. We can advise on accessories and techniques to improve the quality.
If you are local, we can come conduct interviews and materials in person.
Work with you to craft a compelling Story Production.
Publish! Voila!
Share with friends and family.
Let’s Talk About Your Family Story
We can talk about what your would like to do and the best way to move forward with your Story Production.
Contact us at info@tellyourstory.productions or
Toll-Free at 1-833-333-1969 to discuss Your Story Production.
