How to Start a Father's Day Photo Album Tradition

If your family gets together every Father's Day for a big event (or even a small one), you probably commemorate it with lots of photos. After a couple of years, those photographs can pile up quickly. Rather than leave them sitting around in shoe boxes or mixing them into your existing albums, why not use them to start a new Father's Day tradition? A Father's Day photo album tradition is one that the whole family can enjoy.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Archival-safe photo album
• Acid-free pen
• Labels
• Camera

1. Start by organizing your old Father's Day photographs. Go through all of the photos you have from past celebrations and separate them into piles according to year. Buy a pretty photo album for each year, label the backs of your photos with an acid-free pen and insert them into the albums. Put a label on the front of each album indicating the year it represents.
2. Present all of these albums to Dad on the next Father's Day and spend some time with him going through each one and reminiscing.
3. Designate two or three people to take photographs at this year's Father's Day get-together, so you have a wide variety of shots to choose from for your next album. Make sure everyone with a camera is liberal with taking candid shots.
4. Go through all of the new photos taken on Father's Day and pick out the best ones for your album.
5. Label the photos and put them into a new archival-safe album. Make sure you add the year to the cover of the album.
6. Give this photo album to Dad next Father's Day. Continue to repeat the photo-taking and album-creation tradition each year, so you always have a new album to give to Dad every Father's Day. It will only take a year or two for this to become a cherished family tradition.

Tips & Warnings

• Use an archival-safe photo album for your pictures. The pages on an archival-safe album are acid-free, so your photographs won't be subjected to harsh chemical conditions that could cause them to break down more quickly over the years.
• Never put photos in adhesive albums. The sticky glue on the pages of this kind of album is too harsh on photographs and can damage them. It's also too hard to take the photos out of a self-stick album without causing them to rip, tear or curl at the edges.