Now that you’ve taken lots of great photos, they’re either sitting on your camera’s memory card or taking up valuable space on your computer’s hard drive. Sometimes there’s so many that it’s difficult to decide which ones to print. Here are my tips for organising your photos and getting them off your memory devices and out into your home where they can be viewed and appreciated.
Firstly, some house keeping;
* Safe storage – Always upload your photos from your camera’s memory card to a computer rather than using it as a storage device. If you like having the photos on your camera some programs allow you to keep the photos on there as well as uploading them to your computer (I don’t recommend doing this though – see next point).
* Reformat regularly – Once your photos have been put on your computer and backed up you should reformat your camera’s memory card. This will clear the digital build up that happens when you delete and retake photos. It will prevent your card locking up on you (usually telling you it’s full when you have only taken a few photos).
* Be selective – there’s no point holding onto blurry photos. Once you’ve uploaded your pics, go through them and delete the dodgy ones that you know you’ll never print. It’s better to do this once the photos are on your PC.
* Organise – Organise your photos into folders once they’re on your computer or storage device to make them easier to find later on. Name and date the folders so they’re easy to identify.
* Back up – Always back up your valuable photos in more than one place. CDs, DVDs, portable hard drives, PCs and memory cards all have life expectancies. It is important to back up your photos to more than one place in case one option fails. There are some great online options to store photos too. However, in my opinion, the best type of back up is printing hard copies of your photos.
This leads me to the fun stuff…
Ways to publish and display your photo memories;
* A lot of retail stores have photo kiosks these days. Make use of their special deals and print off lots of your favourite prints. Choose a special few to put into frames.
* Get crafty and scrapbook an album of your happy snaps. Find a local scrapbooking store or community college if you’re interested in lessons. You will be proud to show your albums off when you’ve put so much love into making them look fabulous.
* Look out for good online deals for photo products like photo canvases. Printing a favourite photo onto canvas is such a lovely way to share a good photo and they can look very professional.
.. and now to my favourite;
* Photobooks are a beautiful way to display hundreds of your photos. You don’t have to worry about fading (which can happen to photos printed on poor quality photo paper) and they look beautiful. You can fit lots of photos per page. They are lovely to leave out for people to browse through. You can choose a theme or create your own. You may choose from a variety of sized books and different bindings and covers. I have always opted for hard cover books as they are more durable than spiral bound ones. It is also a lot of fun compiling the books. It’s a wonderful way to showcase your photography.
‘Apple’ makes it really easy to create books through their iPhoto program. You simply drag and drop your photos in to the pre-formatted pages and hit order when you’re done (well, there’s a teeny bit more to it than that). There’s a few online sites that also print photo books these days too. One that I like is Snap Fish.
Here’s a couple of my favourite books that I’ve created.