Last week I embarked on a project to finally get our digital pictures organized and to print picture books. I had purchased a groupon for a photo book, and I planned to do one per year for 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Here’s the problem. Our pictures are completely disorganized! Well, that is the main problem. Other problems include the fact that our camera is CRAP and therefore so are all of our pictures, and also if you looked at our pictures, you would think my husband is a single dad (who takes his kids to do really fun stuff) because their mom is nowhere to be seen! AND, it became clear to me that we don’t take nearly enough pictures. The everyday moments are the important ones, and that’s what we miss (other than what we catch on our cell phones, ha).
Anyway, back to the disorganization. First of all, our pictures are spread out among at least four computers and three online archives. They are not all in one place. And frankly, I’m sure I forget where some of them are. Also, they are in no particular order, the file names are meaningless, and there are a dozen terrible pictures for every good one.
After a ton of work, I finally got the last couple of years organized on Flickr, and grouped into sets and collections. However, there are more where those came from! And I know Flickr isn’t a good long-term solution, and I need to have them backed up on something that’s in our possession.
I know it sounds silly, but this whole thing is causing me some serious anxiety, so always, I am turning to all of you smart people!
How do you organize your digital photos?
How do you back them up?
How do you print/display them? In actual old school photo albums, photo books or do you just let them live on your computer?
How do you weed out the bad pictures?
How do you make sure you are capturing your kids’ childhood on film and/or video?
I think this all boils down to that last question. I am terrified I am letting our memories disappear.
