More specifically, I’ve taken procrastination way too far this time. And put off printing photos of Annalyn way too long.
I’m going to a scrapbooking retreat with my cousin Sarah this weekend, and I haven’t printed a single picture since October.
Nine months ago.
And apparently, sorting through hundreds of photos, editing them and sending them to print is not the easiest thing to accomplish the week after a week-long vacation.
All that to say . . . I need to spend my Thursday night blogging time on this “little” project. So how about we take a litlte poll in the meantime?
How do you print your photos? Every month? Once a year? On your printer at home? With an online service like Shutterfly or Snapfish? At the drugstore or scrapbooking shop? Tell me – obviously my system isn’t working so well!
I haven't printed out pictures in years. Only when I need one for a gift or to hang and for family that does not have computer access. Otherwise everyone has access to my pictures on Shutterfly and they can print what they really want. I will be making books with Shutterfly and that is where I am procrastinating.
I scrapbooked for my 8 year old's first year but after 3 kids and a small business no way. If it were my passion it would be easier but it just started feeling like a chore to me.
My DD 4 and I am WAY behind on her scrapbook…think I am still in yr. 1! YIKES! However, this summer I have decided to be more intentional about printing out pictures and am going to try to do a "summer" scrapbook. Every few weeks I print pics, but unfortunately have not completed any layouts and it is July! Obviously my system is working either. I need a scrapbooking retreat! :)
Don't feel bad Mary…I'm still not into the Scrapbook thing but I'm still working on just organinizing all my digital photos so they are in some type of order for me and family to view online. I had over 2,000 photos in various folders on 2 different computers when I started the project. OY! What a task!
I ordered a huge amount two Christmases ago and filled albums and haven't done much since! Yikes. I feel your pain. I don't have a clue. It does seem tough to get motivated to put them in actual albums now that everything is digital.
we got our first digital camera right after samantha turned one. and since we didn't have to go develop film to see our pictures, we haven't printed one since! our photo albums end with pictures of her being 1! and now she's 6! ryan's totally getting the shaft here because we don't have any of him.
i really need to get up to date, don't i?!
I hate feeling behind, so a couple of years ago I started making myself get pictures off of our camera every Tuesday. They immediately go into folders by month and year in a main folder called something like "family and children pics". As soon as they're in that folder, I browse through them, note which ones I want to print and which ones I want to include in the website we have set up for Brennah (and now Corinne, too). The ones I want to print I upload to Snapfish and while those are loading I update the girls' website. Then when Snapfish has a good sale I print a bunch of photos all at once.
The difference between us is, once the photos arrive in the mail, I just put them in chronological order in a photo album with the date and maybe a short caption next to each. I LOVE scrapbooks and think they're beautiful, but haven't ever created one myself. I think I'm more of an instant gratification girl. :)
So there you go…that's my system. Some weeks when I haven't taken many pictures it doesn't take anytime (espeically if none of the pics are print or website worthy), other weeks it's more of a time investment, but at least I don't feel so behind anymore!! :)
PS–love your blog! :)
I print them whenever I need them. So I'm really not much help. I don't have that many pictures but I'm not one to make scrapbooks for everything or file away photos. Yup, not much help huh?
I print once a month or so, or whenever Shutterfly or Snapfish has a sale. Otherwise I pre-buy prints from those sites (cheaper). Having photos delivered rocks! Then I date them & put them in albums. If I don't keep up with photos, I go crazy!
Have never done a "real" scrapbook and never will–too nit-picky for me. I did put wedding stuff into a scrapbook, but that was a "put glue on and slap it into the book" thing. Nothing fancy.
I used to leave them all for months, and then last fall my computer up and died and we lost every.single.photo. I was so sick about it. When we resurrected the computer, my husband was able to recover some of our photos with some software that came with our camera. But it was still only maybe a quarter of them.
So now I have a system where whenever I upload photos from my camera, they go in a folder labelled with that month. At the end of the month, I burn them all to CD. And if I'm up to it, I order prints. But at least they're on CD!
Once a year (or more often) I make a photo book online of my favorite pictures from that year from Kodak Gallery, Walmart or Walgreens. Other than that, I don't print them out. I keep them on cds sorted by month and placed in our fireproof safe–so if I ever DO need to print them out, I know exactly how to get them :-D. Since all of our pictures are uploaded onto Kodak gallery every month, I simply go through and look at them whenever I feel like it. Photo albums around the house tend to get…um…"played" with. It is much safer to keep them online :-D.
Oh…last year for our parents, I printed out a photo book and incorporated my favorite blogs of the year for each child…that was fun :-D
OK, you're making me feel guilty…all I do is take pics…but I never print them. I'm off to sulk in shame…
Oh girl, I'd so be the blind leading the blind!
I have all these good intentions — yep, you know how that goes.
Anywho, I am an avid scrapbooker — slightly behind — okay, okay, about 1 year behind — so, there are people out there worse than you! :) And I, of course, mean that in the most loving of ways!
When I'm not selling my house and packing up my life and moving my family five hundred plus miles away, my system is to usually get myself scheduled for regular monthly crops.
I plan to print my pictures off for those crops — and if I don't get them all in and scrapbooked, then I begin with those the next time. But ideally, I try and print them off once a month. Now, that hasn't happened in a really, really long time, so I fear for what it's gonna cost me for my backlog of photos.
Now, I used to use snapfish — but found I like shutterfly better. I can't really tell you why — may be it was easier for me to upload — and I think it had something to do with shipping costs — so I switched.
I like them. Have had good luck with their matte finish photos. I have also heard that Sams and Walmart.com are good.
At any rate, I am jealous you're going on a scrapbook retreat — there's one in January I'd like to get back for in Columbus, so I'm working on may be hubby biting on that one — I mean, after all, if he's still going to keep his Ohio State season tickets and travel back to Ohio for football season, surely I should be able to attend a scrapbook weekend? I know. I know. You totally get my logic.
Happy organizing — and remember, deep breaths. Deep breaths!
I have to admit that I was way better getting photos developed the old fashioned way… shoot a roll of film and take the canister in to the camera store to have them developed. Now that I'm all high-tech with a digital camera, I'm really bad about having the prints made. But when I do need some made, I download them to Costco Photo and pick them up in an hour. So easy, why do I procrastinate?
Did someone say "backlog of photos"? My solution was to spend years creating a web site that organizes them for me. Like Erin's method, it's year, then month, and on each month's page they're grouped by day. It's automatic thanks to digital timestamps. For days with lots of photos, only the first few are shown, and there's a link taking you to that day's page to see the rest. That keeps the month page from getting too noisy. I don't have to think very hard about what to upload. I made it so others can use it too: http://ourdoings.com/
This is one thing I hate about the digital world. I definitely take more pictures than I would on film, but I hate not ever printing any out. I kind of miss picking up a roll & being surprise with good shots!!
Who knew digital cameras would be the curse of the scrapbooker? Since we went digital in 2008, I have printed very few photos. If I am scrapping at home I print as I need them, in the size I need. But that is not a very good system because I have THOUSANDS of photos on my computer. I do upload my photos about once a month from my memory card, and I sort them on my computer into folders. My folders are titled with the YEAR-MONTH-subject. The chronological approach has helped me tremendously when I am looking for a specific photo on my computer. Oh, and I highly recommend you use an external hard drive. Less bogging down of your computer when your photos aren't hogging up all the memory. I am also terrified of my computer crashing and losing all my photos now that I am digital. That's my system, flaws and all!