I've just spent 3 hours sorting, compressing, organising and blogging photos.
And I'm not even totally done with July but I'm "done"!
Maybe I should explain my system?
(as an aside, developing and maintaining my system was on my 36 things list. I have a system and it works for my brain but I've been a slacker since March so I gave myself 0.5)
- I have a folder for 2011, and then for the months 01, 02, 03, etc
- I download and move the pics into their months
- here's where it gets exciting (not!)
- If there were "major events" (for me that means socials) I make a sub-folder for each of those. My April folder has Dullstroom, K&B wedding, LC visit. Just makes it easier for me to find things since that's how I think, in categories.
- Otherwise the pics all just lay loose in the folder. Are some of you twitching (MandyE?)?
- Then my new thing is I made a "to blog" sub-folder - this one has all the compressed pics.
- I take the compressed pics per blog post, paste them in an email and send to the children's blog, http://connorandkendra.com. It just helps with the uploading as I have zero patience.
- While all that is happening, I'm deleting duds, etc.
- I then go into blogger and make sure they're in the right sequence, change the date since I'm ALWAYS late, and publish. If you're subscribed to that blog, I did 5 tonight and you'll see nothing for the next 3 - 4 weeks :)
- To make things even more interesting I also have a big folder for organising (that's for my organising blog) in the main 2011 folder, and I've recently added others called getting my craft on (with no less than 9 subfolders - yay - and that doesn't include July or Aug), recipes, courage, favourite pics 2011 (any arbitrary pics of shoes, birds, the sky, anything - I will say I hardly have pics of my kids there!) and up til the party, I had a Babies 12 - 24 months folder too (for 1 - 2 pics per month). Basically, my projects.
- In my general My Pictures folder, I also have other weird folders called Doors and windows (I'm obsessed - one of these fine days I'm going to make a nice collage of pretty doors and share it with you), Skies, Food and Around Jhb (do you want to see?)
- I don't do any editing except for making all the pics face the right way up and cropping out private parts (D and I made a boundary for our family that we wouldn't keep naked pics of the kids because who knows what might happen and if things get into people's hands...) in the bath pics.
- Sometimes if I'm lazy to make decisions (okay, a lot of the time) I will make a collage in Picasa. But that's the extent of it.
- If I feel like playing around (very rare) I love taking travel pics and making them black and white.
I love this pic of K
yes, blurry but I love the way she's laughing. Not many people see that side of her.
look at them trying to pretend they're not being naughty
notice Friday (teddy) and the dummy - C's BFFs (I actually hate that acronym)
Bottom line with the photos
If I've gone through my stuff and the bad ones are deleted, I consider it a 5.
If I've put the ones I want to blog in another folder, that's a 7 or 8.
And if I actually send those pics to blogger or Wordpress drafts, that's a 10.
Those are my definitions for success with photos.
Notice no editing, no printing, no nothing else...
All this stuff seems to take forever. FOREVER. And I'm not even editing - I don't know how you guys do it with making stuff fancy.
What's your photo system look like? Do you use lots of folders? If yes, tell me some of your favourites/ weirdest ones.
Major points for being so organized. My photos are pretty much everywhere. I try to label and tag them correctly but Im terrible about consistency.
ReplyDeleteI'm only twitching because that system sounds pretty complex! ;)
ReplyDeleteI have folders for each month on my computer. The few sub-folders I have are for really BIG events, like "vacation" and "birthday party". On my computer I delete any real duds, but I keep probably 75% of my pictures.
I do my serious editing through Shutterfly...I pare down my photos, usually from 200 - 250 non-duds a month to 80, on average, and edit those until I'm content.
I print all 80...I get doubles (occasionally more) of the really good photos that I will want to put in a frame or brag book, or put in a scrapbook. I put 30 - 40 pictures on average in an album for the month. The others are in photo storage boxes.
