Visual Storytelling
Visuals attract attention and make your story real for your audience. / Image by Kobu Agency via Unsplash
Tell some of your stories and family history through images. Engage your viewers with photo books, slideshows, interactive maps and other visual formats.
People are visual. We’re wired that way. Most people absorb much info and entertainment through their sight. People tend to create a mental picture from words they read or hear.
Pictures of people, animals, scenery – and more – attract people’s interest. Moving images, such as videos, grab our attention – advertisers sure know that!
When you tell a story about yourself – or a relative, friend or ancestor – it helps to include photos. Viewers can see:
you at a younger age, when the story took place
what someone else looked like at different phases in their life
an old photo of the place your ancestors lived
This helps your audience to visualize real people and places, and imagine the story as it unfolds. If you don’t have photos of the people in your story, you may find images of the location it took place.
Whether you see yourself as a writer or a visual person, there are many ways to tell life stories with images.
Still Images
You can tell life stories with static images such as still photos.
Photos
As they say, “a picture tells a thousand words” – the look on someone’s face, the postures in a group photo. When you tell life stories, it’s best to include some words! Add a caption to say who is in the photo, where it was taken, and when. Share the story behind the photo.
A collage of photos can ‘say a lot’ if you focus on a person, place, event or family. If you select photos of someone over their lifespan – at home, work and play – you can show the type of life they led. Of course, you can say much more if you write stories related to the photos.
The main ancestry websites enable you to attach photos to people on your family tree, and add a story to your family history photos. These include: Ancestry Storymaker Studio, MyHeritage Photo Storyteller & FamilySearch Memories.
Scroll down to read about AI to animate still photos of ancestors.
Photo Books
A collection of photos in an album, whether print or digital, may not always tell a story. It’s best to arrange the photos in an order to tell a narrative – even better if you add captions to describe what’s going on.
Arrange your photos to tell a story, more than a collage or 'shoebox' of pictures. / Photo by George Milton via Pexels
Before they make a film, the director creates a storyboard of still-images and sketches. This is a visual plan of the film they will shoot in order to tell the story. If you think of a graphic novel or comic, you get the idea of how to line up pictures to tell a story.
You might tell your story in chronological order, at different ages and stages of life. Or share the tale of an adventure or vacation. It could be someone’s life story. Or perhaps about experiences of a family in your lineage.
Use the same storytelling methods to engage your viewers, as you would in writing a story.
Scrapbooks
Scrapbooks are a fun option. You could make them the traditional way, with printed photos, tickets, stickers and other mementos. Or, there are apps to help you make digital scrapbooks. They make it easy to upload images, take clippings, choose borders, select backgrounds, plus other features.
Remember, if you aim to tell a story, don’t just jumble everything in there. Select, arrange and annotate your contents to tell the tale you’d like to share.
Moving Images
Slideshows and Videos
Moving images attract and keep people’s attention! This is a great way to tell life stories.
User-friendly apps help you create a slideshow from individual digital photos. Instead of using a random mix, you the storyteller can select the images in order to tell your story. There are features to fade one image into the next, add captions or title cards, and add audio (music or voice). What you create becomes a movie or video to tell your story.
If you lack photos of particular people, places, or times in history, you may find other images to help you tell your tale. For example, you may not have a photo of the house you lived in as a child, but can find one online of that neighbourhood (now or then).
Online archives have many historic photos that are available to the public for free, as does Creative Commons. When you obtain images online, just be sure to read and abide by the copyright restrictions.
Today's cameras and software help you prepare slideshows and edit videos. / Photo by George Milton via Pexels
Videos are, of course, a great option for telling life stories. You could edit a series of short videos together, to tell a longer story. Perhaps interview someone and edit the footage so you can share their stories and perspective as told in their own voice.
Video-Log
You may like to record videos and make a vlog (video-log) of your stories. This is a good way to show your children at play, your travels, or any experiences you’d like to share with voice and visuals. As the name ‘log’ suggests, this is for a series of videos on a theme or topic over time.
You could post on social media, such as on: your ‘Story’ on Facebook, your own blog, or your YouTube channel.
Diagrams
You may like to use diagrams to help tell life stories. It could be a flowchart or puzzle to show how pieces of a story fit together, or a diagram of circles to represent various roles in someone’s life. Family trees and timelines are types of diagrams to show family history and individual lives.
Whether by hand or via software, diagrams help – especially in relaying family history. / Photo by Ksenia Chernaya via Pexels
I’ve used various types of diagrams (with success!) to engage my relatives in our shared family history. They are a great way to attract attention and summarize much information.
Family Trees
Family trees show your ancestry and family lineage in a visual format. You can prepare them as a flowchart on paper, or there are many software options to generate family trees. The main online ancestry services (such as Ancestry, MyHeritage and FindMyPast) enable you to attach photos, stories and documents to people on your tree.
Although a family tree says lots (and lots, if you’ve created a big one) it doesn’t tell a story that’s easy to follow. People with an interest in genealogy – and in your family line in particular – might make the effort to view individual profiles on the tree. But even as someone who’s keen on family lineage, I lose the thread when I view a whole bunch of people over the generations.
It’s best to look at part of your family tree and tell a story of ancestors in that group.
This one of the reasons I developed this site – your relatives may not bother to study your detailed family tree. That’s where story comes in, including stories in small packages! Read below for more ideas, and see ways to engage relatives in family history.
