1. Write the boundary in one line
Before opening the picker, describe the chapter in a sentence short enough to remember. Try “the coastal weekend,” “our last month in the old apartment,” “the summer everyone came home,” or “senior spring.” If the sentence needs several unrelated clauses, the selection is probably too broad.
Use time as a boundary only when it helps. A calendar month can be coherent, but a four-day trip may contain a stronger story than an entire season. The right boundary is the smallest period that still contains a beginning, a change, and an ending.
2. Make a generous first pass
Do not try to identify the final hero images immediately. First collect everything that clearly belongs to the chapter. Include people, places, objects, food, signs, rooms, transit, weather, and the quiet frames between events. A generous pass prevents the edit from becoming a polished but generic highlight reel.
For Memento, aim for 50–150 eligible photos. Fifty is the floor, not the creative target. Around 100 can provide more recurring evidence and visual choice, but a focused set of 70 is better than 140 images padded with duplicates.
3. Balance five kinds of evidence
A useful selection usually contains five kinds of frames. Establishing images answer where and when. People images show who kept appearing without requiring guessed relationship labels. Action images reveal what actually happened. Detail images carry the era’s visual language. Transition images explain how one moment became the next.
You do not need an equal number of each. You need enough range that the edit can move between scale and emotion instead of repeating twelve versions of the same portrait.
- Establishing: streets, rooms, landscapes, venues, arrivals.
- People: candid groups, portraits, silhouettes, shared activity.
- Action: movement, preparation, meals, games, departures.
- Detail: objects, hands, clothing, tables, tickets without private data.
- Transition: windows, walks, trains, empty rooms, the way home.
4. Keep repetition when it means something
Delete exact duplicates and weak burst frames, but do not remove every repeated subject. Three visits to the same diner, four versions of the same walk, or a color that appears across different days can become the visual rhyme that makes a recap feel observed.
The test is whether the repetition reveals a pattern. If the images only document repeated attempts at the same pose, keep the strongest one. If they show a ritual changing over time, keep the sequence.
5. Run a dignity and privacy pass
Remove private messages, passwords, receipts with identifying details, boarding passes, medical or financial documents, exact home or work locations, and images that make someone else vulnerable. Crop decisions cannot always make a private image safe; sometimes the right edit is exclusion.
Then ask one human question: would the people in these frames understand why this moment belongs in the story? Memento is designed to be flattering and public-safe, but the person making the recap still owns the final sharing decision.
6. Check the opening and the ending
Sort the remaining photos chronologically for one last review. Make sure the selection contains at least one frame that can open the world, several moments that deepen it, and one or two images that feel like an ending rather than another highlight.
Do not worry about choosing card layouts or writing captions. In Memento, the editorial pipeline handles the 12-card sequence after you choose the evidence. Your job is simpler: give the chapter enough honest material to reveal its shape.