That sounds awfully complex as I type it! Deep down I'm a sentimental pack rat (in some ways), and I think I'm doing pretty well to print only 80 pictures! :) :)
Oh, I do label (through Shutterfly) every picture. I note the date, who is in the picture, and often some kind of caption or descriptor. That really doesn't take that much time once everything else is edited, and I'm sure I'll appreciate it one day when my memory starts to fade. :)
My photos are the one thing where I am very organized - I have a folder for every year and then a subfolder under it per week at the date of the Sunday of the week. Under those I will also have subfolders for big events.
ReplyDeleteFor compressed photos I use Smartstone - brilliant program, and dump them into a "downsize" folder that is merely under "my Pictures" This folder I clean out every 3 months or so. I downsize when I need the photos. Not ahead of time.
Oh yes, and we have that same decision in our house about naked stuff. Really no reason to embaress anyone and with the monsters out there you never know.
ReplyDeleteMine is basically like yours. I put photos in Year folders and then in event folders. I don't do it by months because we don't take that much photos but I think it is really cool how you organize photos. Well done!
ReplyDeleteOMG...I agree with mandye...that is complex.
ReplyDeleteEvery month, I start a folder for that month..."August 2011."
My photos download into iPhoto where crop them or delete them. I then figure out if I want to share them on FB or the blog (where they get further edited on picnik and watermarked in case anyone wants to steal from me).
At the end of each month, I take that folder and drop it into dropbox (and online file storage system).
If we have a really great event, I order a photo book from shutterfly and use that as a scrapbook...so far I did our trip to the aquarium, their birthday books for this past year, and now I need to get crackalacking on our vacation.
I can no longer stomach ordering pictures and putting them into albums...I suck.
You are super organised...I just have mine sitting in date order...and "one day" I will have a system...promise:-)
ReplyDeleteLovely pics of your little cherubs.
I am horrible at anything to do with batch editing, printing, or getting pictures into frames! I have 500+ pictures on my iPhone since mid-May...and I have not put any of them on my external hard drive (which is where I store my pictures) yet. I do have them on a flash drive and I intended to load them this weekend, but maybe it will happen by next weekend.
ReplyDeleteI use folders on the external hard drive...the year, then the month, and maybe an extra subfolder for a major event.
I use Picnik for editing and Flickr for sharing on the blog. I like that Picnik lets me edit, then save to my computer, Flickr, or Facebook easily. Since I am bad at downloading to the hard drive, I usually transfer and upload to Flickr first--just the best pictures that I intend to blog/share.
I am determined to get some pictures printed soon...then get started on my collage wall!
You do NOT want to see my photo organization system. Trust me! ;)
ReplyDeleteYou're definitely using a much more complex system than I am.
ReplyDeleteBasically, I take photos (sometimes a ton, sometimes very few) and then I upload them to iPhoto. Within I photo I have event labels (similar to folders) for the seasons (winter 2011, spring 2011, summer 2011...) and the photos go in whatever season they belong in. Occasionally, I'll pull out photos and make them their own event (like a wedding or something), but I have very few of those type.
I upload frequently, delete the true duds, and do a bit of cropping, but that's it. I'm pretty good at posting a photo or two in blog posts every now and then, but really, really bad at posting large batches of photos (which I intended to to monthly) on my private family-only blog (I think I'm up to May 2011).
It all takes time, and that's something that I (and most parents) are always short on. I'm just glad I have the photos at all. I'll get to the rest whenever I can. :o)
When my memory card is almost full, I dump it all into a folder on my computer labeled 'TO BURN'.
ReplyDeleteWhen my computer starts running slow, I burn them all on to our external hard drive.
I never delete, and never can find anything.
I hate the photo organising. HATE IT!
ReplyDeleteSjoe. Sounds very tiring. I would probably avoid it too. I don't have a system exactly. When I do download then I categorise by date and I may do a sub folder if there is an event. No editing or anything, though Lance is teaching me how to photoshop. I actually don't have the patience to play around with it.
ReplyDelete