To have a record of your baby's first year, try some of these suggestions:

• Photograph everything your baby does on a normal day, at regular intervals (three months, six months, nine months). Order double prints (or print out two sets), save one set for the album, and use the other set to make a book for your baby.

• Regularly photograph your rapidly growing child with something that doesn't change in size. For example, use a teddy bear that might tower over your baby at birth, but comes up to his knees at a year. You can also try “baby in a hat,” “baby with the cat,” or “baby in Mom's rocker.”

• Develop a photo series (these work with video as well). For example, you might photograph your baby with a single pumpkin or rose for her first birthday — and add an additional pumpkin or rose in the photo for each additional year of her age. Another photo concept might be “Splish Splash,” with pictures from your baby's first bath in the hospital (given by the nurses), and additional ones in the baby tub and then on to the big bathtub.

• Don't put the camera away when your child is crying or screaming. Tears and tantrums are a big part of the first year — and many years to come — and though you may think you'll want to forget them, someday you'll treasure those photos.

• Don't forget to get pictures with each parent. In most couples one person takes on the photographer role, and sometimes finds out when it is too late that he or she is missing from the photographic record.

• Videotape and photograph the significant people in your child's life: grandparents, other relatives, the neighbor's baby that he sees every day at the park, your regular babysitter.

• You don't need to save every work of art once your baby starts scribbling, scrawling, and painting, as you'll quickly be overwhelmed. Instead, save a representative sample and regularly surround your child with his artwork and take a photo.