Is photo organizing worth it? I can imagine that is the question in many people’s head. Why pay for something that can be so easily done yourself. Well it CAN be done by you. But will it? It’s a lot of work. It can be monotonous and boring. It can be triggering. Sometimes we see pictures we had forgotten and we see pictures we might rather not see. Then again there might be so many pictures you are overwhelmed with them. Digitally we accumulate thousands of pictures a year. If you are of a certain age or have your parents pictures you may have hundreds of those too. It can be a LOT.
This is where people like me come in. We provide a service. Maybe take a worry off your hands. Why? Some of us are organizers, Some are photographers. What we have in common is a love of photos and being able to make them accessible for our clients.
But you tell me you STILL want to give it a shot, how hard can it be? You are right its not a difficult job especially if you are familiar with the people and events shown in the pictures so here is a quick 411 on how exactly to tackle photo organization
Start big and move towards small. Think of organizing a pile of rocks, you take on the larger ones first and then start on the medium sized ones and then the smaller ones and so on down to the last bits of pebbles that you dust up sweep up and dispose of.
Your biggest rocks are years of photos; each rock representing a year. Your medium rocks are events- vacations, holidays, birthdays etc. Your small rocks are people and the dust and pebbles? These are the blurry, over exposed, butt shots and accidental screen shots you have taken. Or if you have a teenager the 800 selfies they take on your phone when you arent looking.
(been there done that)
So first the big rocks. Take your time. Breath often don't worry if you miss something. Pick a year and sort roughly by month or event which ever you choose. If there are obvious pics you don't want dispose of as you please.
Now take each "big rock" and sort it into events, vacations, holidays etc. Take into account what happened that year ( ie births, deaths marriages etc) Some events may be unimportant....do you need 35 pics of the office holiday party? or 100 sunset and sunrise pictures? Do you need the 150 teen age selfies? (oh wait thats me)
These are the medium rocks. Make sure they represent the year in parts. Are the pics you keep the ones you really want? Look at each event and dispose of redundancies, uneeded shots of the mail clerk singing karaoke with the CEO at the office party (unless needed for blackmai) and the 125 pics your daughter took of herself that are really not that good. Look at each event as a whole and see if they tell the story you want to remember.
Now that you have your year broken into events and they are relatively stream lined. Look again at each event. Look at the people and characters, expressions and circumstances.These are the small rocks.
Look at each event and the pics you took. How many do you need to tell the story of that event. For example lets talk winter holiday season. For some it's Christmas, others it may be Yule or Diwali or Kwanza or Haunnakuh. Which ever the event....generally there are gifts, meals, family and friends gathering and lots of pictures especially in this digital age. Group pics, decorative pics, food pics, kid pics, gift pics, events within the event pics, and of course the pictures others are sharing with you at the same time. Do you need them ALL? What pictures tell the story best? This is where it gets tricky for me and my family photos because I want to keep everything. But ultimately it's really a personal choice. The shot of a preteen eating a slice of fruitcake and his reaction might be a very precious moment, the 10 sequential shots of his Nana cutting the cake, serving the cake and the laughter after the fact may or may not add to the story. Its your decision. I find that maybe they aren't ALL necessary. Keep the precious ones, the ones that BEST represent what you remember. This is also the time to make sure things are labeled and dated and add keywords and hashtags or whatever you need to make these accessible. Maybe making them into a digital or analog scrapbook, maybe putting them into a digital frame or printing special ones as gifts. However you can preserve them do so.
So now your pictures are organized, preserved and safe guarded and shared. It may have taken days or weeks or months but it's done. For future pics do the sorting in the moment or shortly thereafter. Weed out the duds and keep the faves. Put in digital albums and keep labeled as possible.
Good luck and if you ever decide its just to much there are always people like me that can help.
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