Time Capsules & Storyboard

The challenge for Beyond Layers Day 5 & 6 was easy: creating Time Capsules and making a storyboard, with ready-made templates.

Time capsules is a concept I love. Photography is for me in any case recording - recording everyday events, capturing moments. It's something I've learned from my father. He was a keen photographer, and of course took pictures at Christmas, in family parties and on holiday trips, when we toured Finland with my parents and sister, but that wasn't all. He also shot us kids in our everyday. I still treasure a particular series he caught of me and my cousin, aged about five, playing with a pail of water in our grandparents' garden and totally oblivious to being photographed.

When my mother passed away, we had a hard time finding "presentable" pictures of her for the funeral, although Dad had been photographing her for decades. It's customary to have this one picture of the deceased on a table, with a candle and some flowers next to it. In the picture the person is seated alone, preferably with a smile on her face, and that's it.

Well, there were loads of shots of Mum walking, working, dancing, fishing, swimming, skiing, gardening and very very seldom was she alone.  I asked my sister why we couldn't make a collage instead, showing Mum the way I remember her, active, but of course Sis wouldn't hear of it, because it's Not Done.

A few years ago I stumbled on digital scrapbooking on the Net, and realized this might be something for me. I'm not really into embellishments or quotes... what I like to do is tell stories, capture time. In 2010, I bought a small album and created a birthday present for my ever active better half, showing many of the things accomplished during the year, from one birthday to the next. I'm still quite proud of the little album.

But now to the challenge itself.  I decided to make a time capsule of the day the challenge was given, 3 May. On that day I journeyed from Rostock in Germany to Zwolle in the Netherlands on a coach tour with some students of mine. We left our ship in Rostock after 8 in the morning, and it was a 550-kilometre drive, so most of the day was spent just sitting on the coach. We arrived in Zwolle early enough in the afternoon to go for a long walk in town, though, which naturally resulted in a lot of pictures.

Early morning in Rostock. Pictures from the shipboard.
Template by Kim Klassen 

Driving across Northern Germany. Shots from the coach window.
Template by Kim Klassen.

Breaks along the Autobahn. Shots of the places we stopped at.
Template by Ginger Pixel. 

On the  road in the Netherlands, more coach window shots.
Template by Kim Klassen  

Sightseeing in Zwolle.
Template by me.

Walking in Zwolle.  More pictures of the town centre.
Template by Timounette.

Window-Shopping in Zwolle. Still more photos of the town centre.

Template by Flaneuse.

The thing I learned here was to make the outlook more uniform by adding a gradient map layer to the storyboards.