Adding Captions to your Photo Calendar

Many photo editing or publishing programs have a calendar feature that enables you to add comments in the form of text or drawings to your photo calendar. Although captions add humor or inspiration to your calendars, it's often hard to come up with clever comments to give your creation just the right flavor. Here are some ideas to help you on your way.

Motivational/Inspirational

Grow Calendar 2011

Motivational comments can add inspiration to your calendars. Sometimes if you're feeling down, all you need is a little push to help you reach your goals. A beautiful picture along side a motivational comment can make a calendar that's both attractive and inspiring. Online there are millions of quotes available for use, here are a few to consider for your next calendar:

"Whatever you are, be a good one." --Abraham Lincoln

"I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them." --Pablo Picasso

"Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles, which he has overcome while trying to succeed." --Booker T. Washington

"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that is your own self."--Aldous Leonard Huxley

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." --George Bernard Shaw

"To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions." --Benjamin Franklin

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." --Albert Einstein

"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out." --Ray Bradbury

"Joy is not in things! It is in us!"--Benjamin Franklin

"Definition of courage: 'Grace under pressure.'"--Ernest Hemingway

"The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important." --Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

"Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them"--A. A. Milne Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh

Kids Say the Darndest Things

Many people like to take digital picture of their children or grandchildren to share with loved ones. Humor comes naturally to children, so through the year keep record of the cute things they say to use on your next calendar. For example, my son once asked me for a piece of candy, and I told him he could have "one", than he said, "Can I have two ones?" So, a picture of him with this comment along with some candy images would have made an adorable calendar page.

You could even use fonts that resemble child handwriting with their comments, or captions that look like they are crayon drawings.

You might even ask them what they want to put with their picture, what they want to tell the person that is receiving the calendar, or what they were thinking when the picture was taken.

If you still cannot think of what to add to your calendar look for famous quotes online or from books that relate to children such as:

"Children have more need of models, than of critics."--Joseph Joubert

"Children need your presence more than your presents." --Jesse Jackson

"I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it." --Harry S. Truman

"You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going."--P. J. O'Rourke

"You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance."--Franklin P. Adams American journalist

"Children have never been very good at listening to adults but they have never failed to imitate them."--James Baldwyn

Holidays

There is a holiday for every month of the year. In December, you could include a line from your favorite Christmas carol, or a phrase or saying that fits your families holiday season. In the fall, you could find a phrase from a favorite poem that reflects on the change of the color of the leaves or on the harvest. If you are not a poet yourself, you can find a poem or a song phrase that mirrors the way you feel about a season or a photograph.

Humor

Humor can brighten any day. If you have funny pictures that you want to incorporate into you photo calendar, you could include jokes that you have heard, or most people are open to you poking a little fun at their silly picture.

Some calendar creation programs will even let you draw over the pictures, so you could add fangs to your friends for a funny Halloween picture, or a bikini to someone for an August month.

If you are the type that cannot remember the jokes you hear, an example of some humorous phrases that can be found online:

I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it."--Jack Handey

"If it's free, it's advice; if you pay for it, it's counseling; if you can use either one, it's a miracle."--Jack Adams

"Income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf."--Will Rogers

"No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens."--Abraham Lincoln

"Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died."--Erma Bombeck

"I love deadlines. I especially love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."--Douglas Adams, Author, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

"You know you are getting old when the candles cost more than the cake."--Bob Hope

Birthdays--On Getting Older

Some people like to make birthday calendars to share with their family, so that everyone can remember birthdays and stay in touch on those special days.

In Birthday calendars you could include a little family history, such as where people were born, or a favorite birthday memory. You could add history, such as, in 1963 when Uncle Steve was born, John F. Kennedy was the president of the United States.

You could add birthday cakes or party hat images, or draw the birthday party hats over the photographs. Calendar creations software will also allow you to insert pictures into the calendar grid, so you can include multiple birthday pictures in one month.

Some famous quotes, on getting older, you could add are:

"Youth has no age."--Pablo Picasso

"To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am."--Bernard M. Baruch

"Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live."
--Unknown

"Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else."--Ogden Nash

"Adults are obsolete children."--Dr. Seuss [Theodor Seuss Geisel] (03/02/1904-1991)

"Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age."
--French proverb

"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity."
--Thomas Henry Huxley

"The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom."
--H. L. Mencken

"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better."
--Unknown

"When our memories outweigh our dreams, we have grown old."--Bill Clinton

"A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age."--Robert Frost

There really are endless possibilities to the type of captions you could add to your photo calendars. Just keep some notes on the funny things you hear, or do some online research for a famous quote or poem. For history, there are websites that you could look up a month and year a person was born to add historic facts to their images. You could add favorite songs or sayings, comedic drawings, or change fonts to match the images.

The most important thing - let your imagination and humor run wild.

Adding Captions to your Photo Calendar

Grow Calendar 2011