6 tips to organize all your digital photos

 

Ah! Return from vacations, return to routine and to organization goals. 

If you're like me, you probably went on vacation with a camera in your hand and you now have a memory card full of memories, laughs and moments.

Also, bringing with you a smartphone everyday in your pocket has made an hyper-documented life, how many photographies do you have in your phone?

I have almost 4000 images in the smartphone, and that given the fact that from time to time I make backups and erase all of them that I don't want to have with me all the time...

Anyway, today, I'm gonna organize my digital photos from this summer and if you want to join me, I'll show you how to make it.

Choose your tools

Are you going to save'em in the computer? In the cloud? Maybe in Lightroom?

In any case, the first step is to think what will be your method, let me explain you mine.

I'm gonna use always a computer, with an automatic backup in the cloud and one more in an external hard disk.

Choose your sorting method

Maybe you want to sort it by years/dates, by places or events.

You need to think what will work for you, I mean, your personal photographies probably will be better organized by years or places.

If you have also professional photographies from your business, works for others or you sell to images banks, maybe it would be better to sort them by descriptive names.

In my case, I have a mix, you know that besides documenting my life I create microstock and product images.

So, I have 2 folders, one for the personal photos and other for the professionals.

The personal photos are sorted by years, and inside the folder I have the day-to-day photos and also folders that put together special events like Christmas, celebrations, trips and so on...

The professional folder is sorted by topic and inside the topic with folders with the date and the exact concept of the photos.

For example, I have a folder called 'Home' and inside it, I have product photos of things related with the home, so, imagine that today I make a session with tools, then I will create the new folder with today's date in format 'yymmdd' to have a better organization and it will be called: 240906_Tools.

You know what I mean, don't you?

Erase on the go

As much photos you have, more difficult will be to organize.

In the 'analogic era' this was much easier, you took a photo and that was all, but now to take a photo of a cool dessert in the restaurant, we take 10 photos 'just in case', and even worse, we leave them in the phone, well, we will delete them... someday...

So, a good practice is to discard them as soon as they have accomplish their function, when you have published them, or send to the one you had to, delete those dismissed.

Create a routine to make backups

I know this is what will create more resistance, but it's too easy to just leave the photos there, in the camera card because you will not use it in the next days or in the phone because you have so much space...

But truth is that if you leave them there, when you take the camera again you will realize that you have there last year photographies without saving, sometimes you will not remember exactly the reason to take that photo, or in the worst scenario, the memory card is dead and with it all the memories you had in it...

As minimum you should make a copy of your photos from all your devices at least once in a month and at the same time to delete all of them that you don't need to have with you in the smartphone.

Apply the Mary Kondo method to your gallery

How do the photos make you feel? Do they make you happy?

Sometimes we keep photos because they don't disturb, it doesn't matter to have them there but, for what reason do you want to keep all those memes or absurd photos you receive through Whatsapp? O the photo of a menu in a restaurant in the coast during the last vacations? Is it really something you want to keep?

Think in your hard disk as your photo album, watch all of the with the gallery visor in your operative system and pass them 1 by 1, if some don't catch your attention, maybe it doesn't worth to save them.

Consider creating book albums

Because, sincerely, unless you look for a concrete image, is not probably that you will navigate between more than 10000 photos.

I have created albums for my special trips, the first year of my kids, communion, and so on

I don't know, for me having something physical catch my attention to revive moments.

Probably this year I will star to create general albums making selections of all the photos saved, and as they're ordered by years, it's easier to have them in the correct timeline.

Anyway, I have to investigate more about companies to create it, 'till now I was using a dealer here in Spain called Hofmann but they have reduced so much the quality that, I need to find a new one. 

Any suggestion will be welcome. =)