digital photos Archives - Page 2 of 3

Aug 30 2017

Save Your Photos: Create Your Digital Photo Hub

Your digital photo hub is the one location where you will store all your original images. Designating a ‘hub’ is the key to keeping your photos organized and backed up.

Choosing your digital photo hub is the most important decision you will make when organizing your digital pictures, so let’s dig in.

Your Digital Photo Hub = Your Digital Home

You’re going to create a digital photo hub to store every photo (and video) you take including your soon-to-be-digitized prints and home movies. Your ‘hub’ will be the ‘home location’ for your entire memory collection and can be a master folder on your computer hard drive, an external hard drive or in some cases a cloud-based location. When you have a designated hub, you will find it easy to backup your memory collection and you will simplify your workflow significantly.

Create a single digital hub for all of your digital photos and videos. #saveyourphotos Click To Tweet

Things to Think About

Here are a few things to consider when choosing your ‘hub.’

1. Does your hub have the capacity to expand?

Chances are, you’ll continue to take photos and videos. If you locate your hub on an external hard drive or your computer, then you need to ensure you have ample storage space for your existing images and your future ones. High-resolution images and videos require a lot of space, so choose wisely.

2. Is your hub accessible and within your complete control at all times?

You should have access to your photos whenever you need to which means your hub needs to be stored locally, and not online. The only exception to that rule is if you are living an entirely mobile life where you aren’t tethered to a home computer.

Cloud Questions

Mobile devices don’t have the capacity to store your entire collection, making a cloud-based solution your only option. If you need to choose an online service, pick a reputable established provider and read the fine print. Ask about privacy (protecting your image info), photo ownership, data stripping (removing your metadata or compressing your images) data mining (sharing your personal info for advertising purposes) and how you retrieve your images if you decide to ‘break up’ with your provider. Some online services make you pay to download your own pictures. Buyer beware!

What’s In a Name?

Finally, give your hub a name that makes it easy to locate. Smith Family Memories is a good example. My Pictures or Pictures is a little too vague.

Where will you locate your digital photo hub?

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.

Aug 23 2017

Save Your Photos: Start With Your Digital Photos

Tackle your digital photos first. Your images may be at greater risk than your printed photo collection if you don’t have sufficient backups in place.

You may be tempted to start with your printed photos, but we have a good reason for tackling your digital photos first! We asked Certified Photo Organizer Caroline Guntur of Organizing Photos by The Swedish Organizer why she recommends starting with your digital images and she gave us 4 GREAT reasons.

Tech Failure Rates vs. Natural Disaster

Consider this fact: Statistically, you are more likely to lose your digital photos in a tech crash than your analog memories in a house fire or other natural disaster.

It’s no secret that hard drives fail. Lots of phones are stolen every day. Computers shut down, never to be powered on again. In other words, your device is the most likely culprit when it comes to lost memories, not a natural disaster.

Is it always accurate? Of course not. No disaster or accident should be treated casually, so you’ll have to consider the dangers that your photos face, and make a good judgment call, but in general, I tend to acknowledge this statement as fact. I live in a low-risk area, and I know for sure that my photos are more at risk on the tech side. Every project needs a plan of action, and if you’re statistically more likely to lose your digital photos, why not start by keeping those safe?

4 reasons you should start organizing your digital #photos today #saveyourphotos Click To Tweet

Most of Your Photos are Digital

If you lose your digital collection, you’ll probably end up losing more photos, maybe even most of them. I mean, aren’t the majority of your photos digital? I’d bet my last quarter on the fact that most of your photos are digital, even if you have lots of prints. If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably taken more pictures in the last few years of smartphone-clicking than in the past few decades combined (unless your polaroid cam was working overtime!).

Intangible Memories are Easier to Lose

Digital photos are easier to lose because they’re not tangible. Printed photos are usually stuck in a box somewhere, and are relatively safe if you store the box well. You’re not that likely to forget about it. Digital photos, on the other hand, are usually scattered on different devices and across different platforms, and they don’t come together as quickly. You just haven’t looked at them enough to remember all of them, so they’re easier to forget. You’ve never held them in your hand, and that makes a big difference. Many studies show we relate better to things we touch, so I have to believe that tangibility matters. It’s much easier to forget about a few photos on an individual device than about a box of prints that you can physically see.

