9 tips for organizing your photos

9 TIPS TO ORGANIZE YOUR PHOTOS WELL 

Special collaboration of Kassandra Lalonde, professional photographer (behind, among other things, the magnificent photos of the Belles Combines!) -

To see his work: LalorPhotographie

On a daily basis, we think about ordering our place of life, our house, the yard, the office and everything else. But what about our phone or our computer? With today's mobile devices, we take an endless amount of photos. By comparison, when we were younger, our parents had film cameras. One of them could last a full trip! On a 24 exposure camera, we could thus find photos of birthdays, family outings, Christmas of the previous year, etc. Today we document just about everything we see and experience, videos included! As a result, we get lost a lot when it comes time to go back to see our memories.

There are different ways to organize our memories. It is possible to do it directly on our mobile devices, or to take care of organizing the photos in order to have them in printed versions. 

In any case, there are all sorts of advantages! Now is the time to coordinate your photos: here are 9 tips that will help you get there.

First, we won't hide the reality that often catches up with us quickly with a small notification that tells us that the storage is at its maximum, and the solution is certainly not to change the phone in order to have more 'space. But, as we are attached to our thousands of photos and we don't want to delete them, we start by deleting unused applications and unnecessary text messages, but sooner or later we end up with the same problem! So let's start with the tips related to electronic devices. 

ELECTRONIC DEVICES

It's always a good time to start building good habits, including organizing your memories. Today, just when our little heir takes his first steps, we must have about fifteen photos just for this precise moment, in addition to all the videos we accumulate of his first strides!

• facial recognition

Face recognition is a good first way to organize your images. Basically, your mobile device can group your different photos according to the people in them. For example, as soon as you take photos of your little Jeremy or your little Romy, you will see those where they are in the same album which will be automatically assigned to them. Your phone often does this on its own as soon as the faces come back repeatedly. 

• Storage apps

Storage applications like iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox or others can be very good allies! For example, in your settings, you can synchronize your images so that they transfer there automatically. External hard drives can even be very useful if you are the type to transfer your images to your computer. You just have to store them carefully in a safe place to keep these memories like a treasure! An accident happened so quickly; word of a former university to whom it happened! 

• Schedule a seasonal or monthly triage

You can be optimistic and think you can do the task as you go along. But far too often, we end up always putting it off for later! Why don't you put that as a task to do every season or every month? Les Belles Combines planners are the perfect tool to help you with this task! In this way, you will be able to have time to delete the photos and with hindsight, you will be able to efficiently sort out what photos you really want to keep. 

In addition, as we often find ourselves with a happy mix of photos or videos from our daily lives, inspirational images seen on Pinterest, screenshots forgotten and accumulated over the past few years, photos taken on the fly by your youngest putting his forehead in close-up... Punctual sorting is probably the best ally for organizing your memories! 

• Creating photo albums on the phone

If you are the type of family who does a session from time to time with a professional photographer, know that this same task can be done on a more regular basis by yourselves so that your favorites are printed and deposited in a souvenir box. well dated!

By doing your punctual sorting, you can thus create albums according to different themes , such as:

• The months
• Seasons
• The trips
• The celebrations

This way of proceeding is ideal when we want to have quick access to photos on our mobile devices and want to relive specific moments. By having a scrapbook for every birthday, every Christmas, every trip, or every season over the years, great memories can be relived easily. This task can also be very useful when we carry out large projects; you can thus create an album made up of photos of your different inspirations when you undertake kitchen or bathroom renovations!

• Family Sharing App

The reality of social networks is for some people an obstacle to sharing photos on these platforms. We often want the photos to be seen first by Grandma and Grandpa, Auntie or Uncle, Godmother or Godfather, friends, etc. However, we all know that very often, by posting a photo on social networks, the exposure of these goes beyond the close entourage. This can of course be a concern, especially when the photos represent our children or when our profession requires a certain discretion in terms of privacy; Image rights are therefore a very important factor to consider! 

