Tapestry Adoption Story Digital

Digital Slide shows - Web: photos, videos

Digital Slide Shows are a great way to create a photo essay, to tell your adoption story with photos adding movement/transition and perhaps music. Here is an example of several "video journals" using photos, music and video.

As you watch these adoption stories think about the digital elements (photos, video, text) that were used to tell the story. The first video is a particularly interesting composition in that the step by step journaling of the experience, adopting from China, has footage that walks us through the family interacting with Chinese agents at the orphanage and getting their baby.

Digital Scrapbooks - Printing: albums, photos

The article below provides a good resource list of online printers. We have our favorites, and in future posts will discuss several. If you have had experience working with any please share your thoughts.

Online digital photo and sharing

By Eamon Hickey and Aimee Baldridge
(June 15, 2005; updated October 6, 2005 CNET reviews)

"Snapping a huge number of photos with a digital camera is easy, but finding a practical way to print your pictures and show them to friends and family can be a hassle. Fortunately, there are many Web sites that allow you to upload your photos to online albums and other sharing tools and to order prints of them to be mailed to your home...... We tried out more than 40 of them to give you a snapshot of your options. Most sites offer both sharing and printing, but to make it easier to get a handle on a large amount of information, we've put the details on sharing and printing in separate sections..... " CNET Reviews

One scrapbooker's views on online photo developers can be seen at the Scrapjazz.com web site. Andrea Steed is the co-founder of the learning resources of Scrapjazz.com and the Scrap Tutor CD-ROM series.

Sharing digital stories with family & friends

Telling stories digitally opens up the possibility of editing/enhancing your photos or video, organizing them into scenes, embellishing with images or music, and making them viewable in ways that suit you, and eventually your child. Even though there are some recurring themes in adoption stories, the moments, people, or places that make your child's story unique need to be remembered. These can take the form of things such as the weather, clothing you were wearing, or the architecture of a city visited. What carries the most memorable and succinct statement about an experience captured on film will always be people expressing emotions. Tell your story by surrounding the most expressive shots of people with other images.

Through desktop publishing, web based printing services, and digital editing of photographs and video, it is now possible to both create and share your adoption story as never before. There are various options from burning on DVD, creating  slide shows, emails, to uploading to online photo services for printing. There are many options for printing out your digital scrapbook pages. There are many inks and printers that are very affordable for home use. You also have the options of creating and printing a bound album/book to display your scrapbook pages in a beautiful way.

Digital Scrapbooks - Printing: albums, announcements, photos

Digital Slide shows - Web: photos, videos

Video Journals - Web: videos