About Organizing pictures

hello-

I am up in the wee hours of the morning.   I have several projects that will keep me busy, busy for the next several days.   first off, I need to complete my mom's cards (will show them when I am finished).   My parent's just returned from a cruise, so I need to work on their cruise trip book.  It is a small scrapbook with a challenge for me:  24 pages-6 x9 format.  I am not saying that I cannot do it.  I have actually worked with less room then that.   When I get the pictures off of my SD card, I need to get the cruise pictures off of my dad's camera.  It is not like he needs help doing it.  I just want to know what pictures I am working with for this little book, and possibly make a hand crafted one in addition to the first one.   Things like this need a plan, and this is the reason why I call this organizing pictures.

You do not have to make a big deal out of organizing.   Back when I was little, and my parents took dozen of pictures, the task was not bad, but it was time consuming.   Between taking the pictures, going to the photo store to get them developed, waiting a week or so to get them back, and finally having them stored in these flimsy envelops, that was enough to bare.  Now with the age of digital, 33mm film is almost a thing of the past.   Now you can develop pictures from a computer, store them on a hard drive, and print them out at home.  If no computer is available there is a store nearby to print them out quickly.   No negatives to worry about (I think I saw my last negative in 1995)  What to do with pictures?

You have three filing choices when dealing with printed pictures.   File them by subject, Chronological, or using the number system.  I will tell you that using the number system is out.  too time consuming.  You have to develop a system and then put the subject under that number.   The best way is subject/chronological .    So your system would look like this :

As you can see, I put what the subject is all about, followed by the year it was taken.   If I find any pictures with anything that has to do with that house being the focal point of the photo, it goes in that envelope, and it has to be from that year.  Now for that extra touch:  do you see the "2" in the left-hand corner of the envelope.  only put it there if you have more than one copy of the photo.  Purging Tip:  The "2" also means that you can give it away to family members who care.  If you are a scrapbooker, it means that you might want to crop it up for layouts.  Another tip about this type of filing, The envelope in the photo is archival safe, which means that the photos can stay in the envelope without it decaying.   It takes about 10 years before it starts doing that.  

There are other ways of organizing your printed photos.  I am just showing you how I do it.  I bought mine at Archiver's, and I love how they mimic those old envelops, and still keep them safe.  If you took them with the 33mm film, negatives can easily store in the front for easy access.  For the other photos, I just store on a CD, or my 2TB hard drive, unless it is the current year, then it is on my regular drive until December of that year, then I archive them on the external drive.  

Well that is it for now.  Have a wonderfully blessed day.