5 Reasons Why You Haven’t Gotten Your Photos Organized

Manage Your Photos, Organize Your Photos, Preserve Your Photos

5 Reasons Why You Haven’t Gotten Your Photos Organized:

• You don’t know where all your photos are and thinking about it hurts your head.

• Or, their location is known but you feel completely overwhelmed.

• Photo organizing is marked as a ‘to-do’ for someday…but it hasn’t been done yet. And as we all know, someday is the day after never.

• All the technology and choices around photo organizing confuse you.

• No one told you that professional photo organizers exist – and can help!

I’ve recently read several interesting articles on photo organizing. Many of the folks interviewed say the same thing as my clients.

For example:

• They feel overwhelmed by the state of their current digital collection. This holds for any inherited print photos as well.

• They are motivated to start. But they got sidetracked or lost in the weeds.

• They are tech-savvy but can’t find the time (and believe me, it always takes longer than you think).

Does any of this sound familiar? If so, help is here. You can spare yourself frustration by taking a few simple steps to address these reasons why you haven’t gotten your photos organized. Remember, not doing it will cost you in the long run, as images continue to accumulate in your camera roll.

A few tips to help you get started:

Manage, Organize and Preserve your Print Photos

If you have loose printed photos, use the ABC’s to organize: A = A list of photos, your keepers. Put these in one pile. B = B-roll, these are your alternatives. C = Can, as in trash can. Yes, you can throw out photos! The ones I recommend discarding are any blurry, redundant, or unrecognizable images. If there are people in them you don’t know, ask a family member or relative. They may want them and will be happy to know you have them.

• Scan the A + B photos and back them up. Get an archival, acid-free storage system for your remaining printed photos. You can store them in sections – by date, event, or subject. I recommend Archival Methods for a wide array of museum-quality storage options.

Manage, Organize and Preserve your Digital Images

• The digital photo collection requires some hunting and gathering from all your devices. Don’t forget any recently scanned print images. Keep in mind that digital images are more delicate in the sense that they can be erased with one click, so proceed with care.

• Use the same ABC process for digital photos. I find it’s best to choose a consistent naming convention. I go with YY-MM-DD wherever possible. You can then add names, events, and places to the files using keywords / tags.

• I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention video. Do you have old home movies? You can have them digitized and sorted, as well. iMovie is a great place to start. You can add them to current videos and edit them to music. Or simply add them to your collection to share with family (pop some corn for family movie night!).

Storage Options

Both professional photographers and photo organizers use the 3-2-1 backup method. This requires maintaining three (3) copies of your collection at all times. Two (2) copies on external hard drives (stored in different locations) and one (1) copy in the cloud. You will need to update your collection at regular intervals. But that’s ok because you are now motivated and organized to do so! And if not, we at Past Present Pix are here to help! Don’t hesitate to contact us for your free 15-minute call.