How many photos do you take? How many do you print?

Ok, I reckon I take between 20 and 2500 photos a month, depending on the age of my kids, what we've been doing, and how much I've been at home ... Average for me with little kids is probably around 600 a month, but most has been well over 2000. I know, I know ...

I then *try* to cull them as we go, and to place an order for pics once a month so I don't get to November, realise I haven't placed an order in 16 months, and suddenly have the completely overwhelming task of going through a gajillion photos ...

But I'm going through my April 2012 photos, and I think I'll be impressed with myself if I can whittle the list down to 200 pics for the main order ...

Now a 9c a pop I guess that's not too bad ... but it still sounds like an awful lot ... ?

And then I try to whittle again, to make those little cheap booklets, to send to overseas family ...

What do you do?

We take as many as possible. We don't really print any but my Mum makes more memorable occasions into books for the girls... I think she misses the classroom. Examples are Imogen's Beach Holiday and The Zoo Trip. She even narrates them in true childhood manner, simple and lots of repitition... I love them, they are the thing I would save in a fire, I always get two copies as they get read to death and I want to keep one 'nicer' for when they are older to look back on. I would say books get made every month or so but that will probably slow down as they get older, they usually have about 20 pages.

We also take a zillion photos! Don't print many at all. In fact the only photos on display in our house is one canvas with a few wedding pics on it! I do want to change that and make a photo feature in one of the corners in our house. I have made a few photo collage's, one for each grand parent and I printed a few for an album for ds but they have been sitting in the draw for 6 months. I also made dh a book for fathers day and I attempted to make on for myself but it never got finished. Perhaps I can make a priority of the photo feature inside :)

I take a billion too. I don't really print them though. I print ones for the wall and then I print one photo book each year with the years photos. Getting the photos down for that is HARD!

As you say it changes depending on what we've been doing, usually over 1000 per month though. I have hardly printed out any! I do make digital scrapbooks, one huge one per year as well as a couple extras for special days. I really feel like I should have actual photos printed out and put in albums like we had when I was a child but have no idea how I would choose!

We are starting to get some on the walls. I'm meant to be going through and picking out my fav pics of both boys as well as our honeymoon as I have 3 frames that I am going to make collages with.

yes, I sometimes do photobooks of special things (trips, etc) but I *love* the idea of doing a little one for a trip to the zoo or something!

got april down to 211 pics, and am counting it as a win ;)

I have always planned to make photo books and never got to it!!!

We have printed NO pics and DS1 is nearly 4 ooops I hope once uni over for year I can get busy making some books for kids!!!

Before I do that need to sort all damm things!

And my dh thought I was crazy pmsl!
I have thousands of photos of the kids he is forever having to transfer from my phone to the computer as I run out of space often on the phone!
I think it's great though so many photos to look back on, haven't printed out all but will do huge frames and books with all photos.

We probably take maybe 100-200 photos a month? And I never print them out. We look at them on the computer.

I take heaps every month, and videos too!!!

We have a printer that I can print 6x4 photos up to size A4 and I do this sometimes mainly to send to family!
I am getting more organised with my photo books :)

Was thinking about this thread because I think I have a (slight) taking photos of my kids addiction. I got a new camera for Christmas so it has been 4 days and already it has over 600 photos on it. So about 150 a day but it is new so there is that.

Then I checked my phone which I only got in July (and still has the answering machine of my brother because it used to be his lol) has over 9000 photos on it. So still about 60 photos a day on average. Still seems pretty high!! But then I tell myself well a photo takes what, 5 seconds tops to take so even times 60 is only a few minutes out of the day right??? And that seems to make sense, I don't feel like I have my phone/camera on me much, I usually spend a few minutes taking some pictures then put them away and get stuck into whatever we are doing then might bring it out mid-way or towards the end again for different perspectives. I'm also a big "I'll just quickly snap a billion and one is sure to turn out" photographer because well, kids so that surely inflates things and of course then heaps turn out really good and showing subtle things my kids are doing which fascinates me, I am a little in awe of the way children develop and learn so I'll see DD2 transferring through her palm and go a little mental about it like she has just flown to the moon while others are just like "huh? Oh yes, that's great dear" lol.