A Digital System Makes Maintenance Easier

It’s not uncommon for the photo organizing process to take a few weeks, and sometimes clients take hundreds of new photos while we’re in the organizing mode. Without a system in place to deal with all the new digital photos, the to-do list keeps growing, and the project never ends. I like to think of it as a conveyor belt. The photos are just going to keep coming, so it’s easier to quickly set up the conveyor belt to go in the right direction rather than having to deal with an amassing pile of files. Why add more to the mess? With a digital system in place, it’s easier to maintain order, and when your older printed photos are ultimately scanned, it’ll be much less work to add them to your collection.

What do you think? Are you ready to tackle those digital photos?

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.

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!

Sep 22 2016

No Picture? No Proof? Photos Capture The Stories of Our Lives

This is a Guest Contribution by Lori Krause, Photo Life Manager, and member of the Association of Personal Photo Organizers.

No Picture? No Proof?

Now that’s a loaded statement! And can be interpreted a couple of different ways. But we’ll get back to that in a minute. First, let’s talk about why we take pictures.

Or why I take pictures.

I am not a professional photographer, far from it! I don’t know my aperture from my aspect ratio, much less anything about shutter speed. What I do know is that I’ve always enjoyed capturing important people and moments in my life through photography. But until about 6 years ago, I didn’t realize that I was also capturing proof.

The 50th Wedding Anniversary

In 2010, my in-laws were celebrating their 50^th wedding anniversary. I was asked to scan their family pictures and slides so the siblings could put together a video for the celebration party. While I was at it, I also scanned all of my pictures as well. How many times have you found a picture and thought, “Oh my goodness, I had forgotten all about . . . ?” I had a lot of those moments!

Like, “Oh, wow! There’s my husband heading to a fishing tournament in a sweatshirt he printed with one of the first color printers!”

or “Look, there’s the picture of my goofy son who won first place in a baby contest.”

But it wasn’t enough for me to remember those moments, I wanted the ability to find those pictures and share the moments with others. So, while I was scanning, I also set up a system in my computer to organize, the now thousands, of photographs. I can pretty much find any picture within a couple of minutes.

OK, so I can find the pictures quickly, but what stories do they tell? What are the memories and how can I share them today?

If there is no picture, is there no proof? #saveyourphotos Click To Tweet

Yesterday’s Memories Shared Today

When that sweatshirt (the one mentioned above) was found and my college daughter quickly declared it was hers, I could show her the picture of her dad wearing it almost 30 years prior. As my son was moving out and came across a little trophy, I could show him the picture that helped him claim that trophy 25 years ago.

krause-1 — *The “sweatshirt resurrected!”*

I also have recently captured memories as well.

krause-4 — *Sitting in the last row (who knew there was a row ZZ?) for the 2012 MLB All Star Game.*

Remember that 50^th Anniversary party that started it all? Over 100 friends and family came from all over the country for a surprise dinner to celebrate them. I made my in-laws a photo book to commemorate the weekend. (I’ve since made a photo book for almost every family vacation and holiday as well.) When my daughter graduated high school and wanted certain pictures for her page in the yearbook, I was able to find them easily. For Christmas gifts each year, I make calendars for my parents highlighting pictures of the grandkids, and they love them! It’s important to organize those pictures so you can find and relive those memories captured on film.

I’ve heard it said that a birth certificate proves you were born and a death certificate proves you died but a photograph proves you lived. So, no picture, no proof!

My name is Lori Krause. I live in a suburb of Kansas City with my husband of 28 years and a recently adopted dog who keeps me on my toes. We have 2 amazing human kids: one working on becoming a certified cicerone (beer expert) and one in college studying sports marketing.

I’m a non-practicing registered nurse. I’ve been in some sort of nursing since 1981. I love nursing, but healthcare is changing. I also love taking and organizing pictures. I had no clue I could transition careers so easily! As a nurse, I looked at the whole patient and evaluated what I could do to help and care for the patient. As a Photo Life Manager and member of APPO, I evaluate all of the client’s needs and help them care for their photographs.