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When I got back from the Who
Do You Think You Are? Live show in London at the end of February, I not only had
a bag full of dirty laundry, but a slew of recorded interviews with fascinating genealogy
experts, exhibit hall brochures, treasured purchases and a mountain of digital photographs.

After firing up the washing machine, I sat down at my desk and wondered what I would
do with all those JPEG jewels. Photographs capture once-in-a-lifetime moments and
treasured family memories that we certainly don’t want to forget. But assembling them
in a way that can be enjoyed for years to come is not as simple as it was in the old
days when we sat down to our scrapbooks and prints.

Here are three tips for assembling your precious pics in a way that will delight you
and those you share them with:

Go Interactive

Genealogy Blogger Mark Tucker recently
emailed me a link to one of his posts on Zoom.it, a website
that allows you to create interactive displays of your favorite photos. This is really
slick for high-resolution shots that you want your audience to explore more in depth.

Here’s a Zoom.it of Hinchingbrooke House just north of London. If you’re a regular
listener of my Genealogy Gems podcast, then you will not only know the significance
of this house to the Cooke family, but also how incredible it is that I have any photographs
of this part of our trip at all! (Hear the full story in episode
106.)

To learn more about how to use Zoom.it yourself and to see a great example of how
it can be used with your own family history photos, check out Mark’s post Interactive
Online Family History Photos.

Create a Photo Collage

When assembling a presentation of photos, sometimes less is more. By picking out the
cream of the crop, you’ll ensure that your audience will stay enthralled.

But when it comes to creating a photograph collage with ShapeCollage.com,
more is better After downloading all of my photos to my hard drive, I just went to
ShapeCollage.com and downloaded the free software, navigated to the folder of photos
on my hard drive and added them. By selecting Text and typing “WDYTYA” my photos assembled
themselves in a creative way to tell the viewer what they were all about.

Video Slideshow

Video production software can also do a nice job of showing off your pics. Here’s
my collection spanning the three days of Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2011. It’s
the next best thing to being there!