Timelines
A timeline provides a good overview of milestones in someone’s life story.
With timeline software, or on your own, you can make a timeline with captions to describe events, and photos from different stages in someone’s life.
For example, for each person on your online family tree, the Ancestry.com site automatically generates a timeline from info you include on your ancestor’s profile, such as birthdate, marriage, location, and death date. If you select the historical insights option, it will supply key events in history (with photos) from their area at that time – such as a major fire, social protests, or new technology. This helps you and your family to imagine what your ancestor faced.
Presentation Slides
Presentation slides are a good way to share family history, such as at a family reunion.
The easiest way to prepare these is via PowerPoint or equivalent software. Upload an image or two, provide three to five bullet points, and you’re ready to share. To gather and sum up the info is the bigger part of the task.
Drawings
You may or may not think of yourself as an artist. If you or someone in your family likes to draw, or perhaps your ancestors did, you can include drawings of people, houses, places and more in your family history.
Maps
Maps can really tell a story, especially when you add extra info to personalize what is shown.
Maps are a tangible way to share family history, travel stories, and a life-story overview. / Photo by Catarina Sousa via Pexels
This can work on a paper map, or static digital one. But the most storytelling potential comes with interactive maps that you create and customize online.
You can use variations of Google Maps: GoogleMyMaps, Google Earth, or Google Earth Pro. Each of these versions of the software are free for non-commercial use. You can put place-markers, show Street View and other images, add a description to each spot, draw lines between locations, and more. When the viewer clicks on a location icon, the information and images pop up.
GoogleMyMaps-Help provides instructions with links to get started.
To tell a story from your life, you might like to make the map of a trip you’ve taken, or places you’ve lived.
I’m excited about this mode of life storytelling. I made a Google map about a bike trip my sister and I took years ago. I had kept our paper map and my travel diary, so I used those to create a digital story with images. This is just one of my experiences showing life stories through images.
You might like to make a life map about someone – where they lived, where they traveled.
I made one about my father, with all the key places he lived, worked and played within the city of Montreal throughout his life. It has pop-up images such as: his class photo at grade school, wedding photo where my parents were married, and of him curling at the local club.
Interactive maps are a great tool to share part of your family history. You can include a historic-overlay, to show what a place looked like ‘then & now’. You could make a map of the towns, houses, or churches that were part of your ancestors’ lives, or the cemeteries where they are buried. You might add an image or briefly describe each location or person. Try to make it into a little story.
Calendars
A calendar is another way to tell a story – the story of days, weeks, a lifetime or even family history. Even just a small daily note on an agenda becomes a mini-diary.
A perpetual calendar puts each day of the month as a number – without the day of the week – to make a generic year. This is a good way to record key dates of ancestors, perhaps with a brief entry about the individual.
Photo shops and online order-to-print services enable you to select one or more photos for each month. For your own family, a nice keepsake can be to make one about your children (or in my case, pets). Make notes with stars for key milestone dates in their young lives. Write a little story that goes with each monthly image.
Someone’s life story can be shared in calendar format. If you know key dates in their life, place them on the calendar with the year noted. If they left a journal, letters or travel diaries, you can make note of events and dates on the calendar.
Calendars a good way to record key dates in your family history, to share with relatives. Perhaps create a Google Calendar to share online with family, with key dates for ancestors. You can add to this as you learn more (but not make it too crowded!). Perhaps opt to notify relatives with a brief bio on each ancestor’s birthdate.
Objects and Heirlooms
Certain objects take on special meaning in a person’s life. They may be medals and awards, report cards, books, family heirlooms, a child’s artwork, or a gift or souvenir. It could be anything – maybe a board game that the family played together!
If you have the physical object – and your family is willing – you can tell them about the item and its special meaning.
Memorabilia kept by a person or family tend to have stories to go along with! / Photo by Cottonbro Studio via Pexels
A more lasting way to share the story behind keepsakes is via photos and stories. Take a photo of the item. Do you have a photo from when it came into your family’s life, such as at a trophy ceremony or on a trip? Perhaps a photo of the war or a document about the ancestor who earned a military medal? Write a little story about the object itself, and use it to lead into the larger story about a memory, event or experience.
You could collect individual memento stories into a book, to self-publish in digital and print format and share with relatives.
If you’re downsizing, photos and stories can stand in for the objects – in a compact format! You can give the items to family, donate to a historical society, or give them away.
Often the memories are the most important thing. The object stands for something: recognition for achievement, a gift of love, a fun time on vacation, or a piece of family heritage. Don’t let that get lost if the items have to go.
AI (Artificial Intelligence)
Animate Photos
Apps are available that use AI to animate photos. Scan and upload a digital image of a printed photo to get started.
MyHeritage has taken a lead on this for family history, with various apps to enhance and animate photos. You provide the portrait photo of an ancestor, and AI simulates facial gestures. If you include some family history info, then select a type of voice (e.g. British man or American woman) – the program will animate the photo as if that person is speaking.
Interactive Videos
You may have seen news coverage of StoryFile, when William Shattner did a prototype. What a great fit, to have the Star Trek captain do the maiden voyage!
Another version of this technology is HereAfter, which is available for use on smart phones and tablets.
In such apps, a person records responses to questions about their life, views, traditions and such. Even after they pass away, others can interact with the person – virtually – by asking questions. AI selects answers from those the person recorded in their own voice.
See these among other apps for life storytelling.
written by Barbara L Campbell, 2024