This is a guest contribution from Nancy Nally of Scrapbook Update.
Thanks to an entire industry of organization books, TV shows, and experts, we know that we need to clean out our linen closets, our pantries, and our wardrobes. We know all about the dangers of being a hoarder.
But have you looked at your photo stash lately? Are you a hoarder…of photos?
Those of us who were raised in the era of film photography are programmed to treat every picture memory as precious, because of the expense of film. In the days of film, I might come home from a week long vacation with as many as 10 rolls of film – around 350 pictures.
Today, with the advent of digital photography, it doesn’t cost anything to click the shutter of our camera. We can click away in search of the perfect shot, or record every moment of a special event. Now, I can easily take as many as 300-500 photos in a single day during an event like a trade show.
And then smart phones entered the mix and we started taking photos everywhere we go, to send as texts, or to refresh our memories.
The result is that many of us are accumulating massive photos libraries. And while we think of snapping the shutter on a digital photo as free, the reality is that as those photos accumulate, they turn into a burdensome volume of digital data that costs money to store, maintain, and back-up.
Besides the financial cost and maintenance burden, a cluttered photo library can also make your photos unusable. It becomes impossible to find the good images in all of the junk, just like a cluttered closet is easy to lose your favorite sweater in.
So what’s the solution? Purge early and purge often. Use photo management software – such as Adobe’s Lightroom – to organize your photos. When you initially import your photos, do an immediate purge of the horrible ones or the ones that don’t belong in your photo archives (like the one you texted to your husband from the grocery store to see if that was the right coffee to buy).
Then, as you work through that group of photos, make sure you delete the not so great ones and only keep the best. Do you really need all six of the versions of the group photo you snapped at that family gathering trying to make sure you got one decent one? No. So pick the best one or two and ditch the rest.
It’s important to save your photos. But that doesn’t mean you have to save them all. Purging your digital photos will make them easier to protect and use. Start deleting today!
Nancy Nally is the owner of Nally Studios LLC., and the Publisher & Editor of Scrapbook Update and Craft Critique.
Nancy has been an avid scrapbooker for over fifteen years, and has worked and taught in scrapbook stores in Michigan and Florida. She founded Scrapbook Update in 2004, and became owner/editor of Craft Critique in 2012.
Nancy undertakes freelance work for a variety of scrapbook industry companies. She is currently the Cricut Creativity Center manager at 2015 Scrapbook Expo shows for Provo Craft, as well as the social media manager for Buttons Galore & More.
