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Pictures and Stories

Street Address
Salt Lake City, Utah
801.906.0609
your life. in a book.™

Pictures and Stories

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RootsTech 2025

March 3, 2025 Alison Taylor

Here are my classes at this year’s RootsTech! Only a few days away…

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Speaking at RootsTech 2024

February 28, 2024 Alison Taylor

Hope to see you at RootsTech this weekend at the Salt Palace. Here is info on the Thursday 2/29 class.

We are so excited to be back at RootsTech live this year! Come by and see the Pictures and Stories booth (#1609) and see some of the many new books we’ve helped our clients create. Alison is giving two in-person classes: The Seven Deadly Sins of Building a Digital Archive, and Making a Genealogy Story Book. Hope to see you there!

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"Novelize" Your Family History Story - Live (sort of) from RootsTech 2020

April 15, 2020 Alison Taylor
How do you get from dry genealogy facts to a compelling story? This presentation from RootsTech 2020 will hopefully inspire you as well as give you tools to write your ancestors’ stories. (Audio with slides)

How do you get from dry genealogy facts to a compelling story? This presentation from RootsTech 2020 will hopefully inspire you as well as give you tools to write your ancestors’ stories. (Audio with slides)

How do you get from dry genealogy facts to a compelling story? This presentation from RootsTech 2020 will hopefully inspire you as well as give you tools to write your ancestors’ stories. (Audio with slides) Join me on a fascinating journey as I find one of my ancestors and write her story.

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In stories, genealogy/family history
1 Comment

How to Get the Most Out of the Pictures and Stories Blog

February 22, 2020 Alison Taylor
Search the Pictures and Stories blog for all kinds of articles about preserving your personal and family history!

Search the Pictures and Stories blog for all kinds of articles about preserving your personal and family history!

Hello there! We've been so busy making books that we haven't gotten around to posting many articles lately. But since we've had so many new people join us recently, I thought it might be helpful to give a little refresher course on some great things you can find in our blog.

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In pictures, stories
3 Comments

Join Us (and Save) at RootsTech London

September 23, 2019 Alison Taylor
RootsTech, the world’s biggest family history conference is coming to London next month! We’ve been invited to speak at RootsTech London and we thought we couldn’t be more excited. But now we are even more excited, because RootsTech gave us a specia…

RootsTech, the world’s biggest family history conference is coming to London next month! We’ve been invited to speak at RootsTech London and we thought we couldn’t be more excited. But now we are even more excited, because RootsTech gave us a special speaker’s discount code to share with you so you can join us!

Tom and I are excited to be presenting at RootsTech London! The world’s biggest family history conference is making its UK debut October 24-26, 2019. We’d love to have you join us, and now you can save on registration with the special discount code herein. And also the schedule of our five presentations. See you in London!

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5 Comments

Writing About Your Life: Are You Stuck?

September 23, 2019 Alison Taylor
It’s not the lack of time. It’s not clutter. You don’t have “writer’s block.” It’s probably that you just don’t know what to do next.

It’s not the lack of time. It’s not clutter. You don’t have “writer’s block.” It’s probably that you just don’t know what to do next.

It’s not the lack of time. It’s not clutter. You don’t have “writer’s block.” It’s probably that you just don’t know what to do next.

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In stories
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How to Tell Your Life Story in 5 Pages or Less - RootsTech 2019

March 25, 2019 Alison Taylor
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Consider this: YOUR life, the one you are living right now, is the “family history” of future generations. Believe it or not, your great-great-great grandchildren will one day find your life fascinating—but only IF you leave a record of it. Short life story writing compels you to narrow down the most interesting and most important aspects of your life.

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In stories, genealogy/family history
2 Comments

Organizing and Archiving Your Family History Stuff

March 25, 2019 Alison Taylor
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Being a “family historian” can be a blessing­—and a curse. The overwhelming weight of this responsibility can cause real stress in the lives of those who care about preserving history.

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In genealogy/family history, pictures
1 Comment

Book Highlight: The Thing About Remembering

February 5, 2019 Alison Taylor
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Every once in a while, a project comes along that smacks us upside the head (in a good way). A project that, in the doing of it, becomes part of our narrative, part of the story of our career as personal historians, that we will never forget. It’s a story we tell often to convince others, and remind ourselves, of the power of story.

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In book highlights
10 Comments

One Surefire Way to Choose Your Best Stories

February 4, 2019 Alison Taylor
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It’s a question we hear often from people who are contemplating writing a memoir or personal history: “How do I decide what to write about?” In a similar vein: “How much should I include? What should I leave out?”

One of my favorite ways to answer the question is with another question: “What would you like to know about your ancestors?”

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In stories, genealogy/family history
5 Comments
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See samples of our book by clicking on the cover photo.

See samples of our book by clicking on the cover photo.

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  • 2016
    • Oct 31, 2016 3 Steps to Writing a Story About Your Life

HERE'S OUR INSTAGRAM FEED

Thanks, London, for making us feel so welcome. We'll see you again someday. #epicfamilyhistorytour #rootstechlondon
Oxford, vertical edition. As much vertical as Instagram will allow, anyway. #theylookbetteronfacebook #epicfamilyhistorytour #rootstechlondon
A beautiful fall day at Oxford, landscape edition. #epicfamilyhistorytour #rootstechlondon
Final day at #rootstechlondon, then rush to the V & A for the last hour before it closes! Then a walk across the Millennium Bridge for a glimpse of the Globe and the city at night, plus a beautiful poetry/video art installation, projected onto St
Long, fun day at #rootstechlondon! 4 presentations down, one to go... Celebrated with dinner at a 500-yr-old pub where Dickens used to hang and which is now owned by Gandalf. #epicfamilyhistorytour
We're here! Tom's up first today, with "Capturing Family Stories in Video Clips" at 14:00. I'm here early to attend the first class, I'm so excited. What a great conclusion to our #epicfamilyhistorytour ! #rootstechlondon #picturesandstorie
Hello, London! So excited for Rootstech. #epicfamilyhistorytour #rootstechlondon #picturesandstories #yourlifeinabook
Our host showed us these amazing travel scrapbooks his mother made in the 1930s and '40s, complete with hand drawn maps and illustrations. We will miss this place! London, here we come...
Featured
RootsTech 2025
Mar 3, 2025
RootsTech 2025
Mar 3, 2025
Mar 3, 2025
Speaking at RootsTech 2024
Feb 28, 2024
Speaking at RootsTech 2024
Feb 28, 2024

We are so excited to be back at RootsTech live this year! Come by and see the Pictures and Stories booth (#1609) and see some of the many new books we’ve helped our clients create. Alison is giving two in-person classes: The Seven Deadly Sins of Building a Digital Archive, and Making a Genealogy Story Book. Hope to see you there!

Feb 28, 2024

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