New Year's Resolution: Organizing your Photos and Printing them!
At the end of the year, do you have thousands of photos on your harddrive that you haven't printed out or backed up?
I know my new year's resolution is to make a quick a easy system so that I ALWAYS remember to back up by files and print my memories out! There is nothing worse then end up with tons of photos that you haven't uploaded, shared or printed and then five years goes by!
In the digital age, it gets easy to be lazy. I use my phone ALOT to take pictures too. But what about the fancy camera that I spent so much money on?
Here is my system to make sure that ALL my memories don't end up being just online or in cyberspace somewhere:
1. Take your nice camera out for a few days a month. That's not very hard to remember. At the beginning of each month, I use my camera consectutively for 3 days. No matter where I am going, or what I am doing.
THREE days, that's not very hard. Then I only have to edit a hundred or so pictures and put them on social media. I know it can get overwhelming to have 1000's of pictures on a SD card that haven't gotten downloaded yet!
Here are my kids on their first "Bounce House" of the new year. All the parents at the place taking pictures with their phone were jealous at my DSLR I'm sure. (LOL)
Then everytime I download my photos, I triple back them up! I save photos to USB sticks to get them off my harddrive, I also have TWO harddrives backing up files constantly and an online archival storage place. I use WALMART for all my printing needs and photo books. It's free unlimited storage for life and the print quality is great for the price. I use Canvas On Demand for canvas though.
2. Every three to four months, do a print order! I make a copy for Grandma, Aunties and Grandpa too. Everyone LOVES pictures. I also usually do my print order for every major holiday. Like: Easter, mother/father's day, thanksgiving/Christmas. That way, you are printing your photos a little at a time and spacing it out through out the year. I simply put my printed photos into a large photo pocket album. Nothing fancy. I do want to get more photo books done though. But they are 20-30.00 a piece and doing a print order is so much more bang-for-your-buck right now. But eventually I want to get to that point.
My daughter LOVES looking through the photos from the last year. It's her favorite reading material.
Little moments like this where my son is just laughing about something and my house is a typical mess are the moments that I want to remember :)
3. I make sure that I take my camera to major events and family outings. If I know that I am going to the zoo for the first time this year, then I also take my camera.
I think 90% of my photos come from the park. But my kids are so happy! I have really perfected the perfect "swing" picture. Try taking a picture with your kids on the swings, while pushing them, It's HARD to do!
4. Whatever the system that you have, just remember to make it simple and affordable enough to continue it year after year. I actually budget for printing photos and photo gifts. Because I know that it's important to actually have copies of photos.
20 years down the road, I don't want my daughter to say "So Mom, do you have any pictures of my childhood?" and I would say "Yeah, they are all on Facebook."
In 20 years, we don't even know if facebook will be around. They are already saving that JPEG file format is going to be obsolete in the next ten years. So if you don't print out your photos, they might be impossible to retrieve!
So good luck this year, take photos and print them out!
Christal
By the way, This is exactly why I don't use kit lenses. This was taken with a 35mm 1.4 (the 1.8 is good too). My aperature was at 1.4 the whole time. I had my ISO at 800 and my shutter speed was 1/125. The inside of the bounce house was actually REALLY dark and you could hardly see anything. I really try not to push the ISO on my camera (even though I could). But I try to be creative with the lighting situation.