Photo Organization Archives - Page 5 of 9

Jul 26 2017

Save Your Photos: Set A Goal

The first step to getting your photo life organized is picturing the end result. In other words, set a goal for yourself and your photos, videos and memorabilia. Just like any goal, you need to have a concrete vision with a timeline for completion.

Having an end-goal and a deadline will help motivate you towards completion. Think ahead to when you have your entire photo and video collection organized and accessible.

How would you like to share and enjoy these pictures?
Do you want a family yearbook with highlights?
Do you want a photo gallery on your wall with milestone events?
Do you want online photo albums that other members of your family can access?
What about a video slideshow to enjoy with some popcorn?

Choose a few fun ways you plan to celebrate and share your photos – this is the fun part!

Next, think about who you plan to share your photos with and let them in on your plans.

Create a goal and timeline for your #photo #organizing project. #saveyourphotos Click To Tweet

You are more likely to achieve your goal when you tell someone who can hold you accountable.

You can do it! Once you’ve set your goal, let us know what it is. Maybe you can inspire someone else’s goal.

We also invite you to visit our sister blog The Photo Organizers for more tips and in-depth knowledge from some of the top photo organizing industry professionals. To find a photo organizer near you, visit the Association of Personal Photo Organizers.

Jul 19 2017

Save Your Photos: Get Set Up for Success

Any good organizing project starts with a good workspace and a plan. This week we are discussing how to find a great workspace to ensure your photo organizing project is set up for success.

Set Up for Success: Find a Work Space

Let’s get down to business. Remember the saying “out of sight, out of mind”? Depending on the size of you photo collection, you may be working on this for a while. (And you probably have a lot of photos because, remember we are all overwhelmed!) If everything is tucked away or hidden in closets and on computers, it will be easy to forget. You’ve made a commitment to organize your photos, so let’s get them into an area where you can work on them.

Set yourself up for #photo #organizing success with a great workspace. Click To Tweet

Designate a temporary workspace in your home that is visible and allows you to spread out. A large table in the corner of a room or a separate room is ideal and causes the least amount of disruption. When you’re project is visible, you’re more likely to remain focused on completion. If you set yourself up on your dining room table, then you may have to pack it up again when you want to sit the family for dinner! If space is an issue, take a photo of the locations where your photos are stored so you can create a vision board of what you are dealing with.

Set Up For Success: Hunt and Gather

Next, gather your memory collection into your workspace. Locate all photo albums, loose printed photos, memorabilia, kids artwork, negatives, slides, undeveloped film, memory cards, family artifacts, home movies (ex. VCR tapes, miniDV’s, film, etc.). Determine the devices where you have photos stored, such as your smartphone, computers, and tablets. Resist the temptation to start sorting yet or reminiscing! There will be time for that later.

Ready, set, GO!

Jul 12 2017

Save Your Photos: Why Are You Overwhelmed?

Photos are the memory keepers of our personal story. They are reminders of love, laughter, good times, vacations, family, friends, and traditions. They help us reflect and remember a life well lived.

Today we are at risk of losing our visual inheritance to natural disasters, technological obsolescence, and digital overload. The ability to take and share thousands of photos in an instance has lulled us into thinking that these pictures will always be available to us, but too often, that isn’t the case.

No Wonder You Are Overwhelmed

The statistics are staggering.

In 2015 people took 1 trillion digital photos and that number is expected to grow to 1.2 trillion by the end of 2017. There are currently an estimated 3.6 trillion photos stored on computers, and devices and those numbers are expected to grow to 4.7 trillion by 2017. It’s also estimated that there are over 1.7 trillion paper photos stored in albums, attics & shoeboxes, waiting to be digitized and backed up.

In 2017 we will have 4.7 trillion #digital #photos stored on our computers & devices. #saveyourphotos Click To Tweet

What about your old home movies? Video tapes, like VHS, were very popular, and some 6 billion tapes were sold in the US with an average length of 2 hours each. That’s 12 billion hours of footage of new babies, first steps, weddings, barbecues, and graduations. But videotapes were never meant to be a permanent medium, and deterioration strikes them in as little as 20 years, even when stored under optimal conditions. Less than 1% of these memories have been transferred to digital, a much more durable and lossless format. Also the ability to view these 6 billion tapes in not an option any longer since most devices have become obsolete.

Is it any wonder people are overwhelmed with their memory collections?

How To Save Your Photos

Take a deep breath; we’re here to help. Continue to follow this blog and we are going to share tips on how to organize your backlog of printed photos, digital photos, media, and memorabilia. Our goal is to help you choose the pictures, stories, and memories that matter the most and safeguard them for generations to come. And most of all, we want to help you get them back into your life now so that you can enjoy them today!

Sep 19 2016

4 Reasons to Hire a Professional Photo Organiser

Mara Morrison of The Filing Fairies wants you to get past the reasons you aren’t organizing your photos and consider hiring a professional photo organiser.

In our line of work we hear things like:

“I could do this myself”

“I know I could do this on my own but I just can’t motivate myself to get started” or

“There are too many options I don’t know which one is right for me”.

Because many people believe they have the skills to complete a task themselves, there is also an associated sense of guilt. They are thinking “I should be able to get this project done”. They are embarrassed that they long to hire someone to do it for them. I remember the first time I hired a cleaner for the house. You should have heard the song and dance I made about how busy I was and how I really COULD clean the house myself, how apologetic I was about my Joe Average house hold mess. I won’t even get started on the wife/mother guilt that I laid on myself. I will tell you though about the relief once I gave myself permission to let that responsibility go, the sweet release of the burden that would allow me to focus my energy on my growing family and a business I loved, was uplifting.

