So two things:
I take tons of photos every week because I'm a bad photographer and I know if I take, let's say 5 - 10, there's bound to be at least one good one in the batch. The problem is the babies move so quickly and while I intended one thing, they've done 3 - 4 cute things while I'm snapping away.
Which results in tons of photos on my hard drive that need to be organised.
Especially since I take pics with two cameras. One is very good for day shots and I haven't figured out how to take good night pics so I still use my old Kodak for the night shots.
I'm organising mine this way at the moment.
- I download at least once every two weeks.
- I then make folders titled "19 weeks 17 -23 Nov", etc.
- I drag the photos into the relevant folders first so I don't feel overwhelmed by all that work.
- Then I go into each folder and delete those I don't want.
- While I'm doing that, I compress the ones I want to blog. I do a Save As and put them in a separate "to blog" folder. Then I delete from that folder as I blog them because the original is saved in the weekly folders.
So how do you organise your pics on your computer?
Also, here's a touchy subject.
If you're a friend of mine, you'll see I have some of D & me on holiday in years past, and just this week I put my preggy pics on there. I made the latest album private so only friends could view but you know FB, every Tom Dick and Harry is your friend. Or is that just me?
I am getting pickier but in the beginning I just accepted friend requests from anyone. Now if people are annoying or I can see I don't gel with them, I unfriend, but the fact is there are hundreds of people who aren't really friends of mine.
So I'm thinking about the babies... on the one hand I do want to make albums and put some of their pics there. But on the other hand, what about the privacy issue? Funny, I feel no such qualms about the blog! Ha!
What do you think I should do? Do you have lots of pics of your kids on Facebook?
I'm pretty sure if you click on private for an album, only your facebook friends can see them. But that doesn't help since you've got tons of people on there. I don't know... I'd say you either have to go in and weed out the folks you don't know well, or not post pics if you're concerned about privacy.
ReplyDeleteI am HORRIBLE at organizing my photos on my computer, and more horrible about backing up! But I'm sure if/when I have such important pics, I'll get better. I LOVE my Passport backup drive. That might be a good thing for you to invest in.
One solution I use and love (for storage, back-up and sharing) is a service called Smugmug (smugmug.com). I love it because it gives me one central place to store all of my photos (no limit on space) without downsizing the image quality, is a back-up to my computer hard drive (cause lord knows one day it will crash and there go all those memories), it allows me to assign privacy settings to my entire online gallery or mini-folders or galleries within my online storage, and it provides super convenient ways for me to share images that I upload to smugmug via copy/paste code (I use this a TON for when I blog in particular). It only cost about $35 or so per year and I have felt (over the past two or so years) that it has been well worth it. You can also order printed images from their site or request a back-up CD.
ReplyDeleteTo make camera-to-computer-to-smugmug as seamless as possible, I create a high-level folder called "Pictures" on my hard drive. Within that I organize by year and then within that folder I create subfolders for each month of the year and name those folders "Mar.09" etc. If there are any special things that span months (like my pregnancy, for instance, I just create a separate folder and subfolders for that, but I try not to make a habit of this two-tier system to make my life easier.)... anyway, I take that same system and create a web of folders within Smugmug that mimics my hard drive. I LOVE that they can match like that because it causes no confusion. Then, in order to get them uploaded to the site easily, I downloaded a third-party program called "Send to Smugmug" which allows you to (from a PC) simply opposite-mouse click on a folder and choose the prompt "send to smugmug". It then brings up a very user-friendly interface that (after you enter in your smugmug account name and password) is able to integrate with smugmug to tell which images have been uploaded already and which have not. So, for example, today I just snapped a bunch of new "November" pics. I hooked my camera to my computer, moved all the new images to the "Nov.09" folder and then opposite-mouse clicked on that same folder when I was done. The "Send to Smugmug" program opened up, asked me to choose which smugmug folder I wanted to transfer them to or if I wanted to create a new one within 2009. I already had an existing "Nov.09" sub-folder created on Smugmug, so I selected that and then it accessed what pics on my hard drive in that folder had been uploaded previously and which were new (I LOVE this feature!). I then click "send" and it uploaded them all to my online account. I have a pretty fast internet connection, so I'm able to do this during the day without it tying up my computer/internet for too long, but I used to do this at night and it worked out great.
Sorry for such a long reply! I have found this system to work great for me. The fact that I can set privacy on folders will come in VERY handy once our babies arrive and I have really loved the ability to not have to downsize images/duplicate for use in other areas, like on my blog. It has been such a time saver!
If you have more questions, please let me know (cshrwd[at]gmail[dot]com). I'd be more than happy to elaborate or even do a quick video tape of me doing a quick walk-through, if it would be helpful. For more info on Smugmug itself the following link does a nice job of explaining all of the benefits: http://www.smugmug.com/photos/best-photo-sharing/
Hope you are able to find something that works well for you and your family!
~Cathy
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI only have about 20 pics on Facebook because I think it's a bit of a dodgy place to store my images (I get a bit paranoid about their privacy and ownership policies)and the *real* FB friends also know about my proper online album.
We love Google's Picasa. Reasons include: really user friendly photo mgmt application, lots of free space to store images (freeing up your own hard drive), you can create albums that are either public, unlisted or locked. We have a large unlisted one for out of town family to keep up with Minx's growth. Oh and I think Google will be around for quite some time, so it feels safer in terms of storage and also you can buy more space if you really needed to, therefore I back up my images there in their full size, removing my 'what if the house burnt down or the computer died?' fears.
I use Picasa to share photos. I organize my photo's by date, first folder is year, and each download is numbered and dated, so they are mostly in order. Picasa lets me know if I've already downloaded a picture - way cool.
ReplyDeleteYou can make lists on FB and only allow certain lists to see folders of photos. I'm not sure how flexible it is.
I really NEED to back up the TONS of pictures I have on my computer.
I have a TON of pics on Facebook! I only accepted friends that I knew or other friends knew (like in highschool)..other than that no one else can see the pics. I have it set to friends only for viewing.
ReplyDeleteMy blog is my public forum. My Facebook friends are only people I trust in real life.
ReplyDeleteI use Dropshots.com (my photos are at http://www.dropshots.com/sadia47) to keep my pictures organized. Dropshots figures out how to order the photos based on timestamp, so even if it takes me months to put them in folders, they're in order.
Dropshots is also a good way for the extended family to see more photos than I put on the blog, and they have a privacy option.
For backups, I burn everything to CD every couple of months. I've been thinking about getting a bank deposit box and storing them there. I'm a little attached to our photos!
Oh, I also use Picasa for my blog photos, because I've got it set up to add my watermark when I upload for my computer, but the folders aren't quite as easy to manage as Dropshots, and I haven't investigated whether Picasa can handle video.
ReplyDeleteI don't worry about putting pictures on Facebook, because all of my friends on there know me and my kids in real life-even if we haven't seen each other in years! : ) I have also been pretty open about putting our pictures on the blog. I try not to reveal our last name or too many identifying details about our house, but that's mostly because my husband is a police officer.
ReplyDeleteI hope you will post some pictures from the photo shoot for us to check out! : )