Perfect your photos (for you!)

Several people have told me that I should write about my personal way of handling my digital photos. So here goes…

Since I’m over 50, I’m not very good with technology, so I came up with a SYSTEM (Saving you space, time, energy and money) to help me keep my picture taking under control.

This is what I do for my family photography yearly:

1. I use a “real camera” to take my important photos and yes, then I remember taking it to special family events. I use my cell phone for texting photos and social media.
2. About 3-6 times a year I download these photos to my computer in a file called“2015 Album” depending on the year.
3. At the beginning of the New Year, I review all the photos of that “2015 Album” archive and delete the ones that don’t interest me.
4. I then create a 40-page photo album from that photo file. In fact, I drive to Wholesale Photo in Midland Park, New Jersey, where I create these albums because I always need technical help.
5. After I complete the digital project at their newsstand (and this usually takes me 3-5 hours, sometimes I make more than one trip to the store), I order the hardcover album and pick it up several days later when it’s delivered. the store.

Call me old-fashioned, but this system works great for me and I am thrilled to give this photo album to my husband every Valentine’s Day. The whole family sits down and looks at each page rediscovering what the hell happened in our lives the year before.

The final step in this system is where the photo album lives after we’re done looking at it. If you go down to my basement, you will find a small wall that houses all the memorabilia of “Team Herron”. There is a wide shelf along that wall and one long shelf in particular houses all the photo albums from when my husband and I dated. Except for a few extra printed lost photos and a few odd-sized, professional photos, there’s an album for every year of our life together starting in 1999. (I’ll be honest: there are two photo albums for the years my kids were born! because he couldn’t stop taking his photos!). Any member of our family can look at the albums whenever they want. It’s nice to see my son or daughter pull an album off the shelf and curl up in a comfortable chair to reflect. It makes it all worthwhile, especially when that someone is me.

From pressing the shutter button to putting the entire newest album on our basement shelf, this system works for me because it’s the way I like to view my photos and it’s easy enough for me to keep it relative to my organizational skills. . . You may have a completely different mindset about how you would like to view your images and how you would like to save them as well. Okay, we all organize ourselves differently.

You might look at this photo and wonder what the other boxes are for because they’re obviously not photo albums. Two are for oddly shaped photos and professional photos. The others are my special keepsake boxes. For example, when my babysitter passed away, there is a box with items that I treasure from her life. I have a similar box for my husband’s keepsakes. There is a box of newspaper clippings that keep good memories, etc. The organizing skill here is that you have a house for each category of “special treasures” that makes sense to you and your family. I have worked with clients where we have established “Memory Boxes” for each member of the family and when the children move or when a parent passes away, those precious containers are passed on to the heirs.

The important thing is that if your photos and memories are special to you, you design a system that works for you and establish a routine. This way your walk down memory lane can happen because you know where your photos live and you know how to find them.