Over the weekend, I came up with the grand scheme of an Organization Week. While my house isn't terribly messy, there are zones of chaos in here — dirty, little secrets of old books and greeting cards in closets and in attics. With two kids who have outgrown baby toys and a husband who is organizationally-challenged, these zones of chaos are bound to happen. An organized house makes me very happy, but who wants to spend all their time with a label maker? Not me! So, I decided to do a blitzkrieg organization of the zones of chaos. One week and I would wipe out the mess. That was the plan.
One of the major zones of chaos in this house was on my hard drive. I have six years of minimally sorted digital photos. We talking about thousands and thousands of pictures of Ian picking his nose, Jonah catching a fish, roasted chicken, door knobs, basement renovations, and random strangers at ball games. Seriously. When I upload the pictures onto the iPhoto, I cull the obvious duds and arrange the remaining pictures in a folder with a name. So, I haven't been totally reckless.
For a while, I've wanted to pull out the A+ pictures from the herd on the computer, print them out and make some photobooks, so we all could admire the best shots. It would also be insurance, in case something terrible happened to the computer. So, I decided to make Monday "Photo Album Day" and then move on to deal with the other zones of chaos in the house.
Organize 6,000 pictures in one day? Sort out six years of pictures and create six esthetically pleasing photo albums? During a day when I also had to attend an IEP meeting, take the boys to Jonah's orthodontist, make dinner, and help with homework. Oh sure, that's a SMART plan.
Yes, my hard drive kicked my ass on Monday. Have I finished one photo album yet? No. Have I tackled the other zones of chaos? No.
What lessons have I learned?
- Organizing a year-end photo album takes several days.
- Drink a glass of wine to make the process go faster.
- Maintain a favorites folder throughout the year.
- Do it every January.
- Another glass of wine might be necessary.
- Throw money at the problem and let Shutterfly create albums for you. (A "how to" post will follow.)
Apt. 11d 
Wine, pfui. This calls for gin.
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I use Blurb. You can download their BookSmart software to your computer and make the book as you go throughout the year. January 1 of 2012 … just push the send button and in about 2 weeks a beautiful book will appear on your doorstep.
Additional benefits. You don’t have to wait for a slow connection. These are professional books. I know photographers and authors who use blurb to self-publish.
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I’ve started making periodic albums. I’m going to compose the winter album in March, Spring album in June, the summer album in August, and the Fall album in December. That’s the plan for this year; we’ll see if I actually make it!
I’m not even going to try and tackle old photos; they can just live happily on the hard drive until I am retired or forced to organize them because of technology obsolescence.
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Tammy,
Please rethink this. If these are physical albums, that would generate 40 albums over the course of 10 years. We do one thin book a year (for us and for the grandmas and aunts and uncles and siblings), and I have some qualms about even doing one a year. I suppose these are the high-volume photo years, though.
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I actually love the small, paperback books we’ve created already, but the same term “album” fits for a digital slideshow in my mind. Digital or physical, I want to hold myself to quarterly organization of the pictures.
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All I have to say is that in order to organize year-end photos in several days, I’d have to drink an awful lot of wine.
I think Inquirer’s suggestion to do this monthly is a good one, and I think that will be my new years resolution, to produce a monthly set of pictures that will turn into a Blurb album at the end of year. This is a great time to start!
I also think that making plans going forward (Tammy’s suggestion) is a good one. The task is too overwhelming if I decide I’m going to do this for every year into the past.
My issue is picking the pictures. But, I’m motivated.
Wendy — any chance your husband will write a guest post for you describing his photo strategy? One thing I know pros & semi-pros do is that they are brutal in weeding their pictures. They pick a high standard for a picture that will go into an album or be printed.
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Tammy,
Paperback is handier.
Speaking of archival storage issues, the kids’ school is doing a yearbook for the whole school. I bought one this past year, but we’re looking at one a year for the next 10 years. Good thing we don’t live in NYC.
bj,
We do ours at Thanksgiving, which is only achievable by living thousands of miles from family and doing visits over the summer.
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From an archival POV, you have to assume that any digital photo not translated into a hard copy (whether that’s an actual print or via some sort of printed book) will be lost within 20 years. Ten years is probably more realistic, actually — how many of your hard drives or computer discs from 2000 are still hanging around your house? In readable form?
I’m not saying anyone should print out every photo they take, not even all the Grade A-B photos, but don’t fool yourself about digital copies. At some point, sooner than you might like, they will be gone.
(I’m still hanging onto prints, which I order in thousand-photo batches about twice a year and then divide into one of four albums, or sets of albums at this point, one for each kid plus one for the family. I’m this-close to switching to photo books, because they are gorgeous, but I hesitate because they are so darn expensive when done in quadruplicate and I still want each kid to have his or her own albums.)
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I have all my 2001 photos available in accessible format.
I use a Mac, though, and Mac computers are more backwards accessible than PCs.I store the images in jpeg formats, in individual files, in accessible folders: no iPhoto for me, ’cause I’ve never been sure what it does to the photos, and because I want to maintain accessibility without relying on any one specific program. I worry about this with iTunes, too, but not as much, since my iTunes library can be replaced (though at vast expense).
I have about 1 terabyte of media. A 2 TB hard drive costs about $250. I plan to indefinitely keep this hard drive with my images + a backup.
The main failure point to this system is me — I am the only one who is likely to want access to this number of photos. So there’s no “curating.” My incomplete attempts still result in about 200G of photos.
I understand the worries about archiving — and it certainly matters for 50+ years (a worry about electronic journals, now, too). So hard drive data needs to be maintained, but I don’t think photos specifically need to be printed out, unless the print outs are heavily curated.
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“I have all my 2001 photos available in accessible format. ”
And, they’re adorable and handy. But those, I really haven’t curated at all. I think that’ll actually be my first project, to select a subset of those photos.
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