Your personal world is probably overflowing with photos. There are hundreds – maybe even thousands – just on your phone. Your SLR or other digital camera’s SD card has photos on it that you might have even forgotten about. On top of that, some of us have inherited photos from parents and others. We feel the weight personally of making sure that our siblings and other family members have access to those for the future.

You need a system. It needs to be a system that helps you successfully preserve treasured family photos from the past as well as manage the photos you are taking every day.

Let’s start at the beginning and lay the groundwork for a system that is easy to begin and easy to stick with. Getting started truly is the hardest step.

“Well begun is half done.” – Mary Poppins

Decide on your end goal before starting

Every system has to have a well-defined end goal. This will determine the entire system from the beginning to the end.

As overwhelming as it is to have thousands of personal family photos, there is also the flood of new digital products and apps that promise to help you. To stay focused, consider these things.

How will you use your archived photo collection?

Even if you plan to share your photo collection with family members, your system will still be personal. You will be the one putting in the preparation time and you will be the one managing it over time.

Consider how much time you are willing to put into your system. First, there is the preparation of your existing photos. Print photos will need to be scanned and then added to your digital photo files. Then, all photo files will need to be properly labeled and tagged to aid in finding them easily.

After scanning, your print photos will need to be safely stored to protect them from further deterioration. The digital photo library will need to be stored in more than one location. My personal preference is one place for quick access, then also on an external hard drive and two cloud storage locations like Dropbox, Google Photos, Amazon Photos, etc.

You might also need to consider how you might connect written, audio, and video stories related to your photo files. Adding these and connecting them digitally will add so much context to your photos and the stories they tell.

How will your family use your archived photo collection?

Ultimately your photo collection will mean so much more and all the work you put into it will be more rewarding when you consider what it will mean to your family. My sister and I have lost both of our parents and the photos that they left us are invaluable to us. We want to share those with each other, our children, and their families.

To share a photo collection with others, you will need to choose which cloud hosting service that will be easy-to-access for all of them. Decisions will also have to be made on what type of access you will give each family member. Will they be able to add to the collection or edit a photo? Can they add a description to the metadata to add more context to that photo’s story? These are important considerations.

Time to Get Started

I hope that you have some clarity now on where you are headed in organizing your photo collection. Now it’s time to follow Mary Poppin’s advice and get started! You’ll be “half done” before you know it.

Up next: “Gathering and Sorting”

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