You hire a landscape gardener to advise on planting or design and help keep the lawns in check, or a tutor to unravel complicated math problems with the kids. There is no shame in engaging a professional photo organiser to help you with your photo life management. Most people are unable to put a monetary value on their life’s memories so why not invest in getting help to ensure that they are used, enjoyed and protected.

4 reasons to hire a professional photo organiser #saveyourphotos Click To Tweet

4 reasons why you should hire a Professional Photo Organiser

You are busy.

Life is chaotic! We are all at different stages of life and everyone one of those stages comes with high demands on your time. It is perfectly reasonable to not get through the basic household chores and errands, let alone a special project (no matter how important it might be). How often do you have a basket of washing to put away? A Professional Photo Organizer is dedicated to helping and is working hard to provide solutions you can use.

You are overwhelmed and scared.

The elephant just seems so huge and you don’t know where to start eating it. Metaphorically you are scared that eating such a large elephant will make you full to bursting and you are scared that trying to work on a large project will crush you. A Photo Organiser can help identify a clear process to suit your unique needs and put you on the path to freedom.

You are confused by choice.

You know the old saying a Jack of all trades the Master of none. When there are too many options or solutions you become confused by what might be right for you and of course you can’t be expected to be skilled in all areas. Plus you recognise that you don’t really want and unskilled indecisive ‘Jack’ to be held responsible for your priceless memories. A Photo Organizer can demystify all the solutions and ascertain what is right for your individual needs.

You need accountability.

Similar to engaging a trainer or coach to motivate you to achieve fitness and sporting goals, a professional photo organiser can hold you accountable for your organising goals.

Your story matters. Your photo collection tells that story. Don’t let guilt or fears prevent you from doing something to preserve and protect your precious memories. Check out our Resources Page and download our eBook or other checklists.

We make it our business to make your wishes come true.

Mara Morrison

The Filing Fairies is a partnership between friends Mara Morrison and Jo Myers, who met working for an event management company. It was there that they discovered their shared passion for order, lists and getting things done. In 2008 as part of a 150th Anniversary Tour for NAB they organised close to 200 events over an 8 month period. It was during that time they recognised their excellence as a team. Now as The Filing Fairies they hope to realise a vision of giving you peace of mind by helping you to organise your photo collection so you can utilise and enjoy it. The Filing Fairies are certified members of the Association of Personal Photo Organizers.

Sep 08 2016

Get Your Printed Photos Organized!

Follow these five step from Sheila DeHart of Tidy Up Organizing to get your printed photos organized.

I’m pretty sure many of you face this same dilemma. My kids are in their 20s, so that means the majority of their childhood was captured using a film camera. Gasp! I was the mom at Disneyworld with the fanny-pack full of rolls of film. And it was almost unheard of to not get double or triple prints if the store was offering it for free! So now what? You have tons of printed photos stored in the basement or attic. Maybe yours are nicely organized in shoe boxes or maybe they are tossed haphazardly in large plastic totes.

Either way, there is a better solution out there!

Let’s start by getting set up in the perfect conditions for getting these printed photos organized in 5 easy steps:

Step 1: Set Up Your Work Space

You’ll need a worktable with great lighting. This table could be your dining room table or a folding table set up just for this project. Just don’t use the kitchen table, you are going to want to spread out and work on this when you have free time. Don’t think you are going to pack this up just to serve dinner to your family!

We are going to start by sorting through the photos. However you currently have them stored is fine, just take a bunch out and start going through them.

Step 2: Toss Your Photos

Here is the “rule of thumb” when it comes to sorting photos. Keep the ones that are interesting, in focus, mean something to you, have good composition or tell a story. Toss the ones that are blurry, out of focus, unflattering, too much scenery or you just don’t recognize anyone in the photo.

For example, I have tons of pictures of my kid’s school parties. I only keep the ones my kids are in. The pictures of the other cute kids at the party won’t mean anything to anyone in my family in 20 years, so they go in the trash.

You will be surprised at how many photos you are going to toss.

Step 3: Sort It Out

Another decision you will have to make is how you want them sorted. Chronological order is the most pleasing to me. Maybe you are the type of person that would like them sorted by event, then the way to do that would be to make categories such as holidays, birthdays, vacations, family times, sports, etc. Within each of these categories, you could put them in chronological order too.

5 steps to organize your printed photos #saveyourphotos Click To Tweet

Step 4: Time to Scan

Once you have completed the task of sorting the photos, the next step is to get them scanned. You can check out the Association of Personal Photo Organizers (APPO) for a professional photo organizer near you who can help you with this. Scanning the photos and then putting the digital images on a disc or flash drive and also storing those images in a cloud storage is the safest place for your families cherished memories.

Step 5: Store and Display

What you do with your printed photos once you have them sorted is entirely up to you. If you want them on display in beautiful albums, this will be so easy to complete now that they are sorted and in chronological order. Another way to store them is in archival storage boxes to keep them safe.

This is your family’s story, how you choose to tell it is up to you. We at APPO are here to help!

Sheila DeHart lives in St. Louis, MO where she runs Tidy Up Organizing, a company that provides residential and photo organizing. She started her business to help people live happier lives by getting organized and out from under clutter. Once she started seeing how many of her clients were not enjoying their photos because they were not properly organized, she decided to become a Certified Photo Organizer. As a hobbyist photographer and Certified Photo Organizer, Sheila understands the value and importance of preserving her clients cherished memories. She is a member of APPO and NAPO.

Get Your Printed Photos Organized | SaveYourPhotos.org

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