How to Inspire Thanks Through Your Photos

Family Time: 2010 Photo Review

Last night I gathered my kids around me to look through our 2010 photos. We laughed. We remembered things we’d forgotten. We had a good relationship-building time. You can remind yourself and your family of all that you’ve had to be grateful for this past year by reviewing 2010 through your photos.

Benefits:

• You’ll find out what your family’s favorite memories are, along with your own. You can prioritize the favorite memories as your upcoming scrapbooking projects.
• It’s a great way to collect information and details that you yourself forgot or didn’t know. Your family members will naturally offer many of the details without you even having to ask!
• You, yourself, will remember details that you can add into the metadata of the photos.
• You might realize a different perspective on events by listening to their observations, reactions, and stories.
• It’s fun! And it’s a great reminder of all the good in your life.

Set Yourself Up for a Great Viewing Experience

We do this activity right from my laptop. I LOVE viewing photos from my computer, and so do my kids. I usually hear people talk about viewing photos on computers as a negative experience — quite the opposite of my own. Maybe it has to do with the way you manage your photos?

To make your computer-viewing experience pleasurable, make your favorite photos viewable in a spot that is separate from your less-than-favorite photos. Here’s how . . .

Create Quarterly Digital Files or Albums for Fave’d Photos

Every photo manager is different. I’ll explain how mine works and you can look at your photo manager to see how to do the same thing. I’ll share two other options, as well. Hopefully your computer or your manager will have at least one of the three options.

Option 1: Photo Manager with Sub-folders
Here’s how I do it . . .

1. Yearly Projects or Folders – Within my library of photos, I create Projects for each year of family photos. I keep all of my family photos for the year — the great as well as the not-so-great — within that one project.
2. Albums or Sub-folders -I then create albums within my yearly projects. I make four quarterly albums, plus an additional December album, since there are so many photos from December. I want to be able to easily see December photos on their own.
   
   My photo manager allows me to place pictures from my yearly projects (or folders) into my albums (or sub-folders) without actually moving them. This means I can see my favorite photos in both places, whether I’m looking in the first quarter album for 2010 or the Project for all of 2010.
   
   This way, you can enjoy all of the best photos without having to weed through the clutter of all the bad ones. It’s an entirely different experience to view photos on your computer when you only see your favorite photos. These are also the photos I choose from when I am scrapbooking.

Option 2: Smart Albums or Smart Folders
Another option for placing favorite photos in their own sub-folders while still keeping them in their main fodlers: Smart Albums. If your computer has the ability to create smart albums, you can give your favorite photos a specific rating of your choice. Then you create a smart album with the following criteria:

• the date (ie. 2010; or January February March 2010)
• the ratings you assign your favorite photos.

Option 3: Completely Separate Favorite Photos from the Rest
I don’t like this option as well. I only recommend doing this if there is no way to view a photo file in two different place like I explained in the two options above. But if your computer or software does not offer those functions, it’s still worth it to do option 3 and be able to view your favorite photos on their own.

Just make a folder for the year (or the quarter/year) with your favorite photos, plus a separate folder for the year and call it, “Non-Favorite Photos 2010.”

Hyman Family Favorite Memories from 2010

I was surprised to find out what my kids’ favorite memories were so far. Most were not the ones I would have expected. Now that I know what made them most happy, I want to make sure I scrapbook them over the coming year . . .

Gatsby’s Crazy Tongue

Karaoke

4th of July

A Newly Painted + Decluttered Bedroom

I’ll admit it. This last one may have been one of my own favorite memories.

Weekly Roundup

• Paperclipping Video Tutorial – How to Use Up Unloved Patterned Paper
  
  This tutorial was one of our two episodes for the Paperclipping Members this month. Get this episode, plus 156 other tutorials in the archives and two more every month, by becoming a member! Click here to see how it works.
• The Paperclipping Roundtable – Pile On Ali
• The Paperclipping Digi Show – The Sweet Little Machine

Tags: how to, Newsletters, orgainzation, organize, organize photos, photo management, photo manager, Photography, photos, thanksgiving

This entry was written by Noell Hyman and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.