Speaking of a ton of photos...let's talk about how I narrow down my photos from a big event, such as a vacation. If you are like me, you take a million photos on a big vacation, or a big event (birthday, graduation, holidays, etc). My storage and narrowing down of my photos is actually quite simple. But you have to grasp one rule........YOU DON'T HAVE TO SCRAP EVERY PHOTO FROM THE EVENT. So, here's my process, in list form....
- I store all of my photos on a passport (or external hard drive). This gives me a little more security in the event my computer were to take a crash, I would still have all of my photos saved externally. Some people even go the extra step and download all of their pics to a digital site, such as Shutterfly, Dropbox, etc. The only photos I have stored in the digital world are those that I've printed through Walgreens, etc.
- I try to keep my photos as organized as possible once I transfer from my camera to my passport. Trust me, this will help when it comes to scrapbooking and hunting for photos. Some examples would be creating a folder called "Christmas" and within that folder I will create sub folders "2013" "2012". Or a folder called "Vacations" and then sub folders "Alaska 2014" "Disney World 2013" "Hilton Head 2012". You get the idea....
- I try to map out exactly what I want to scrapbook. Let's take a simple subject but one that may have a lot of photos, such as a vacation; our trip to Hilton Head. We were gone for several days, so I would write down what we did each day and what photos I took. We did a dolphin cruise 1 day that I knew I wanted to scrap, so I decided how many photos to scrap. A double page with about 5 photos would suffice. So, I picked about 7-8 photos of vertical AND horizontal orientation from our dolphin cruise. I always print a few more photos than what I think I'm going to scrap. I still like to have a selection process even before I'm about to scrap the photos. I use this same process for each day of our trip.
- What do I do with the extra photos I didn't scrap? I put them in my "completed" pile. I like to have a stash of photos to pull from when I do mini albums or if I'm just in a creative slump and want to play with a technique and scrap but don't want to waste a "good" photo. By that I mean, if I mess up a photo from my "completed" pile, it's not a big deal because I've already scrapped the event and/or a similar photo.
- For smaller events like birthdays, I decide how many pages I would like to scrap. Personally, I don't do an entire book for every single birthday. I try to do 2-3 pages for each birthday. I know, crazy, isn't it? Friends.....if you hold on and try to scrap every photo, it will NEVER get done. Pick your favorite pics from a birthday and scrap those. Have pics of your child opening gifts? Do a collage of photos or a double page of him/her opening the gifts. Cat and I did a reader challenge just last week in which we scrapped multiple photos. This process would work great for an event like this.
- Random photos from a vacation? yes! I always get those candid shots while on vacation that really have nothing to do with a vacation but I LOVE the photo. I will still print it, put it in my "misc" pile of photos to scrap and will scrap it by itself.
- Sometimes I will have very special photos that I captured that deserve their own page. Yes, every photo is special, but there are some that you are just so proud of....the timing was right, the action in the photo was spot on, the colors are perfect, everything was just awesome.
So, there's my process. I hope this helps those that have a hard time narrowing down photos when it comes to scrapbooking.
If you've been following our blog since the beginning, you may remember me answering one of Cat's questions and I talked about my favorite photo. And one of my points in my narrowing process mentioned those "perfect" photos. With that, I leave you with one of my most favorite photos captured while on vacation. This was taken in Hilton Head. I love everything about it. The colors of the sunset, Carter jumping in the open ocean while looking into the sunset.....love.love.love.
Have a great weekend!
Stay True Blue,
Nat
You are very organized. I like the "complete" file. That will help me from unnecessarily multi-scrapping an event.
ReplyDeleteI use the WeR or Snap pocket pages to collage the candid photos. They always look fun amoung the 12x12s.
Your suggestions were very timely. I'm trying to do a little photo organizing right now. I'm trying to keep a lot of events down to 5-7 photos, then using "pocket pages" with the extras.
ReplyDelete