It’s cool that we’ve got a camera in our hands every hour of every day, and yes, it’s fun to document the minutiae of our lives. But there’s also a downside to it. We have so many photos.
In fact, we have so many digital photos that many of us can’t begin to sort through them. And do you ever look at them? Because having 20,000 photos of your adorable kid isn’t that helpful if you don’t have a way to enjoy them that doesn’t involve carpal tunnel-level scrolling.
As a professional declutterer, here are a few tips to get your digital photos organized and curated.
Find them all
It’s likely that your pictures live in various online spaces, your phone being just one. Think about all the places you might have pictures: file folders on your computer, online file sharing or editing sites, social media, your downloads folder, thumb drives, hard drives, CDs, and even old devices.
Digital photos have been around for a while now, and chances are you’ve collected them through a huge variety of media, some of which are nearly obsolete already. This is a good time to move your memories from old media to newer storage options.
Think about security
Maybe you like keeping your photographic history on a site like Flickr, Google Photos, or Dropbox. There’s no wrong answer; just what works for you. With a single caveat: make sure you’ve got some type of backup.
Websites come and go, and their rules and benefits change over time. Make sure you’re not putting all your eggs in one virtual basket. Maybe you maintain two online photo archives or download the lot onto a hard drive. You should already be backing up your desktop regularly; make sure you’re also backing up your photo library.
Curate, curate, curate
I know your dog is the cutest, smartest, funniest, sweetest mutt of all time. Same thing goes for your kid, your partner, and your pet iguana. But think like a museum curator: you don’t hang every painting in the main gallery; you pick the best. If you’ve got 42 pictures of Junior in that adorable yellow t-shirt, maybe pick the top three and delete the others.
I know, I know, it feels like blasphemy, but quantity over quality leads to exhaustion.
While you’re looking through your photos, get rid of any that are unflattering, out of focus, center people you don’t remember (or like overly), or places you can’t identify. With so many to choose from, you can afford to be picky.
Naming conventions FTW
If you’re scrolling through a camera roll, it may seem easy to see what’s what, but organization will help you in the long run, especially if you’ve got photos tucked away in digital file folders.
It doesn’t matter how you choose to organize them, but come up with a convention and stick to it.
What’s the first thing you think of when you’re looking for a specific photo? Is it the year, the subject, the location, or some other detail? Most digital storage systems allow you to enter metadata, such as year or location, which can help you filter your results when you’re searching. If you’ve got a lot of pictures in file folders, you might need more explicit names.
You may find something like this will work — 1978 Christmas, Family Vacation 2018, or Sam Elementary School. Within those categories, you can number each photo. Some pictures will cross categories, but do the best you can. Having trouble deciding? Look at your other filing systems and see what’s worked in the past.
Reliving the memories
Don’t lose sight of the whole point of taking pictures in the first place: looking at them later on.
Printed photo books may be the easiest way to share and revisit special events. Digital albums are another. Electronic picture frames that display a changing selection of photos are a good option. Don’t just leave them all in a digital heap at the bottom of a virtual cardboard box. Enjoy them!
If organizing and curating your thousands of digital photos sounds like a Herculean task, take a breath. This is something you can do in increments of 10 to 20 minutes. Do a little deleting while you’re in a waiting room. Move photos into folders while you’re listening to the latest true crime podcast. Like any organizing or decluttering project, incremental steps lead to excellent results.
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