How do I begin organizing my photos? I have so many!

Last week I wrote about how many photos we take in a year. Today let’s start talking about how you can take control of them. I’ll cut to the chase: start with your why.

If you are like many people, you realize one day that you are overwhelmed by the number of photos you have. Maybe you personally take a lot of photos, or maybe you just inherited a mass of photos from a family member. Perhaps you have a life event and would love to create a slideshow commemorating someone’s life but you can’t find what you need. There can be many reasons that brought you to the point where you need to take control of your photo mess.

STEP 1: DETERMINE YOUR WHY

So where to begin? Step one is to determine your why. Why do you want to organize your photos? Is it because you want to have all of your memories at your fingertips? Do you want to clear out the physical photo mess taking up room in your attic? Do you have a big event coming up for which you want to display photos taken over a lifetime? Do you feel overwhelmed by the sheer mass of digital data you have clogging up your computer and phone? It is important to identify your why before you begin to craft your solution. Your process and solution will be different if you want to have all of you photos accessible on your phone than if you want to clear out the clutter in your basement. So think about your why.

The clients that I work with generally want both. They don’t want to keep everything, but they want to make what they have accessible to enjoy. You many not need or want 500 pictures of your son’s 5th birthday, but you would like to find them, remove the duplicates, and keep the best ones. Likewise, you may not want to keep all the slides you inherited from your mother, but you want to see what’s on them and keep a selection to preserve her legacy.

STEP 2: FIND YOUR PHOTOS

After you determine your why, step two is to see what you actually have. I can almost guarantee that you have a lot more photos than you think.

Sit down and really think about where your photos might be. This chart shows some of the places you may find your photos. Some are easy - we all have photos on our phone, and most of us have photos in the cloud - Apple iCloud and Google Photos are the most common. But where else? Most clients also have photos on their computer stored in areas not connected to their phone or cloud. Most clients also have photos in additional cloud accounts, such as an iCloud user finding they have some photos in Google or Dropbox.

Some of the many digital places your photos may be hiding.

Before cell phones became ubiquitous, did you have a camera? Where are those photos? Did you share photos with family via Shutterfly? Perhaps you still have some albums on the service containing photos that you don’t have anywhere else.

And then there are your physical photos. Do you have shoeboxes under your bed or in a closet? Old albums with photos stuck in magnetic pages that are yellowing? Sleeves of school pictures that you never got around to filing or sending to family? An attic full of boxes of slides and photos you inherited from a loved one?

STEP 3: MAKE A PLAN

Now that you know your why and have identified and/or gathered your photos, it’s time to create your plan. But before you do, go back to your why, as it may have changed a bit after reviewing your inventory of photos. At this point, make a cost/benefit analysis:

Is this a project you would enjoy, making the time and effort it takes to organize photos a fun, relaxing enterprise for you?

Or is this a project that is overwhelming and would cause you stress?

Organizing photos is a big job. There is no right answer here - everyone is different. But if it’s something you would have fun doing, and have the time to do it, do it yourself. There are lots of great resources out there to help you, and I’ll be posting some here.

If you decide you don’t have the time, energy, or desire to do it yourself, give me a call.