We had a photo shoot done recently and I’ve got to tell you… I am in love with it.

Not from a vanity point of view but just that it is so me.

Of course it does help that everybody who sees the pics says they love them

I’m still deciding which to have printed on canvas.

Part of my process is to print 10 X 15s of the ones I’m thinking of printing BIG just to make sure.

It’s much cheaper to spend R3 a pic to make sure you’re happy with the quality, colour, etc. than to spend R500 on a canvas and it is not exactly what you had in mind.

Last year after looking through pics on my computer I thought I’d have a particular pic printed on canvas. Good thing I had the small prints done because I changed my mind.

Back to this year’s shoot.

I loved so, so many I had 150 printed.

And it has been the best thing ever.

I had an album that takes 100 pics so on Friday night I sat and arranged the best 150 in the album.

Let me tell you… I can’t stop looking through it.

I’ve said before that I think we all (a collective all) don’t print enough pics now that we’re digital.

E.g. When we visited Australia in 2004, we had about 8 rolls of film developed. That’s 288.

Most of those except the obvious duds – I’d say about 250 – are in photo albums.

When we visited Thailand in 2006, we also took hundreds of pics and I have 2 printed. Yes, you read that right – TWO!

And yet I love looking at them.

So I’ve decided on a little project once my Christmas organising is out of the way.

I’m going to haul out those discs and get our travel pics printed and put in albums.

Do you have your photos printed regularly?

How do you display them?

Photos taken by Jeanette Verster (click through to see a few of the others)

Adele says: I have a big box full of photos that I need to sort out but haven’t got a clue where to start – that doesn’t include the photos on my computer!!!

pic taken by me in Dublin, Ireland – 2008

Here is my response:

I’m all about having the FEELING of being in control as quickly as possible.

This is why when people’s email boxes are out of control I say make a folder with today’s date and drag everything in there, and then start doing things according to your new system.

How this translates to printed photos is this:

1. Toss that big box onto a dining room table or similar.
2. Roughly separate chronologically or by person. I would make a box for my husband’s life pre-Marcia and then start sorting our “together” life out.
3. Don’t get caught out by perfectionism – roughly sort into years, or time periods (university years/ high school years/ years in city X, etc).
4. Buy a number of albums that all look the same and just start putting those photos into the albums. Don’t worry if July pics are before April – go wild
5. Label the albums by years/ events (wedding/ Thailand holiday 2006, etc) and call it a day.

It doesn’t have to be complicated unless you want it to be.

My guess is that you’re so overwhelmed you just want to get those albums sorted once and for all.

Then let’s talk about the digital albums.

I have a coaching client (Hi M) who has a fabulous idea. She only keeps good pics digitally, prints everything and puts into albums. So that’s a couple of hundred photos a year.

We worked together at the end of last year and beginning of this year and got about 5 years of pics sorted and album-ised within about a month.

I’m so proud of her and it’s such a relief to have all her family’s memories neat, organised and in order.

I personally think since the advent of digital we don’t print enough pics.

Let’s print those pics and get them organised.

By the way, one of my favourite photographers, Kristen Duke, has just finished a fantastic series on her blog called Decorating with photos. That link is to the intro post and the individual posts are very neatly categorised on her right sidebar.

Go and get a nice mug of tea, be inspired, and then get those photos on your walls and off your hard drive

Any other words of advice for Adele?

PS This is a hot topic for me at the moment as I’ve just been through about 12 photo albums picking out pics to get scanned to jpg (I’ve paid a service to do this for me). What a mission but I don’t want to lose memories, especially of my husband’s and my grandmothers who are now deceased.

PPS Please click on the label to see all the other posts in this series.

Be gentle with me.

I have another confession.

Of all the aspects of my life, after the library books (since I wrote that post, I’ve actually been very good about returning them on time. Who knew that airing my dirty laundry would fix my issues???), the next area that is most disorganised is my photos.

Strangely, they probably don’t seem disorganised to the majority of the population but to me, they’re desperately disorganised.

Also, I don’t seem to have a system for printing and displaying photos.

The only time I print some is if either I buy a beautiful photo frame or I’m given one as a gift.

The other day at work someone suggested I get a digital photo frame to display pics of my gorgeous babies (yes, I’m biased).

Immediately I jumped to conclusions and said, “oh, that’s way too expensive” until I heard what it cost – between R500 and R700.

My word, that’s almost nothing when you consider the cost of printing!

I felt like such an idiot though for simply assuming it was out of my budget.

I am now the very proud owner of a digital photo frame and I’m pleased that I (almost) never have to print photos again

How often do you print photos? What do you do with them?

I’ve decided to do Project 365 this year where you take one photo a day.

As you know, I do like baby steps

I’ve already posted my first 9 days and there are some organising pics but if you do want to subscribe and you only want to see the organising pics, then click on the word organising under LABELS.

Here’s the new blog – http://marcia-project365.blogspot.com

Is anyone else doing this photo project?