The beauty of it is that there are photo storage apps designed especially for sharing with the family! This is what FamilyAlbum offers, an application that allows you to store images to be shared in a safe way. Grandpa and Grandma can even leave comments or sweet words on the memories left in the different albums. 

In addition, the photos and videos are automatically organized by month and you can also see the history of visits, which will allow you to easily see if Godmother or Grandma have seen the last photos shared. But the most important thing about this application is the secure and private aspect; only the people you invite will have access to the shared photos. 

• App or triage software

There are a few apps that can be very useful and help you a lot in sorting out your mobile devices. For example, with the Smart Cleaner app you will have a good data cleaner. This application will allow you to avoid having dozens, even hundreds of similar photos ( I'm sure I'm not the only culprit! ) There is also the Cleanup application which allows you to do the same job. 

These tools help organize and sort screenshots, similar images (including bursts that often look too similar ; hello to my Thomas here! ). In summary, the applications will allow you to easily search, delete or classify all your images and magically free up space in your phone! 

Be careful, however, of the terms of use issued by the application you want to use, particularly with regard to your images and the price to be paid.

PRINTS

For my part, given my job as a photographer, I admit to being among those nostalgic for this world when it comes time to talk about “photos”. I endlessly love looking at the printed photos! For example, here travel photos should be printed; I find them sometimes on the walls of our house, in a box of memories, in an album, etc. By having previously carried out a seasonal or monthly sorting, we give ourselves the chance to have memories that we love very much printed on occasion. 

So let's go with solutions to organize the photos that allow to obtain a more tangible result. And no excuses since orders can be made directly through your mobile device!

• Souvenir boxes

Printing the photos in a classic format such as the traditional 4x6 is a nice option. Less expensive, this print format is common and very easy to order. In addition, there are a multitude of choices of albums in which we can insert these photos. However, it often takes more than one to retain all of the printed images. 

So why not buy a box and put your prints inside? Everything can be classified over months, over years or trips, etc. Again, don't wait to get everything printed at once! Returning from a trip, take a moment right away to sort through the photos during your stay. In case you don't want to print them all, select your favorites or the highlights of your vacation.

• Albums (photo books or with printed photos)

The classic album made up of 4x6 format photos is always great, but there are also other formats and types of albums to consider, whether it's a magazine format album or one with a table book look. Creating one album per year can also be a very good idea! So you can see your favorite moments inside and watch it regularly. I don't know about you, but sometimes taking the time to look at memories with family is really something we love to do here at home. There is a little something very unifying and warm in watching albums surrounded by our children. These are moments that allow us to dive back into everyone's memories. 

Platforms like VistaPrint offer this type of service, with which you can easily and quickly create small albums here and there. There is also the Chatbooks Family Albums app which makes it easy to build albums from your phone photos. Then, to get something more upscale, when you want to make an album with the photos taken by a professional photographer during a session, do not hesitate to order an album directly from him; many offer this type of service. 

• instax printer

Who does not know the Instax devices, this jewel that has made a welcome comeback with open arms? For many of our children, it's real magic and quite a revolution, even if we could feel a bit old when explaining to them that the concept existed long before us! 

But did you know that there are also Instax printers? Basically, using the Instax application, we can download photos from our phone. We buy the same films and via Bluetooth, everything is printed and the magic happens! It's ideal for making beautiful collages and it gives a very interesting look for nostalgic people! On our side, we even used it for an oral science presentation for our daughter and to carry out small family scrapbooking projects. This option also allows them to be printed and easily integrated into a souvenir box! 

As you may have noticed, there are several tools that will help you better coordinate your images. Whether we stick to solutions on our devices or like to do it all in a more tangible way, take the time to relive your moments and memories surrounded by your family. After all, captured memories are not meant to be forgotten! Now all that remains is to plan a moment that will come back on an ad hoc basis in order to sort your photos to better enjoy them and manage the space of your phone well with the various tips given.