Right off the top, I have a word of advice for you… LABEL YOUR PHOTOS!!! Who, what, when, where. Trust me… you’ll be thankful… There’s even special pens to write with that won’t mess up the dyes in the photographs.
I’m going thru boxes of photos that I have just dumped in as I found them. Some are in envelopes and some are single photographs.
I’m using these photo boxes I picked up during half price sales at Hobby Lobby. They have a place on the front where I can drop in a label for each box. I’m using categories that work for me. Broad ones like “pets”, “flora”, “fauna”, “landscapes”, etc. And specific ones such as “SW Trip ‘04”, “Day Trips”, “Grandma”, and so on. They also come with index divider cards – but I’m not at that point yet. But when I do they will fine tune the sorting. Such as with “pets” I will then have dividers for “Patches”, “Sabre”, “Tsion” and so on.
The good thing is once I get the photos into their own box, I can take a box with me when I know I’m going to be waiting or when I’m traveling and need something to do in the down times.
For my hard copies, once I sort them, I will scan the best into my computer. (I have a lot of photographs so I can save only the best).
As I said earlier, my photos since 2006 are in digital format. But I am making it a point to make a high resolution copy of the best of my shots. Most I print out in a 4x6 size, but the very best are printed at high resolution in 8x10 size. These 4x6 will have their own box.Then all photos will be backed upped on both my external hard drive and a couple DVDs.
Then it will be time to work on displaying them…
Several years ago, I labeled 15 years of snapshots. It took months, and I vowed to always write names and information on the back of new pictures before I filed them. For the most part, I've kept up.
ReplyDeleteI have them organized chronologically, with date dividers separating sections.