I've been organizing pictures lately, and deleting all the multiple copies we have in various locations (desktop, laptop, external hard drives, etc.). I LOVE Picasa by google - it's free and so easy! I have them categorized by year, month, and main theme if there is one. They are all neat and tidy.
This very minute EVERY single digital (and scanned) picture we have in our possession is on my own personal external hard drive. It was a Christmas gift and I LOVE it. Our pictures take up 35+ GB of storage space, and yet I still have hundreds of extra GBs to work with. Ahh the joy of extra room!
That being said, we have over 15,000 pictures. At this rate, taking into account a new member of the family requiring their fair share of camera time and the proportional increase of pictures taken per year, we will come close to having 50,000 pictures by the time we've been married for 10 years.
Okay, that may be exaggerating a bit. But my point is: what on earth do you do with that many pictures?! I worry what this amount of digital stuff will do to me in the years to come!
I have my own ideas of how to document baby's first year, subsequent years and whatnot, and even am making an attempt at family albums. But I would love to hear your ideas and ways to make these memories accessible over the years; plus your own method of madness to keep these pictures contained without taking over your life. Any thoughts?
8 comments:
Hey, I have no advice for you...but I would love to see how you use picasa. I don't think I take advantage of it like you do. I didn't realize you could categorize. I want to come check out your system sometime.
i want to come and check it out too. i have over 20,000 pics, and have NO idea how to get them organized let alone what to o with them!!! help me!!! :)
You could either go old school and do standard photo (4x6) albums like we had as kids, but you could include the favorite ones and a disk full of the rest from that "category."
Or...you could do a movie (using something like Windows Movie Maker). You can add pictures, videos, music, etc. Then you could vary the speed that the pictures are shown (really fast versus 3-5 seconds in different parts). You can throw a video in here and there. It could be really cool! =)
I'll bet your picture taking slows down SIGNIFICANTLY with each subsequent kid. Which is why youngest children always feel kinda stinted.
Have you experienced the picasa Naming feature? It's amazing. But it might be a little overwhelming with so many pictures. Picasa has a hard time distinguishing baby faces. I can't blame it. They all look alike.
What a task!! I am still working on organizing all of ours. Since we knew each other in high school, we have so many multiples and it is quite the task, so i'm impressed!
As for ideas, I dont know, but i'm right with you. We have all of ours on an external hard drive as well, and I'll be honest, I am scared to death something is going to happen and erase the whole thing! What I am planning on doing is putting all my pictures on a CD or DVD according to year. That way if anything ever does happen, I have a back up, but that is only adding to the piles . . . so I guess i'm of no help! (this is bec by the way)
You're pregnant? How did I not know this? Oh my gosh, congrats! We need to talk. What's your phone #?
I just read a post about this sort of thing on one of my favorite photographer's blog:
http://rebekahwestover.blogspot.com/2010/01/can-i-inspire-you-for-moment.html
You'll have to check it out. It made a lot of sense to me. I have a ton of photos, and I don't even have any kids yet!
I've just started to use Picasa in hopes that it'll make it easier to tag and find photos when I need to find them. I store my more recent ones (the last couple of years) on my computer for easy access. I also store all of my photos on an external hard drive, then, just because I'm paranoid, I also have them stored and tagged online through flickr. I pay $25 a year for unlimited storage. I love it because I'm safe if there's a fire or I'm robbed (my neighbors just were!)and there's no limit to what I can store. (I think I have over 37,000 pics on there so far... :0 ) Also, I love that I can choose who can see my photos online and that my family can download full resolution copies that they can use however they want. lol, just my 2 cents
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