photo preservation Archives - Save Your 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.

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!