Comments on: What do you DO with your pictures?

By: Rachel @ BusyBagCentral.blogspot.com

Rachel @ BusyBagCentral.blogspot.com — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 05:51:28 +0000

Since high school, I’ve always taken pictures of anything and everything and have many of the old-style albums with printed photos to prove it.
But when we had a baby in 2007, we switched to digital cameras and three years quickly passed….then I realized I didn’t have a single picture printed and was in sudden fear of “how do I organize these MILLIONs of photos” and “how do i get them all printed” and “how do I tell all the stories”, you get the idea.
I came across the idea of printing all the photos neatly onto individual pages in a photo book and found a happy medium between my fetish with scrapbooking and the photo-happy-me!
For storing – all photos on the computer with a back-up on our external hard-drive.
For organizing, I create folders in the computer; sorted by year – then month – then event (i.e. “baby learned to climb today” or “visit with the cousins”).
For printing – I use a variety of websites such as Blurb, shutterfly, or Paper Coterie.
It’s really fast to make books with my system of organizing; I just create the book layout then look at my name/date on the picture folder, then drag and drop the photos.
My most recent exciting book is one more like a journal…I’ve been using the “Notes” app on my I-phone to note down the cute stuff my little boys say. Once I had a year’s worth of text, I put it into book-form along with some photos of the boys so I’d remember what they looked like when they said such funny things! ((Hey, I should do a tutorial on this!))
Here’s the link to my post about it:
http://busybagcentral.blogspot.com/2012/08/journaling-cutenessabsolutely-worth.html
It’s good to heard what other people are doing! Thanks for the post!

By: Noelle

Noelle — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 20:01:56 +0000

I plan on using Shutterfly to make photo books, although my daughter is almost two and it hasn’t happened yet. What I do manage to do is use Red Stamp’s app to make photo thank you cards. It’s easy, reasonably priced ($1.99 for a printed card, postage included), and people love them.

By: Rita Norton

Rita Norton — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 20:37:27 +0000

Hi,
I am a personal photo organizer and I help people reconnect with their photos. I take them from photo overload to photo peace of mind. If you need some help visit http://www.appo.org and search for your state. The Association of Personal Photo Organizers is a network of professionals dedicated to telling clients’ stories. Through images, words, and creatively designed photo books, scrapbooks, and more, Photo Organizers are bringing cherished memories back into clients’ lives.

By: Lynn

Lynn — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:42:01 +0000

I love to scrapbook but now with three kids (8, 5 and 4 months) I’m so far behind it’s not even funny! The poor 8 year old doesn’t even have a finished baby book. I’m in the same boat as you trying to figure out what to do with it all…my girlfriend Mary had a great tutorial on her site about how to get all those pictures organized: http://www.capturingmagicalmemories.com/2011/06/i-think-i-have-been-here-before-getting.html.

By: lidia varesco design

lidia varesco design — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 14:52:04 +0000

Another fun idea for a stockpile of baby/kids photos… put them on your computer screensaver or a digital photo frame that rotates the photos. My little one loves to see himself on my laptop screen and it’s fun to see the older photos sprinkled in. The only drawback: I end up staring at photos instead of working!

By: sara

sara — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 04:49:55 +0000

Every year, we make a photobook of the kids for the grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. It allows us to really highlight the year and how the kids have grown and changed. It’s become the favorite (and expected) Christmas gift! Given that most of the actual prints I have from before the digital photo era are still not nicely archived (it’s on the never ending to-do list), I really don’t feel bad about now printing and archiving the digital ones. We upload them all to flicker and make sure we remind the family of the URL on a regular basis, and let them know that if they want prints, let us know which ones and we can get them. We take a bazillion pictures. Even if I did scrap book them, we wouldn’t have the space for all those albums. So we have some choice ones in photo collage frames, and have the yearly photo books. And the ever growing digital collection.

By: lidia varesco design

lidia varesco design — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 18:37:32 +0000

@Whitney: I would love to! Let me gather my thoughts and I will get in touch with you soon. (shoot me an email if you can so that we can get connected)

@Whitney/photo book fans: I love the fact that your mom writes about the kids’ visits. I’ve been keeping a journal since my pregnancy and and use the text in making my books. It takes a bit of effort (some entries are literally one sentence!) but I’m so glad I did it. I never would have remembered the “firsts,” details, funny stories, emotions. (I’m a book/paper freak, but I admit I use the app MacJournal)

Now that my son is 1-year old, I plan to keep journaling, even if it’s just a few sentences a week. It seems to make creating photo books easier because you have a frame of reference — and reading it later is wonderful. If my little man inherited my sentimentality, he will love it too

By: Whitney

Whitney — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 17:44:56 +0000

@Lidia I’d love to see some of your creative projects that incorporate your baby’s photo. Let us know if you ever want to share a simple tutorial or a template!

By: Whitney

Whitney — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 17:43:41 +0000

@Kim and all the Shutterfly fans: it’s a great way to go. My mom makes a Shutterfly book after each visit with us. She writes text and uses the pictures. They are my kids’ favorite books to read and it comforts me to know that there is printed evidence of their childhood. You know, in case the Internet goes out of style someday.

By: Kim

Kim — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:56:47 +0000

We are big fans of Shutterfly. With thousands of pictures every year of the little one — I pull our favorites and promise to make one family album each year. Money and time constraints keep me focused, but I love having an album that also includes stories and anecdotes about where we were and what we were doing. Baby girl will have them someday — And she will probably dread moving the damn box around year after year, but at least she will have the choice

By: Karen

Karen — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:52:49 +0000

I make books on shutterfly too. They are on the coffee table and just have “greatest hits” pictures for every 6 month period (including before baby was born.) I find that they get looked at and enjoyed much more than the mass of pictures on the phones and computers because they are just there physically and not too overwhelmingly large. But it is daunting to pick like 100 pictures to represent 6 months, when you have thousands of pictures. One thing that helps me is immediately deleting any pictures that aren’t great right away.

By: Workingberlinmum

Workingberlinmum — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:50:28 +0000

Now pregnant with my second child I have decided it is an absolute must that I organise the copious amounts of photo’s I have of my first child who is now 3 1/2 before No. 2 is born. Because I can’t afford to print the thousands of photo’s I do have, I am condensing them down to my favourites and making them in to photo books rather then the old-fashioned photo albums. I can’t wait to see them all.