Yesterday we tucked our pop up camper Mae in for her long winters rest.
Camping may be over for now…a bummer…but I am filled with gratitude for Mae and the fantastic memories made this summer because of her. Many more summers like this await.
Her absence in our driveway motivated the creation of videos of some of our camping trips. I take A LOT of photos and videos and plan to start to ENJOY them, rather them sitting uselessly on my phone.
Decluttering my photos and videos
The first step in doing this has been to cut back on the number of photos and videos I take and go through the ones I do as quickly as possible to delete the less desirable ones. I find, like a lot of things in life, having less photos and videos actually provides me with more value. I’m more likely to do something with them if I don’t feel overwhelmed by 50 photos of the same thing every time I open up photos on my phone to view them.
How I use my photos
I have a decent system with photos. The biggest thing I do is a yearly book. It consists of my favorites of the year with brief explanations. It’s an easy way to gather our pictures in a place beside my phone, allowing us all to view them. If we go on a big vacation I will also create a photo book specifically for that event. The kids LOVE looking through these books. I use Shutterfly for this but there are many photo book services to choose from.
Another way I enjoy the photos is the creation of my blog. I use it to document our adventures and upload pictures.
Finally I started using pictures as gifts. One example is last Christmas all the grandparents received a photo calendar. I also used Shutterfly to create this.
How I plan to use my videos
Photos are being utilized more effectively now, but videos are still sitting on my phone. My first step in remedying this is editing some home movies on iMovie and uploading them to YouTube. I can also use this as a place to share with other family members. YouTube has various privacy settings so videos can be public (everyone can see it) unlisted (only people I send the link to can see it) or private (only I can see it). It is a place to store them too. Although I also have other storage options, such as an external hard drive and google drive, but I want the videos not just kept safe, but easily accessible. That way we are more likely to watch them.
Camping Videos
So far into this process I’ve created two videos about our camping adventures this summer. The kids loved watching these just as much as they enjoy our photo books, which is the motivation I needed to create more.
Thanks for the encouragement to use our photos well and keep them organized. I regret not having photo albums/books around over the years for my daughters to look at (they’re now 17 and 20). Every time we pull out photos and look at them, we have lots of fun memories and conversation, but my girls have grown up during the transition between film and digital (plus I’m always slow to convert to new technology!), so I haven’t done a great job getting them all organized and compiled, and I’ve definitely succumbed to the pitfall of SO MANY excess images with digital. I guess no better time than now to start getting it all in order so we can ENJOY our memories–the real reason to preserve them in the first place!
Yes, absolutely. Well said!