At this time of year, we are starting to plan for 2022, so what better time to provide an incentive, if any was needed, to create a personalised calendar using our own photographs?
The format
Your calendar should have a ‘month to view’ format, with the ‘calendar’ aspect taking up as little of the page as possible to allow you maximum space for adding either a single large photograph or a selection of smaller ones for each month (see example below).
Tip: Personalised calendars often feature month-appropriate images, which you may want to bear in mind when designing your calendar.
The theme
Your calendar should have a recognisable theme, rather than just being a selection of random images, but the choice of theme is entirely up to you. Personalised calendars often feature photographs of family members or family occasions, not forgetting family pets. You might prefer to focus on places you have visited during the past year, or flowers and plants or animals that you’ve photographed in your garden or while out and about, or even photographs of meals you’ve cooked and cakes you’ve baked. Another idea would be to showcase your Cuppa & Capture images from throughout the year, either including one statement image each month or several favourites. Or similarly, you could feature images from your favourite Photo Walks or Challenges. Feel free to release your creativity and come up with your own unique theme.
The photographs you include can, of course, be taken specially, but if they are related to a specific month, they will certainly need to be retrieved from your archives. Either way is perfectly acceptable, this is your calendar!
How to create your personalised calendar
It was not possible to find a template that would allow you to create a calendar that you could subsequently print off at home and, importantly, download as images for the gallery.
With this in mind, and unless you know of a better way to do it (in which case, feel free), the suggestion is for you to create your calendar using a commercial company, on-line or through their app. Note that, if you follow the suggestions below, you will not have to purchase the finished calendar, although you may of course find that you’d like to. Instead, you should be able to ‘preview’ each month and take a screenshot that will be of a perfectly acceptable quality for the gallery on the website.
Please note: The designs on offer will vary between companies, but as mentioned above, you should aim to choose a layout where the images and the calendar for that month are on a single page, and where the calendar aspect is minimal (as shown below), leaving you plenty of space for your image or images.
Listed below are three examples of commercial companies that you might want to explore, although if you have a favourite that is not on the list, and they have an appropriate template with the same sort of format, you should feel free to use them.
Whichever company you choose, you can either upload a single large image or several individual photos for each month, or alternatively you can create a collage of individual images and upload that as a single image.
(i) Cewe
https://www.cewe.co.uk/photo-calendars/wall-calendars.html
You can create your calendar on-line or through the downloadable app. From a range of different ‘Wall calendars’, choose the size you would like as your end product (A4, A3, A2, square, XXL), the design (making sure that the calendar aspect is minimal), the orientation (landscape of portrait) and the number of photographs that you add. Once you have chosen your photos, you simply ‘add new photo area’. It is easy to ‘preview’ and take a screen shot (see advice on taking screenshots below).
Appropriate formats (with the option of a minimal calendar) are: A4, A3, A2, Square (30 x 30cm or 45 x 45cm) or XXL (Panoramic 62.5 x 32cm) Photo Wall Calendar
(ii) Photobox
https://www.photobox.co.uk/shop/calendars-and-diaries
Scroll down and choose from A3 Poster Calendar, A2 Large Photo Calendar or Square (30 x 30cm) Photo Calendar (all of which feature a minimal calendar).
(iii) Optimalprint
https://www.optimalprint.co.uk/product/category/312/wae31yvSYCQ
This is their ‘Modern Overlapping Year Wall Calendar’. Choose A4 landscape or Square 21 x 21cm (select one of these appropriate formats from the seven on offer).
How to save your month-to-a-view pages
You may of course decide that you’d like to order your finished calendar, but for the purposes of our Gallery, please follow the following guidelines:
- If possible, download the previews, but more likely, you will need to take a screenshot of each individual month, and crop any superfluous details away to create a ‘clean’ version of that that calendar month.
- You can either download the entire screenshot and crop as necessary, or you should be able to select the part you want to take a screenshot of, as follows:
- On a MAC, use ‘Shift’ + ‘Command’ + ‘4’, then simple drag the cursor to select an area
- On a PC, use ‘Windows logo key’ + ‘Shift’ + ‘S’, select ‘Rectangular Snip’, then select ‘Save Snip’
Updated information
A couple of our members have made very useful additional suggestions, especially with regard to achieving higher resolution images. Please click on the following links for more information:
Feel free to follow these suggestions but please rest assured that the images obtained by following the original method will be of sufficient quality for the Challenge.
Submitting your month-to-a-view pages
- You should submit ‘clean’ versions of all twelve individual months (as JPEG files in the usual way, see below).
- We are hoping to be able to publish all 12 months of your calendar in sequence or as a group, depending on numbers submitted and provided we can find a way to display them in the gallery. However, if you have favourites, please let us know your rankings for the twelve months in case we have to be selective.
- Please send your images to web@bishopthorpecc.co.uk by WeTransfer.
- Why not create your calendars in time to have them printed as Christmas presents, but if you are not in a hurry, the deadline is midnight on Tuesday 4 January.
Please adhere to the guidelines for submission as set out for ‘Challenges’ under Submitting Images on the website. In particular, to help the web team, please check the following list:
- Images are JPEG files.
- Image dimensions are a maximum of 1600 pixels wide or 1200 pixels high.
- Image sizes are less than 500kb. If not please save your images at a lower resolution until they are.
- The ‘title metadata field’ includes your ‘image title’ and ‘your name’ in the following way: January, John Black or August, Sally White.
- There must be NO other metadata in the caption or description. (Note to Olympus users, you will have to delete ‘Olympus digital camera’ from the caption field.)
- Your images are saved with file names as in the following example: January, John Black or Sally White, August i.e., exactly as in the ‘title metadata field’ (see above).
If you are unsure about how to submit, or about the Challenge more generally, please ask. Receipt of your images will be acknowledged, so please get in touch if you don’t hear anything within a couple of days.
Acknowledgement
With thanks to Crewe, PhotoBox and Optimalprint for templates and template images, which we hope will encourage members to purchase their finished creations.