If you are like me it is impossible to sort and catalog pictures as soon as you get them developed. In some cases I have gone months without sorting my photos and I end up with a stack of pictures taller than my 3-year-old precariously balanced near my desk.
So what do you do when your picture mountain has grown to epic heights? I set aside time and start sorting chronologically. Regardless of whether you are using the pictures to add to a scrapbook, a frame, or just placing them in a traditional photo album, it’s best to have a system in place so that you can retrieve a single photo in the fastest way possible.
Sorting also comes in handy if you are tying to create a photo collage or if you are trying to configure a page in your scrapbook. Sorting will help you survey what you have and give you an idea of what the end product might look like. It also helps to give you an idea of how much you have to work with.
Before I begin digging into my stack of pictures I make sure I have my photo storage boxes ready and have enough filing cards for each box. I assign one card for each month of the year and subsequent cards for sorting according to event (e.g. a trip to the zoo) or occasion (e.g. birthdays, weddings, etc.). I then place my cards in the photo storage box and start filing them according to the date they were shot. Typically, some months have more photos than others. For example, December might have twice as many photos as February given that I take more photos around the holidays. As such the months with more photos will have more subtopic cards. This helps me find the photo I want in the shortest time possible. If I didn’t sort according to event I would have 200 photos in the December file and not be able to distinguish between the family holiday dinner, the school Christmas program and the Christmas Day gift opening.
The other plus to sorting pictures is that you can weed out the bad ones. Don’t hesitate to toss photos that you don’t think are frameworthy. For example, if you have a dozen shots of your kids in front of the Christmas tree and a few are bad don’t place the poor ones in the photo boxes. However, if you only have two pictures of your child sitting on Santa’s lap and one is bad you might consider filing it and trying to fix it later via professional restoration or with do-it-yourself programs such as Kodak Picture Maker.
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