Are you drowning in a sea of photographs (still)?
Is your computer groaning under the weight of a terabyte of imagery (sounds scary)? It’s a very common issue which faces nearly every one of our clients and we’re prepared to bet you have a little of this going on too…
Here are some tips for organising your physical photographs:
• You will need some plastic folder sleeves, or better…some good sized zip-lock bags (LOVE these bags), some address-style adhesive labels, a plastic tub or two, depending on how big your stash is, and a medium Texta (marker pen).
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Go find you photo collection – don’t be afraid!
• Make sure that you designate a place, now, for further additions to your photo empire – that plastic tub? Memorabilia box?
Or, for the truly inspired, a photo quality archive box from Zetta Florence – http://www.zettaflorence.com.
• Break this task into manageable chucks if it’s too daunting.
• Grab a handful of photos and lay them out in groups according to type. That may be ‘friends’, ‘family’, mum’, ‘frisky’ (a cat, not a state of being…) etc. You could organise by year.
Try to be somewhat specific, the more specific the groups the better.
• Use the Ziplocks to store groups of photos for future organising into albums or, let’s face it, for many of us, just to stop them straying into chaos-land and making them impossible to find at that precise moment when you’re trying to convince Uncle Harold that he really was wearing his pyjamas on his head last Christmas!
• Make a note on the outside of each bag as to its contents – yes, I know they’re see-through but let’s make this as easy as possible for the future. Make the labels as simple and informative as possible, and place them toward the top of the bag in a consistent spot – think about what you will look for in the future to find Uncle Harold’s photo – Christmas? Harold? Family secrets? Blackmail..?
• Had enough for today? Easy! Find that box and place the Ziplocks inside – upright and neat, labels visible (was I going to say anything else?). Consider using alphabetical order – that’s always a goodie.
• Don’t spend a disproportionate amount of time going through and storing/sorting images which are irrelevant, damaged or lacking any photographically redeeming features (i.e. blurry, out-of-frame multiples of uninteresting moments – we all have a few of those!) Yikes! Dare I say – chuck them?
• Pack up the remaining photos you haven’t categorised and put them in the container to one side – to deal with later.
• Make a time to complete this task later – say 2 hours a day, or while you’re watching TV is a great multi-tasking strategy.
• Complete this task later.
• We’ll give you some more computer photo-organising tips in an upcoming newsletter.
Seriously, our advice is always to break down a big task into smaller chunks in the interests of making them achievable.
Each time you work on a group of photos, you can place them into Ziplock bags, label them and come back later to continue. A great job for TV-watching nights.
