Sunday, May 8, 2011

Workshops on Organizing Photos and Scrapbooking Supplies

I have been reading a lot about organizing my photo collection and working on improving my photo processing workflow. I have read through materials from two courses: Finally Get Organized and Organizing Your Photographs, along with the materials from Library of Memories. Library of Memories has been revamped and starts again as Finding Photo Freedom June 1st. I have a system in place for uploading and star-rating my photos, but the keywording and editing process is very haphazard. Since an organizational system is very personal, these resources are helping me articulate and streamline my workflow. My goals are to get scrapping again. I want to share my photos in a systematic way and protect them. What I don't have to think about will make me happy. I have also discovered that I really enjoy the editing process.

A little about the two online workshops:

Finally Get Organized
This workshop will get you started thinking about why you keep what you keep. I found the content applies to both paper and digital, including organizing your supplies. Everything is organized around how you use the product and there are a series of questions and prompts to get you thinking about that process. This is very similar to Wendy Smedley and Aby Garvey's method found in The Organized and Inspired Scrapbooker. Having to think again about my stuff, I have come to the conclusion that I have too much. In my scrapbook room I have started moving things from shelves into bins and giveaway boxes to make room for the things I truly love. I don't think of myself as being emotionally attached to my stuff, but I am beginning to realize I am wrong. I am stuck on: "Oh this is a really cool project I wanted to try. I have great ideas." "I will use this or give this away some day." "I have spent so much money, time, energy, on this, I have to keep it." The last one is the biggest impediment to purging anything. The workshop is very basic, but it might be just the thing to get you started.

Organizing Your Photographs
Liz is presenting this as a comprehensive year-long project to honor the process involved in organizing 30+ years of photographs. This is a very realistic approach to this project. I did a bunch of print organizing many years ago when I started scrapping. I have most of my prints organized chronologically in acid-free cardboard storage bins. I kept albums together that were archival-quality. There are two areas of my print organization system that don't work-how to handle incoming prints (photos I am given, inherited, or the few I choose to print) and how to handle the non-4X6 photos (I don't have storage in other sizes for those photos.). I am concentrating on my digital collection, implementing LOM-style organization, but I want to start digitizing my paper photos and that will require a system in place before I start scanning. (I have blogged about LOM here.

The first lesson of Organizing Your Photographs is called "Grouping and Gathering." Liz provides worksheets that will get you thinking about how you use your photos and why you have them in the first place. This is a different way of approaching this task to me and I like it. She has put a lot of time and thought into the content and I am really liking it. She presents the content in video and in PDF form so you hear and read it. The hugest thing is that this is FREE! Liz is giving away this content. You have to sign up for her newsletter to get the series. That's it.

Next, my system.

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