Tuesday, June 04, 2013

Photos, Scrapbooks, and the Digital Era

For a while now, I have wanted to get ALL of my photos in one place. My digital photos - I have them on CD's and discs and thumbdrives, from all the various computers that I have owned.  So yesterday I decided to put them all on THIS computer - label, edit, admire, and then I will put them on my Passport external storage.

However... remember those big 100mg zip discs, and those 3.5 smaller discs? There is NO reader for those on this computer. I 'splained it to the boys, and I think, well, no, I know, they laughed at how old things are to them!!!

They are still going to try to help me this weekend though - to see if there is a way.

Look at how young they were!
Me - I have always been that young ( snicker snicker)


And Wrangler Man.... Sigh

Now that I am almost all organized - I have at least up to 2001 done.... what do I do? Do I print everything and get into the art of scrapbooking? Do I use a service - someone recommended Shutterfly? Someone else told to me look into Blurb ( which I have never heard of)  .... something that is not going to cost me an arm and a leg?

Any ideas?  I mean there are literally thousands of pictures, apparently I love to take lots of pictures!!

6 comments:

Kevin the Quilter said...

When you do figure out what to do, please let the rest of us in on it too. Sometimes I think it was better to have to go get your photos processed because you actually had to get a hard copy to see them?

Ranch Wife said...

While we were without Internet for 12 days, that's what I did. Organized the digital photos on my computer. 12 years worth of photos. 30,652 photos. I had quite a few duplicates and then I got brutal and deleted. I am down to 22,372. I scrapbooked back in the day and really should get back to it. I never could get into digital scrapping because I like playing with paper too much. I am beginning to have some pictures printed again. I have about 2000 filed away from before the digital age. I need 2 lives. I need 3 lives. One for scrapping and photography. One for quilting. And one for ranching.
So, although that was probably no help (LOL), I just wanted to tell you that I am in the same boat. Your pictures are super cute! They grow up way too fast!

Smultronbo said...

I'm in the same corner with the only differnece that I have à pile of negatives and such to scan too. My plan is to scan all and get all on one compie and backed up on 1-2 lose drivers for safety. Then sort them by year. When all that is done, what comes to mind is making slideshows with background music to them. GL with yours and pls share what you end up doing with them. Thanks for sharing.

Amy said...

LOL @ Ranch Wife; I think we can ALL ditto her "I need 2/3 lives" comment!
I am also paralyzed by my digital photo chaos; I am no help for you :( BUT, your post did kindly remind me that I need to back up the pics from this computer before something bad may happen. Losing all of these pics would be so tragic.

TLC said...

PLEASE post the advice that you receive. I just can't imagine dealing with years of photos.

Kate said...

I have to agree with Kevin. We did really well at getting everything printed and in photo albums up until about 2005. After that, I'm in the same boat as you are. My only saving grace is that having worked with data files for years, I developed a filing system with my first digital camera for my CDs and DVDS that lets me find photos pretty readily. One other thing that I did was print contact sheets for every CD and put those in a notebook. If I'm looking for a particular image, I can scan those then pull the CD that the photo is on.

I've used Shutterfly for cards and did photo calenders for family. I've been really happy with them. I've looked at doing some books, but haven't had time. If you get on their mailing list, they offer 50% off their photo books fairly regularly.