Where are Your Photos and Family Videos?

As a kid, I could sit for hours and look at my mom's photo album of us. For my children, I printed photos and scrapbooked them. They also loved looking at albums, laughing at silly pictures, or pulling out the album when a new boyfriend or girlfriend came over. The next generation has digital pictures and social media. A few pictures are posted on social media and then within a month, they are buried in hundreds of more photos. We take many more photos and videos now than we used to.

Worldwide we take 7.1 billion pictures a day. The thought of how many photos you have, digital and analog can be a bit overwhelming, when you think about starting to organize them. The truth is you didn't take all those photos in one day and you won't get them organized in one day. Here's the GOOD NEWS-you can do it. You can do it yourself or you can hire someone like me to do it for you. The first step is to set a goal. What do you want to do with your photos? What is your ultimate goal? Along with setting your goal, it is important to think about "your why." Why do you want to organize your photos? because this process will take a while, it is important to have these two ideas foremost in your mind! It will help you push through on those days that you want to throw in the towel.

Start by making a list of all the places where you have photos and videos. Photos are on old phones, flash drives, or other memory cards, DVDs, and videos are on obsolete VHS or Mini DV tapes. They are on various websites and printing sites. Basically, most of us have photos and videos in places we haven't thought about in a decade. Check websites like Snapfish, Google, iCloud, Shutterfly, and Amazon.

Next, you want to start gathering all the photos, videos, flash drives, computers, scrapbooks, slides, and negatives all in one place. Now look at what you have, and what your goal is to decide which part of the project you want to tackle first. Basically, break down your big goal into smaller goals, (i.e.: the digital photos or organizing the analog photos).

This is an IMPORTANT step!!! Before you do anything else make sure what you do have is backed up! Not just synced but backed up. Mess and all! The reason for this is you don't want to lose what you do have on your computer already, even if it is a mess. Along with this back up you want to make a decision as to where you want to save all the photos and videos.

This can be an external hard drive or the cloud. Please note that videos take up a lot of space, if you have a lot of videos take that into consideration. Ultimately you want to save your photos and videos with the 3-2-1 backup method. In short, there are 3 copies, 2 types of media (analog and digital), and 1 copy is off-site (stored somewhere else.) This should be part of the goal, but it is going to take time to get here. If you have gotten to this step CONGRATULATIONS! You can be proud of yourself.

Your next steps will depend on what you decide is the priority. I will be posting again soon. Two things you can do until then are delete unwanted and unnecessary photos from your phone. Read this post for tips on different programs to help you. Or you can read and watch this post about removing photos from a magnetic photo album.

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