Summer is when many of us take vacations and get away from the ordinary life of what we think is mundane. We plan and save, pack our things, and just go. No schedules to keep, no itinerary to hold us accountable. If you travel with children the trek to the destination might have some challenges, such as my daughters oldest learned on a recent trip if he told his parents he had a poopy diaper, they would stop the car and give the desired attention. Yet, after the few false alarms, they quickly learned his game and took a photo to memorialize his antics.
Traveling with pets is more time consuming than it is traveling alone, but still, you get some of the best photos of you and your best friend. Destination made, we may pitch a tent or take a hot shower in the five-star hotel, and let the R & R begin. We take photos of the dinner in front of us, or our toes in the sand, the sunset, and the sunrise and everything in between. Recently we had hundreds of fireworks photos shared on social media, and online, and we cherish the moments we have created, and the special moments of life and the time spent with their loved ones. Every picture has a story behind it. We can recall just where we were or the mood we were in by looking back through some of those photos.
But when we are back home and, in our routine, again, where are those photos? Do we keep them on our phone, and think, “someday I should do something with those?” Someday isn’t a day of the week, and we never get to that, because more important task beckons our attention.
We want to offer a few tips to keeping up with our photos, not even mentioning, the case of photos that your Aunt handed you on her last visit from years gone by. It can be overwhelming if we allow it to, but just like everything else that needs to be organized, it didn’t get that way overnight, and it won’t fix in that same time. My friend Robyn had this reminder that helped when a client would get overwhelmed. “How does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Same can apply to pictures, just start, work on, and complete July’s pictures, and then you can work on June, May, and Aprils.
Decide how or where you want to store your pictures. This can be a hard drive or more common today is to have storage space digitally such as dropbox, google photos, OneDrive, or there are many others. It is so simple to upload or make an album for an event, or time, or person in these digital forms that there is no excuse for not doing so.
Set aside some time, maybe once a week if possible to clean up your phone. Of this last week’s photos, there are receipts, the package of a light bulb I need to purchase, the connection of a cable box, an app that I use, a Facebook post, a wedding announcement, an invoice, an error message, quotes, employees, my run(s), art, a deposit and it goes on and on. Out of all of those, once I have sent it to the correct person, and the current situation has been corrected or taken care of we don’t need those pictures again. That trash can we call “DELETE” is your friend. You can let go of most of the pictures and keep only those precious ones of your husband fishing, or grandchild singing to his sister. Then you can categorize, organize, and keep what is important.
I have a brother who takes several trips every year and takes a ton of pictures while he is traveling. But, in the evenings, he’ll make a Splice video out of the best ones and deletes the rest. If he needs to find a photo, it will be in that video.
Honestly, we don’t NEED any of these photos to survive, it is a luxury. The first photo was taken in 1826 of a man’s upstairs window looking out on his estate. Looking at that photo now, is bleak and it is hard to decipher and really the only thing that is interesting is that it is that old and survived. So when you think you’re stressed out because your photos might get lost, just know that in the middle of all that ….. you lived a life.
Lori
Consider It Done
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