Choosing the photos for a funeral program

The cover portrait

Choose the cover photograph first. It is the picture every guest sees, and the one people keep long after the service.

What matters most is the face:

• Sharp. A clear photograph from an ordinary afternoon is better than a blurred one from a special occasion.
• Well lit. Soft, even light shows a face best: daylight from a window, or the shade outdoors. Hard sun and a camera flash can leave dark shadows or bright shine.
• Large enough. The face should fill a good part of the picture. A face cropped from a group photograph can work if it is sharp, but a picture of the person alone is usually easier to use.
• Nothing in the way. Sunglasses, a hat brim or a raised glass can hide the eyes.

The photograph does not have to be recent. Choose the one that looks like the person people knew. For some families that is a picture from last summer, and for others it is one from decades ago, from the years when the person was most fully themselves.

If the family cannot agree, lay two or three candidates side by side on a table or a screen and choose together. There is more about what goes on the cover beside the photograph in what to put in a funeral program.

Copying old prints

Many of the best photographs are prints, in albums, frames and shoeboxes. You do not need a scanner, because a phone can copy them:

1. Lay the print flat on a table near a window, in daylight but out of direct sun.
2. Turn the flash off.
3. Hold the phone straight above the print and level with it, so that the edges stay square.
4. Move closer until the print fills most of the screen, and take two or three pictures.
5. If a patch of shine appears, tilt the phone a little, or turn the print, until the shine moves off it.
6. Crop away the table around the edges with the phone's own photo editor.

If a print is stuck to the glass of a frame or to an album page, photograph it where it is. Prints stuck to glass are hard to remove without damaging them. When you photograph through glass, stand slightly to one side so that your reflection stays out of the picture.

Small scratches, fading and soft corners are fine. On paper they read as warmth, not as faults. When you are done, return every print to its owner. A copy is not a replacement for the original.

How many inside

A folded program has two inside panels and a back page, and the service details, the order of service and the obituary need most of that room. The inside photographs are a handful, not an album.

Choose them from different parts of the life rather than several from one day: a childhood picture, the wedding, one at work, one with the grandchildren, and one doing the thing they loved most. Six well-chosen photographs can say a great deal about a life.

Photographs a folded program cannot hold can still be part of the day. A slideshow made separately from the program has room for many more, and there is a guide to making a memorial slideshow.

If you make the program here, the same photographs make both the program and the slideshow. Four to eight inside photographs suit a single sheet, and more add an inside sheet automatically, so a long slideshow makes a longer program. There is more about the layout on the funeral program with photos page.

Gathering photographs from the family

The photographs you want may be in several places: on phones, in a sister's albums, in a box in the attic. A little organization saves a lot of searching:

• Ask one person to collect them. Everyone else then knows where to send pictures, and nothing is sent to four people or lost in a group chat.
• Use one shared album. Shared albums in iPhone Photos and in Google Photos let the people you invite add their own pictures, so everything arrives in one place.
• Say when you need them by, so that the program can be finished and printed in time.
• Ask for a line with each photograph: who is in it, where it was taken, and roughly when. It helps with the order, and with captions if you use them.

Photographs taken on a phone are fine for a program. The one caution is size. Photographs sent by text message, or through some chat apps, can arrive smaller than the original, and a screenshot holds only what fit on the screen. That matters most for the cover, so ask whoever has the cover photograph to send the original file, at full size.

Putting them in order

Two orders work well:

• By time, from childhood to the later years. It is the easiest to follow, especially for guests who knew only one part of the life.
• By theme, such as family, work, and the things they loved. It suits a life with distinct chapters, or a collection that came from many people who knew the person in different ways.

With only a handful of photographs in a program, the order can be simple: a sense of moving through the years is enough. End on a warm picture, such as a smile or a family gathering, rather than one taken during an illness.

Captions

Captions are optional, and a program without them is complete. Many photographs need no explanation, but a caption helps where a guest could not tell who is in a picture, or when it was taken. Captions also suit a board of prints or an album at the reception, where people have time to read them.

Keep them short: "Walter and Margaret, 1963" or "At the boatyard" is enough. Check every name and year with someone who knows. If a year is uncertain, leave it out rather than guess.

Photographs that need care

A few kinds of photograph deserve a second thought before they are printed and handed to every guest:

• Photographs from a long illness. They can be hard for guests to see, and hard for the family to see handed out. Choose the cover and the closing picture from a time when the person was well. Some families still include one later photograph, because those years were part of the life too; that is a choice to make together.
• Photographs with other people in them. A former spouse, a relative the family is no longer close to, or someone who keeps their life private might prefer not to appear in something every guest takes home. Choose another photograph, crop them out, or ask them.
• Photographs of children. Ask their parents, especially if the same pictures will also go online in a slideshow or on a memorial page.

When you are unsure about a photograph, ask the people in it, or leave it for the family's own albums. A short conversation now is easier than a hard moment at the service.