Summer! A time for making magical memories with friends and family. Whether it’s camping excursions, days at the beach, or those grueling (but fun!) family road trips - you snapped photos all summer long, preserving those moments for life. However, most of us aren’t giving much thought to the organization of the photos and the big digital mess we’re left with. What are you planning to do with all of your photos? Let me help you by offering a handful of tips to keep the past few months of photos organized as we head into the cooler Autumn temps.

Tip #1 - Delete as You Go

Let’s face it. That cute thing your kid did? You probably don’t need 37 shots of it from 10 different angles. I know - it’s the cutest thing EVER! But trust me - when you stumble across this spread of images in a couple of years from now, you’ll be shaking your head at yourself. You don’t need ALL of them. My NUMBER ONE Tip: Delete as you go. You’ll thank yourself later when you have ONLY THE BEST photos to look back at on those childhood moments.

Tip #2 - Use your Phone’s Photo Folder System

If you take tons of photos and can never find the ones you are looking for, this tip is for you. It does take a little time to get into your phone’s folder system and build out a series of properly-named folders to file your images in - but it’s worth the investment. Keep your folder names as specific as possible, and utilize the tagging feature, so that you can quickly search for and find specific images, even months from now. Examples - name your folder “San Francisco 2021” for that amazing family vacation you took. Or name a folder “Preschool Artwork” for all the photos of your kids’s masterpieces. Take one extra second to pop the photos into the right folders and it will make finding them later much easier.

Tip #3 - Set Up Folders in Your Photo Management System

Where do you put your photos when it’s time to move them off your digital camera or off your phone? Storage such as Apple Photos, Google Photos, Amazon Photos, OneDrive - just to name a few - are great places to not only organize your images but to get as detailed and structured as your heart desires. For some, maybe a tag named “Vacations” works great. But for others, maybe tagging with with names like “France” or “Florida,” etc., feels better. The more detailed and structured you get, the easier it’ll be to find the photos you want to find.

Tip #5 - Set a Routine

Instead of waiting until your digital clutter is so overwhelmingly, set aside time to make sure it’s kept organized. Do your cleanup monthly, or even weekly if you are prone to a backlog of images. Using the heart icon on your iPhone allows you to quickly tag the best images as a Favorite. This allows you to find those specific photos faster when you need to. Keep up with this task and you’ll thank yourself later!

Tip #6 - Backup!

No photo organization plan is complete without topping things off with a solid data backup component. Most of the photo management systems mentioned earlier (OneDrive, Google Photos, etc) also double as data backup platforms, but our recommendation is to not take anything for granted. Systems crash, data gets corrupted, and it’s always a good practice to do a double back up to protect those precious newborn images you’d be heartbroken to lose. A simple external hard drive might do the trick. I recommend the 3:2:1 back up strategy to make sure you have 3 total copies of your data, two of which are local but on different devices, and at least one copy off-site for disaster recovery.

Summer was fast-paced, exciting, and full of good times and adventure. Now as the weather gets colder, its time to slow down and take the time to organize all those photos you took. And don’t forget - if you need a step by step guide made by a professional digital organizer, The Legacy Photo Lab can walk you through the process.

Or, if you just can’t bring yourself to do it on your own, reach out for help! You can schedule a free and friendly call with me anytime to talk about how I can help you get your digital photo life under control before it’s too late.

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