Listen here to How to Organise Family Photos:
How to Organise Family Photos
4 simple ideas to help you organise your family photos. Make a start with just one, and hopefully, by the time your children are 18, you can easily create a photo wall to celebrate their birthday, with a collection of photos: some will be funny, others serious, perhaps some will be messy but all will be beautiful sentimental memories of them and for them to mark the moment.
About Your Podcast Host – Sue Kennedy of Sue Kennedy Photography
Sue is a professional portrait photographer based in Harlow, Essex and she specialises in baby, child and family portraiture. Being a parent, she understands just how special your child is to you and her aim is to produce a collection of images that are natural and meaningful to your family. No two moments are ever the same and she wants to perfectly capture those early precious memories and the natural character of your child.
For more information please call 01279 433392, or visit the Sue Kennedy Photography website.
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Episode Transcription: How to Organise Family Photos
Sue: (00:08)
Hello, and welcome to the Photographs In A Shoebox podcast with me, Sue Kennedy. This podcast is all about helping and inspiring you to tell your family’s story in pictures
Sue: (00:22)
Today, I wanted to share four simple ideas on what to do with your family photos, especially if you open the cupboard and there’s an absolute avalanche of them. So this is all about how to organise them, and then bring some order to it. Everyone needs to start somewhere with this. So I’m just going to talk through the four basic methods that I’ve used really.
Sue: (00:50)
Now you don’t have to any of them, but I just want to inspire you hopefully just to get started. Even if you only do one of them and it’ll just make it that bit easier when you do have the time to really hit it hard. So, number one is plastic boxes. So, you can either have one big one that you put in all the keepsakes. I would do it by child (per child basis). So one big one, but you pop in things like artwork, their certificates that they get at school, any special birthday cards, as well as the photographs that you have decided you love enough to print.
Sue: (01:38)
Or you can go with a, they do a photo storage box that is obviously one big plastic box, but then it has individual photo cases within it that you can store some printed six by four inch photographs in. The advantage there is that you can make them per event so you can if they’re for, or all the photographs from a year are in that plastic sleeve, it makes it easier to look through at a later date. And you’ll never forget the year either.
Sue: (02:15)
Obviously, I’d always recommend writing some notes so that you remember where you were when you took these photographs, of what you were doing or who the people you were with were called. Because, it’s just easier down the line when you think you won’t forget, but you do. So there’s also the digital version of this method, where you create a folder on your computer for each child and probably one for your holidays or any other special events, and then upload the photos you want to keep into these folders so that when you’re ready, you’ve got them all in the right place to create an album and you can do so.
Sue: (02:57)
And then also do the same with your holiday memories. And then if you want to, again, another album for that. The advantage of creating your own album is that you can add little notes to it, so that you remember where you were and what you were doing and who you were with. So number three for me is video. No, I know that’s not photographs, but I do like to take little clips. I did this intending to create a montage of stills with video to sort of tell the family’s story, but that’s not quite happened yet. So don’t make the same mistake as me, film everything horizontally, because that looks better when you’re trying to show it on the TV, I’ve got a mix of horizontal and vertical. So it messes with your head a little bit. I haven’t mastered how I put it all together yet. We’re still viewing the little snippets on the phone.
Sue: (04:00)
Ideally, I’d like to be able to watch it as a family on the TV, but I think I’m nervous that I’ll end up being a bit of a bore with it. I don’t know if anybody else had relatives that when they were younger, that you’d pop round to their house, they’d get their projector out, show you the slide show and show you literally every photograph that they had taken of their most recent holiday, including the out of focus ones. And rather than a curated collection of the best images it was, which probably would’ve been, I don’t know, a handful. You’ve got to sit through hundreds of them. But, so that’s what stopped me with the video. And I need to break through that and also master the software. But that doesn’t stop me from suggesting the idea so. And then the fourth suggestion is my old favorite, is to literally print the ones that you love and either create a wall gallery at home or just have them dotted around the house in smaller frames.
Sue: (05:08)
It’s always a conversation starter, and I know I’d go on about this, but children love to see images of their younger selves around the house. And why would you miss an opportunity to embarrass them when they’re older? The sooner you start, the less chance you have of things sort of getting lost. And the more memories that you’ll have for a photo wall say, for example, for their 18th birthday or their 21st parties. And it’s, I actually saw a brilliant idea where somebody had created a table runner out of the photographs, obviously not the originals, but I mean, that must be an amazing conversation starter.
Sue: (05:52)
Certainly, any parties I’ve been to that have had a photo wall of the person through their life. We’ve all stood there, reminiscing and asking questions, and you get to know the person a little bit more. And it is very cute to be looking through their childhood photos and just celebrating all the cute moments, the funny moments, probably the messy moments as well. So it’s something to work towards, I guess. That’s all for this episode. Don’t forget to subscribe wherever you are listening so that you never miss an episode. And thank you for joining me today and until next time bye for now.
