“What should I do with all these photos?”
It’s a common question from clients. To get you the best answer, I turned to Jodi Bondy, the Hoosier Photo Organizer, who shared industry standards and best practices to get you started:
ABCs of photos: Guidance for sorting and making decisions
A is for Album-worthy: Keep the photos that you want to show others,
B is for Box: These are the photos that may not be the greatest, but you want to keep them nonetheless; perhaps one is the only one you have of a person or event, etc. You can store them in a box. (For best storage, use archival photo-safe storage boxes.)
C is for Can it: Throw out the duplicates, the bad or blurry photos, and photos that are similar. (How about sunset pictures with black and white film? Yep, did that. And threw them out a few years ago.)
3-2-1 system: Guidance for how to store photos
Establish 3 backups, in 2 different formats (physical, external hard drive, cloud, etc.), ensuring that 1 of the copies is stored outside your home (to ensure protection if catastrophe hits).
Other Key Tips
When starting to organize photos, don’t look at the front side; look at the back and match up the types of edges on the photo, the processing printing on the back, and written info that someone added to describe the event on the front. This will help you group photos from the same timeframe.
Use a photo safe pencil to write info on the back of the photo, not an ink pen or graphite pencil.
You’re not in this alone! From photo organizers like Jodi, the Hoosier Photo Organizer, who can provide 1:1 assistance for sorting, de-duplicating, digitizing and storing, to companies like ScanCafe that can digitize your already sorted photos (contact me for a promo code), help is available. Both can also help with videos and slides.
Love to see your favorite photos? Consider a digital frame. I never thought I wanted one, but a friend gave us one recently and I love it. It’s so fun to see a rotating display of family, friends, pets, trips, events, and beautiful scenes. Check out the link for the Nixplay frame on Jodi’s site.
