How to Organize and Manage Pictures | Part 6
I hope this series has helped you. If something is still tripping you up, please reach out! I can address specifics.
Creating healthy habits in your picture organization, like anything, is crucial. You can do this. It just takes a little bit of time and sacrificing an hour on the couch once in a while. Below, I’ve listed the major take-aways to help keep you on track. I’ve also included a little “workflow” checklist that you can use to get going.
Healthy Habits
Commit to taking less pictures. Don’t use burst mode. Pretend you have a roll of film in your phone and can only take a couple shots each day. Become more intentional about what you’re shooting. Put the camera away and enjoy the day!
Cull early and often. Be brutal, keeping the best and deleting the rest. You don’t need multiple pictures of almost the exact same thing. You’ll become so bogged down in digital baggage that you will have no idea where to start.
If you’re behind, start small. Bite off a chunk that you feel you can manage in an hour. Start deleting and saving the best. Build on that the next day until you’ve got a whole (month? season? year? decade?!) finished. I suggest printing as you accomplish a certain time period, then moving on to the next.
Find a way you enjoy looking at pictures, and then put your phone pictures on autopilot. Chatbooks, FreePrints, Artifact Uprising… there are so many apps that will allow you to pull right from your camera roll. Once you’ve printed those, delete them and clear up that camera roll, creating a digital storage system Marie Kondo would be proud of. Do it once a season or once a month if you take a lot of pictures.
Set yourself up for success with a well-organized hard drive. This system will help keep you accountable.
Find a way you enjoy looking at pictures, and print your camera photos accordingly. Blurb, Chatbooks, FreePrints, and so many more small photo businesses are all eager for your photo printing business. What works for you? Print the best of the collection and enjoy them for years to come. No more hard drives and SD cards full of pictures that you can’t find! No more digitals in computer jail! Develop those suckers and enjoy.
You got this!
Phone Picture Workflow
Shoot
Cull - Be brutal
Edit
Repeat until you have enough pictures that you want to print
Open App of your choice
Order Prints/Books
Receive order
Favorite a couple to leave on your phone, if you must
Back up to computer hard drive organization system if you want
Delete from phone
REPEAT!
Camera Picture Workflow
Set up organized system on external hard drive (or in Google Photos, your computer’s hard drive.. somewhere!)
Shoot
Cull - Be brutal
Edit
Export to organized system
Favorites or special project files to a special folder in organized system (like what I’d do with my boys’ Christmas books)
Repeat until you have enough pictures that you want to print
Upload to print (Chatbooks, Blurb, Freeprints, however you enjoy photos)
REPEAT!
Keep me posted! I hope I’ve helped. Be sure to send questions my way if you’re still having trouble!