Photo ideas, month by month
A year of photos worth taking.
Twelve pages, one for each month of the first year. No studio, no props to buy, no complicated gear — a window, a blanket on the floor, and someone’s hands holding on just outside the frame.
The photos families keep are almost never the arranged ones. They are the sprawl on the living-room floor, the fist in the mouth, the hooded towel after a bath, the same armchair looking smaller every month. Each page below has six or seven ideas that suit that month, written as staging rather than inspiration: where the light is, where to put the camera, and what to leave in the frame so you can tell later how small everybody was.
One thread runs through all twelve. Take one photo in the same chair, in the same spot, every month, and by the end of the year you have a series worth printing instead of twelve unrelated pictures.
1 month old
A one-month-old sleeps through most of the good photos, and that is the charm of them.
See the ideas →2 months old
Month two is when the awake stretches get long enough to work with, and a face becomes the easiest subject in the house.
See the ideas →3 months old
Somewhere in month three the hands turn up, and once they do, they are in every frame.
See the ideas →4 months old
Month four is loud and physical in a lovely way.
See the ideas →5 months old
By month five the feet have been found, and everything within arm's reach is being tested with the mouth.
See the ideas →6 months old
Half a year in, and the view changes: propped up against a cushion, the world gets photographed from a new height.
See the ideas →7 months old
Month seven happens on the floor, so that is where the camera belongs.
See the ideas →8 months old
Month eight is the month the furniture becomes equipment.
See the ideas →9 months old
Nine months brings noise and travel: along the sofa, around the coffee table, into the cupboard with the pans in it.
See the ideas →10 months old
Month ten is a good month to go outside.
See the ideas →11 months old
Month eleven is all momentum.
See the ideas →12 months old
The last month of the first year, and the one everybody photographs.
See the ideas →What the year adds up to
Twelve months, and then something you can hold.
The point of taking the same photo twelve times is the twelfth one. When the set is complete, the monthly photo collage maker lays all twelve out on one print-ready page in your browser — it is built for exactly this series, one square per month from one to twelve.
If you want each frame to carry its own age before it goes in the grid, the milestone photo maker works out the exact age from the birth date and writes it onto the photo, ready to share or print at 4 × 6, 5 × 7, or 8 × 10. And at the end of the year, the then-and-now photo maker puts the newborn photo next to the birthday one. All three run entirely in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
There are a few more of these in the free family photo tools, including a private photo date checker for older files that have drifted away from the day they were taken.
Keep the year, not just the highlights.
Start a private family timeline free — every photo lands at the age it happened.
Start freeFree to start · No credit card · Your photos stay yours