As a Child and Family photographer I take zillions of pictures of clients and my own family on a regular basis. In the previous years I have taken so many personal pictures and just let them rot on my hard drive and never printed them. I have somewhere near 10,000 + photos on my computer and hard drive. What good do they do sitting on a hard drive? My computer started running slow (imagine that) and I decided I needed to get organized and start printing my pictures. At the beginning of 2012 I vowed to get organized where my pictures are concerned. I created a simple method for my personal and business photos that has worked.
I started in January but you still have time to get organized and stay organized. Listed below is my work flow and resources that you can use to print and store your printed photos.
Organization for Your Photos
• Create a folder for each year (ex: Personal 2012 or 2012 Pictures)
• Create a folder for each month of the year with in your specific year
• Create a sub folder with in each month called ‘Print’
• At the time of import I create a sub folder with a specific description inside my particular month (ex: September 1 or 1st day of preschool)
• Then I create a sub folder called ‘edit ‘
• Import photos to my specific folder
• After all images are loaded and available in my folder I proceed to cull my images. I cull any image that is out of focus, eyes crossed, hand or tree obstructing my view, etc.
• I then proceed to edit my saved images
• All images that have been edited will be saved in my sub-folder called ‘Edit’
• Once I have completed all photos I place a copy of each image I just have to print in the folder called ‘print ‘ that can be found in your current month
At the end of each month I will print all images I have saved and either store them in a custom image box for each year, frame some of my favorite images in a cute frame from IKEA or store them in an album. Resources like MPix and Paper Coterie offer amazing products to consumers without requiring a business license. You can get memory boxes at Paper Coterie or print good quality prints at Mpix that are very inexpensive and give you numerous sizes and textures to choose from. Each company offers a variety of products you can use to show case your images.
This might not work for everyone but it is definitely a starting place. Hope you can use some or all of the steps to making your photo organizing a little bit smoother!
--Jolene
