Way too many photos but never enough to scrap ?

[chocolate_ee]

Feeling defeated ! Started trying to sort photos ... one of many aborted attempts these last couple of years. Every time I try to get a grip on photo storage I always start to feel overwhelmed and yet I've NEVER got the right photo to scrap when I need it !! Does this sound familiar ?

I've got photos spanning over 20 years. All of them pre 2005 are film prints for which I've chucked the negatives. They're in 4 IKEA storage boxes in no particular order. Everything post 2005 is digital . All of the last 6 months worth are in iphoto on my Mac , thankfully sorted by event . But then I've got about 3 years years worth on a backup external hard drive from my old PC which I'm just starting to transfer . There's just way too many. And then I've got a ton of digital pix I've printed but just sitting in boxes although some of these are also in albums which I raid from time to time if I need one to scrap - there are great blanks in those !
I've also got a huge cropper Hopper photobox which is also crammed with an assortment of photos again in no order !!

How does everyone deal with their respective photo mountains ? Anyone got a foolproof system ? I need help !

[leigh11]

NO i have them all over the place, some still in the envelopes from the developers! I REALLY need to organise them somehow too

[Elin]

My photo mountain is in the loft! Once I get really bored of the photos I have out to scrap I get another very large handfull out of the loft boxes. I then sort these and use them for a while. There's no race to have them all finished - ever! Once i realised that I stopped worrying

[jennyap]

I struggle too, I've got thousands of digi photos on my harddrive which haven't been printed, and similarly lots pre-digi (although I do still have the negs for most).

I'm broadly working backwords, so I'm going to try scrap all the main things I want to out of the digi pics before I tackle the film ones. I'm a very slow scrapper so it could be some years before I get to those!

For the digi pics I am printing index prints of the photos on cheap A4 photo paper, and keeping them in a lever arch file by subject. Then when I want a photo from a certain holiday, for example, I can browse that first to choose what I'm going to print.

When I get to the film pics I think I'll sit and go through a pile at a time, look at each pic and see if there is a story I want to remember about it. If not it will go on one pile, if there is I will put it in the to-be-scrapped pile and hopefully make a few notes to go with it.

One thing I'm also doing now is keeping a list of what I want to scrap as it happens, so even if I don't print the pic straight away I have a record of the idea.

Far from a foolproof system, but might be some ideas in there that help.

[Azimuth]

my system at the moment is simple:

I print the photos that don't need much in the way of digital enhancement or fixing up (if i have time i do the ones that needed fixing too!). I receive them and more or less separate them into piles that sort of go together (eg: big trips/holidays, old photos of me, other old photos, christmas, someone's wedding etc)

then, I look through them and pick something to scrap. Sometimes this is decided for me when I get a kit with colours that suit some photos, other times I see the photo and think "oh that was when..." and go off looking for suitable paper. when I'm bored of them, I print some more, but keep them separate from the last "batch". after a couple of iterations of this, I amalgamate some of the older "batches" of photos and use them for a bit.

I must agree with Elin: it's not a problem if I dont' scrap everything. I do what I want when I want. and dare i say it: if I have scrapper's block, i don't scrap...

[VAC]

I print every photo I have as I know the one lot i dont print I will want to scrap. When they arrive I sort them out into Layout packs - even if I have more than i would actually use I have them in one place. I have just put them in albums in packs so I can easily look through them by pack! It seems to work but everyone is different.

[Lula31]

I use memo albums - the sort where you have a slide in place for the pic and a little bit of card to put notes on, so I have the date and any details that I might want to include in a future LO like something funny that someone said.

[USA2UK]

All of the photos I am working with right now are digital or scanned into my computer, so I print what I want to scrap when I want to scrap it...in the sizes that I need. I have jillions of digital photos and pre-digital photos that I haven't gotten around to yet, but I'll deal with that when I get to it. Right now I am only working on the one album (a heritage album of my family history), or specific projects (mini books, etc..), which narrows the scope.

[darm]

i have mine in a photo box - whats not in albums. stored into boston, disney, ptes, family, friends and me. i add new sections if i need to do. msot of these r the last 2 years worht. most of the others r in albums which i occcasionally raid and get copies made to use (original never end up bakcin albums though!!) and thats about it lol. it is easier tosort by theme as soetimes u can rememebr a photto or even t an dknow exacty where to look

[Scrapcomber]

I have mine and parents pre digital in Power Sort boxes, in subject order, then I use a computer programme (also by the same company as the boxes) to store the digital photos as it uses the same system, and then just print off what I need when I need it, it even tells me if I have backed them up or printed them out

[Damkina]

Just looking at my photo mountain is daunting and it really needs sorting.

The majority of my photos are still in their envelopes from the developers, and because I'm also a slow scrapper they're probably going to be there for a while yet.

I usually have weeks where I can see how to scrap photos and have a great time, then can go another few weeks where I've just get scrap block and can't see the woods for the trees!

I've more or less decided to sort them and put them all into card/tissue insert albums using photo corners (like wedding albums), then as I look through and decide what I want to scrap I can take it out and to the printers without ruining the whole page.

This is the best solution I've thought of, where they're kept neat and easily accessable... thing is... I've still got to wade throught the mountain first!

Joanne

[Debbie]

I went through all my old film pics and separated out the negs, then boxed the pics in photo boxes in date order. Negs in a separate box in date order. All other printed stuff, such as school photo and portraits etc in a big wooden chest. Digi stuff......yikes, thousands on disc and on my hard drive. Must back up soon! I've never sorted my digi stuff in any way: it's all still in the original dated folders, which more or less works for me.

But yes, I quite agree about not having the pic you actually "need". I got a load of vouchers from Jessops a while back, which entitles me to 50 free prints a month, and have found it fun to actually scrap some pics without agonising over the size and spending ages printing them. May get into the habit of having a load printed every month even once the vouchers are finished. I do worry about the reliability of having so many years worth of images stored on disc, and know I'd be really upset to lose them, so really should go and get the precious ones printed.

[Cris]

I think I read somewhere (in a book) that someone sorted all their photos into date order in photo boxes and wrote a list by month of events that happened in that year so that she could refer back when she was scrapping.

My photos are mostly filed in boxes by year with negatives in there too (where I still have them) and digi ones are on the pc and backed up to disk. Dh files them by month for each year which seems to work.

Cris

[yizzard]

Mine are in the cd size RUB boxes sorted by date order and then event. I cut up A4 card to make index cards and have labeled each event so I can just flip through the boxes. It took me three weeks to do them all as like the original op I had over 30 years of photos. I layed them all on the bedroom floor and did bits at a time. It was a massive task as many had no dates and had to be matched by counting cake candles, matching dresses or background furniture/wallpaper
Now I have looked at them so many times I can more or less remember every photo I have so can find it fairly easily when I want to scrap it.
Now I have gone digi, I wait until there are photoprinting offers going and then print the new ones out and add to the boxes (boxes all labelled by year) so that I have one 'hardcopy' but often print duplicates out myself the sizes I want when I want to scrap one.

[jani d]

Stacy Julian of SS/Big picture is bringing out a new book on this subject. It already looked like one for my list. Maybe worth a read to help.