Since the birth of our first child almost 7 years ago, we have taken insane amounts of pictures. If you're a parent you know exactly how out-of-control that can be. For the first couple of years I would regularly print pictures and every time my memory card would get full I would transfer them to a cd and store them neatly in an album.
Fast forward 4 years and I found myself with 2 completely full memory cards and a computer that literally couldn't hold another picture. I have been solely taking photos with my phone for months because I couldn't store them anywhere.
Needless to say I was forced into the long, daunting task of organizing, transferring and printing thousands of photos. Literally....thousands. After hours and hours of hard work I have promised I will NEVER let it get out of control again. Seriously it's way more work than I thought it would be.
Here are the problems that led to the ridiculous amount of photo chaos.
1.) Never deleting from my memory card. When photographing my children, especially my toddler, it takes about 10 shots to get that one decent one. Instead of deleting the ones that aren't good, I just leave them and let them take up space.
2.) Not organizing uploaded photos. When I upload the good photos to my computer I never organize them. I leave them on my desktop in a vaguely labeled folder.
3.) Not storing them on an external drive of any kind. If someone were to break into my home and take my camera and computer I would loose every picture from the past 4 years. I know that's a really unlikely event, but when it comes to sweet moments caught on film I don't want to take that risk.
4.) Not printing photos. What is the point in taking thousands of pictures if no one ever gets to look at them. I love looking at pictures from my past and I would like to have beautifully organized printed photos that my children can some day look back on. And as much as technology changes it can't hurt to have some prints just in case.
When I sat down to start the process it was quite overwhelming. I was worried to death about accidentally deleting some or them not saving correctly. I found that doing it in very small steps was the best and safest way to go.
Here are the steps I took to get everything organized and easily accessible.
1.) Organize folders on computer. Being very detailed and precise is key. It takes longer, but it's completely worth it.
2.) Transfer folders to external device.
3.) Upload favorite photos to be printed.
4.) Store current prints in order by date and or event.*
5.) Put past years prints in album by year.*
6.) Make photo books from each year. I'm not sure if I will actually do this but I might. It seems like a less expensive, less time consuming alternative to scrap booking. Which, let's be honest, I'm never going to catch up on.
*I haven't done these steps yet because I haven't received my prints yet.
I will do a detailed post on each step. As much as I did not enjoy doing this the sense of satisfaction I have now that it's done feels great. I hope I can encourage someone to get their chaos in order or discourage someone for letting it get that far :)
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