Do you feel overwhelm creeps in when you see the sheer number of photos on in your camera roll? How do we even start to tackle what’s there and make sense of it?
We likely all have tens of thousands of photos on our phones at the moment. When thinking about documenting them, that creates overwhelm for anyone to tackle. We shouldn’t be thinking of each of those photos being an individual project. Zoom in.
Look at things in topic form.
2023 – what does that year at a glance look like to you? What were the highlights of the year? What memories do you want to document from the year? Definitely the holidays, the trips, the milestones, but also include some everyday moments. Those are important to the story of your life as well. But don’t get bogged down by each and every photo.
Take a trip for example – go through and delete any photos from that trip that you don’t need. Then, make a folder for the trip on your phone. Add in the highlights. The “best of” photos that capture the story of the trip and the things you did and saw. That becomes the photos you document. This is where the story is added.
Focus on one child. Maybe they are hitting a milestone birthday. What photos over their lifetime would you put in a slideshow that highlights their life. Narrow it to a manageable number for you. Again, make a folder and add those photos to their story.
Our kids do not appreciate photos in the way we do, or the way our parents and grandparents before us did. If we have a dozen photos of your grandparent over their lifetime, you are fortunate. Those are treasures to us! Our kids easily have thousands of photos of themselves and they are still young with many more to come.
Memory keeping expert, Stacy Julian says – “Rubies are more valuable that sand because rubies are rare and sand is not. The images on our phones are sand. We can increase value by adding personal stories to the images. Personal stories are unique and therefore rare. Sift through the sand and create the rubies.”
It is our job as the curators and editors of our memories to pull those to the surface. To give them the value they deserve. Printed photos are simply a tool to connect with the people you love most. Don’t worry about the lighting, composition, editing, etc. It’s the story that connects the memory.
Develop a process and workflow that works for you and just get started!
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