8 Great Photo Organizing Tips while Social Distancing (or Anytime!)

Here we are about a week into practicing social distancing, without a clear end in sight, and many people may be feeling a bit gloomy. This is an excellent time to embrace your photos in fun and creative ways. As we navigate this unprecedented, anxiety-ridden time, our photos can be a great source of joy and stress-relief. So check out these timely photo organization tips and resources to help you enjoy your photos and make progress on your projects!

1. Clean out your camera roll. Does scrolling through your Facebook feed increase your stress level these days? How about scrolling through your camera roll instead? Start by deleting the unnecessary photos like screenshots and bursts. 

2. Take photos of the latest technology, your house, your kids’ rooms or artwork, your family doing their “social distancing,” empty shelves at the grocery store - anything that represents what life is like today. These photos will be really interesting in 5, 10, or 20 years.

3. Consolidate your digital photos. Select one location on your computer or an external hard drive to be your “digital photo hub.” At this point don’t worry about what photo management program may or may not be a good fit for you; the first step is to bring all your photos together in one place. This is key before sorting, deleting, deduplicating, adding stories, etc. If this or any other part of organizing your photos is overwhelming to you, let us know – we can help! (And yes, we can help remotely!)

4. Set up a backup system. As we know all too well now, life can derail at any moment. Same goes for your computer with your important and valuable files – at any time you could lose them to a hard drive failure or other calamity. Experts recommend the 3-2-1 Backup Method. That’s 3 copies of your digital files on 2 different media, and 1 being off-site. So take that digital hub you have now (even if it's still a mess), and back it up to an external hard drive and the cloud. I recommend Backblaze for a cloud backup of your all your files and photos, Time Machine for a local backup of your Mac, and for PC users I like SyncToy, a free product from Microsoft, to back up changed files to an external hard drive.

5. Select photos for a photo book. You may have had to postpone that upcoming vacation, but you can certainly re-live and celebrate the memories of a previous one! Or how about a family photo book for 2019? I highly recommend this Family Yearbook Course by fellow photo organizer Miss Freddy.

I love Miss Freddy's teaching style and the simple, clean books she teaches you how to make, and I’m a big fan of the book vendor she recommends. I took the course last month and ordered our 2019 family photo book just a few weeks later! You will love the easy steps that will get you going on your photo book!

6. Sort & organize your physical photos. This is a fabulous option now while we are not as busy as usual. And many of us aren’t having guests over so we can spread out on that dining room table and leave it there for awhile! Here’s a great article on Spring Cleaning Your Photos by fellow photo organizer Carin Osborne, and another great resource is the book Photo Organizing Made Easy written by Cathi Nelson, founder of the Association of Personal Photo Organizers.

7. Break out the home movies. Tired of kid crafts or Netflix marathons? How about gathering the family to watch home movies instead? If you have old media like VHS and VHC tapes that need to be converted to a current playable format, let us know – we can digitize them for you! Also, check out how to create an annual video reel with your iPhone videos with another great lesson by fellow photo organizer Miss Freddy.
 
8. Send a photo gift. Be it a mug, apron, blanket or whatever, it will be like a virtual hug to a loved one who you're unable to visit or embrace right now. One of my favorite gifts is the Nixplay WiFi-Cloud Frame; send it to your parents, grandparents, siblings, etc. and you can upload photos to their frame directly from your phone! My favorite option is the Nixplay Seed; my parents, sister and I all have one and we enjoy sharing photos with each other!

Overwhelmed with your photo organization or project? Need a little guidance, an expert to take over the project and do it for you, or something in between? We are open for business! And did you know that we can do most of our organizing work remotely? While I love meeting with my clients, we can accomplish much of what we do with a virtual meeting and screen sharing! Contact us today.

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