In this era of ubiquitous phone cameras, most of us have too many digital images and are overwhelmed by them. I hear this complaint a lot when I tell people that I’m a professional scrapbook/photo book maker. Here are some tips to make dealing with digital images EASY and/or FUN.
Heather is a client of mine that uses a great strategy to manage her photos. Every 2 months she schedules an hour appointment with herself to review the photos on her phone from that last 2-month period. She uploads only her favorite photos to be printed then puts photos in an envelope with the month and year on it. When she has 8 months of photos, she contacts me to begin putting a scrapbook together for that year of her daughter’s life. I wanted to write about Heather because she has some good photo habits!
I just finished listening to NPR’s Hidden Brain Podcast called “Creatures of Habit”. During that Podcast I learned that:
- Much of the day we operate on autopilot, meaning we do things out of habit.
- To change a habit, we need to make our new desired behavior (organizing, deleting, printing, or preserving digital images) EASY and/or FUN!
- A tip to make a new behavior more automatic is to insert it into the middle of another set of habits.
- SET SOME TIME: daily, weekly or monthly to select your favorite photos or keep photos that you want to preserve. It’s FUN to relive your memories! (Heather makes an hour appointment every two months and I like to carve out 10 minutes a day. Figure out what is EASY for you.)
- CREATE “AN ALBUM” ON YOUR PHONE: An album is just a way to organize a group of photos on your phone. Call it “photos to print” and add photos to the album. (It is EASIER to do something with your images if you have them in one place. I can help.)
- PRINT YOUR FAVS: If your phone gets lost or stolen, you’ll be glad that you printed out some of your favorite digital images. (I like the KODAK MOMENTS APP on my phone because it is SUPER EASY to use. Whenever I have a little time, I send photos from my phone to a local drug store where they are uploaded and printed in minutes!)
- GO TO A SCRAPBOOKING WORKSHOP: It is FUN to work with your printed photos along with other people. Bring a friend with you to an event. (I host weekly, monthly and 2 weekend retreats a year with ladies who enjoy scrapbooking together. Go to MemoryBooksbyEileen.com/events.)
- HIRE A PRO: Don’t have time to put your photos in a scrapbook or photo book? What is EASIER than hiring someone to preserve your memories for you? (Go to MemoryBooksbyEileen.com and click on “Done For You Services”.)
Follow one or two easy/fun habits to create a system for preserving your photos and memories for many years to come.