organize my photos

is making me realize how necessary this is.

I think scan my photos is what I’m going to do. Now, to do it…

I think the scanning option is the best, for me, at least. I now need to make organizing and grouping them to send in a priority.

I have lots of stuff in albums, which is good…but if I send in all my old paper photos to be digitalized, not all of them are going to be albumable (like, “vacation to chicago” or “weekend in Vegas”)...they are going to be random pictures of friends and small events in high school, like movie nights or roller skating…not big events. So those will have to be identified by keyword, most likely, with the activity or who is in the picture, rather in broad albums. So I started doing that with the 1400 photos I already have on my computer. I got through over 100 in less than an hour…it does not take long to type in the few words that best describe a photo “mom, dad, cruise, snorkeling” or whatever. So I’m working on keywording everything I have, as well as bundling up the old ones to be digitally scanned.

found some duplicates that I was able to throw out, as well as just random bad pictures that do not need to be scanned for posterity.

I have four categories so far…just keep sort of adding to each stack. Then I’ll go through each stack, try to make each stack more in order and make sure they are turned the correct way, no duplicates, and count them (they charge you per 1000, so if you have 1010, it’s an extra $50, which I don’t need)

At least I did some sorting earlier, which is making this easier.

Fidgie’s comment and talking with another person at work today convinced me. I researched more today, and it’s probably going to cost $80 for a batch of 1000 (once they ship the photos back to me). Were I to organize these all on my own and really house them so I could find a specific picture to show someone when they came over, I would probably be in at least half that much in new albums, plus all the time spent. I’ve decided it’s worth the money, and I’m going to start working on getting it ready.

You have to bundle the photos together. They do not scan in a particular order of bundle (unless you pay more for that), but they will scan each bundle in order, so I’m going to at least have like-minded bundles (college, high school, vacations, etc).

I’m so glad to at least have an idea of HOW I’m going to finish this goal.

http://unclutterer.com/2008/08/19/have-someone-else-digitize-your-old-photos/

I’m just not one to really stick things in an album….

Also, if I ever wanted to, I could…

All of my current photos are digital (wedding included)

any further organization COULD be handled during a car ride or long flight, vacation, etc., just by having my laptop with me…

As I stacked and rubber banded them all, I could easily toss out ones that I have no interest in scanning for long term keeping…which I’m doing now, but it’s hard for me to get them in the right stacks.

I got to thinking about this the other day when I thought about naming my photos a certain way in iphoto, so that when I did a spotlight search on my computer for “mom,” all the photos with my mom would come up. and then I thought, hmmm…maybe this is a good solution for me…

Any thoughts?

I have an empty album that I’ve committed to putting high school youth group pictures in. The good news is that most of these are not really order specific, just a lot of pictures of us hanging out, so i don’t need to worry too much about putting them in order. I’m going to pull it out right now and see if I can commit to a few pages and also tossing out some of the weird ones.

I had a few horrible pictures that I mailed out to a friend this week…pictures that were like, “why have I kept these for 10 years?” She loved them…emailed me and said she laughed so hard and missed me. So even those horrible pictures have a nice purpose.

I threw about maybe another two inches, found some doozies and some hilarious things. If anyone has any suggestions about how to go about this, I’m all ears. I know probably should make stacks all across the living room if I have to, high school, college, this trip, that trip, etc., but so far I’ve just flipped through aimlessly and mixed up stacks I sort of already had separated. This is why I feel it will take forever. At least I can be thankful I’m now a digitizer and do not print most of what I take.

yikes, it’s so hard!!! I have done awesome on the computer…I load computers and put them in an album instantly. But that stack of printed photos…yikes. I went through today and got rid of a 8 in high stack of photos and other stuff. I also put a few stacks I had sorted into an album, just so they are there. They are together with their respective groups, but not in chronological order all together. But I suppose I can go back and put them in order if I really want to some day down the road. But I have other larger stacks that are sort of organized, but I can’t decide what album to put them in, etc. But at least I worked on this for awhile (I had contemplated just sitting around this morning, but I feel better having done something towards this goal)

I found aNOTHER box of photos in the garage today. I’ve been putting them all in one area to tackle after I clean out other areas of my life, but dang, its frustrating.