I think I have gotten better, I used to feel almost panicky if I didn't have a way to take photos on me, like moments would suddenly be lost and I wouldn't be able to hold onto them strong enough. But then I started looking at it from a different perspective, about how it was a special moment just for me and whoever was there, the privilege of having that moment and not having to share it with anybody else and I don't feel panicky anymore. In fact I now enjoy leaving them behind at times and just soaking in my kids all for me! I also journal every day and have for a long long long time so I think the whole thought of lost memories is a big fear thing for me. I'm not sure how to let go of that... anybody have a similar fear? And I also don't want family to feel left out of our lives, especially those far away because they always lament about the missed moments and large distance so there is this guilt about whether I am allowing them a big enough window in. i guess this is more about the sharing than taking though but anyway.

Anybody feel me???

Completely.

Over the past few weeks, I have got into order our photos from July - November, done the prints, done the photobooks (one per DS for every 2 months until they're 1, and then every 6 months) and there were THOUSANDS.

And then we got a DSLR and I reckon we've taken 2000 in the past week.

We've started doing "no photo" activities, where DH and I aim to just be completely engaged the whole time rather than taking photos in and out.

And we got a new external hard drive (2TB) to store all the pics on. :redface:

But I think I'm going to have to start culling ... I still aim to only print 100-150 a month, but it's so hard to keep it down to that some months!

How do you guys curate your photos? I'm struggling with the volume of photos on my computer and hard drives etc and I'm not sure how to store and file them.

Do you name them? Put them in folders?

simple method here:

one folder for the year, one sub-folder for each month.

then a separate folder for the culled (printed) sets (again, by years and then months).

We have ours in folders named by reverse date then the subject, then they all organise into the correct date order. eg:
2013 03 19 e's birthday
2013 03 31 easter
2013 04 trip to coast
etc etc
I also have a "various" folder and a folder for each of the kids for each year (with sub folders for each month) to put in those few snaps that don't fit into another folder.

I take heaps and heaps of photos, I'm too nervous to count.

We store ours similar to Peanutter. Folder for year, than month. There are also separate folders for special events though, so Birthday's, Christenings, Holiday, so that I don't have to go searching through that month just for those big events.

I don't print a lot of my photos, one or two for scrapbooking and that's about it. Some of the special ones make it into a frame here or there, but not many.

Everything is stored onto a 1 or is it 2 TB external hard drive, and then that is backed up onto a second hard drive. I'm still trying to convince myself that I don't really need to back up the back up, but I do tend to kill hard drives both internal and external with my eyes closed. The idea then is to store one off site in case of fire/flood, the issue being with that I have to remember to grab it to update it.

:

---

And I also don't want family to feel left out of our lives, especially those far away because they always lament about the missed moments and large distance so there is this guilt about whether I am allowing them a big enough window in. i guess this is more about the sharing than taking though but anyway.

Anybody feel me???

---

I don't have a fear of lost memories but I do share the feeling about family feeling left out, ours is all the other side of the world, so are all our friends pre 28 years old - so I do take a lot of photos and I do share a lot of them.

I use burst on my phone quite a lot so can easily run up 60 photos in a minute.

Regarding storage, I really don't do anything specific, I use Google Picasa desktop to import from my camera and via dropbox to import from my phone - it stores them in folders according to date taken. That is about it for organisation. You can tag people and places in it, which I sometimes do, but haven't for photos for quite a while (I do photos of kids artwork and tag those in it though). There is a timeline feature in it so can show pics from certain time period which is useful.

I am now also auto-backup to Google Photos (part of Google+) - the photos are private until you choose to share, and stored at full-resolution (you get quite a big allocation of space) - it has a feature called Auto-Awesome - which amongst other things makes animated gif.s of photos captured in a small time frame - e.g. with burst. Some are lame - but sometimes the animated gif captures the moment better than the picture. At Christmas it had a feature where it made things sparkle - it was quite unnerving when I first saw the picture and saw Santa's eye twinkling.

I don't have enough faith in external hard drives etc. I have had externals fail, I reckon am less likely to lose my pictures using google+, flickr, dropbox or similar.

I don't print many - only occasionally to send to less technology savvy relatives. I have little interest in individual prints for myself. I did do some photobooks up to DD being 1 - but she is 4.5 now so I am well behind :-). I will probably end up using one of the services that takes the pictures from FB timeline to do one automatically.

I agree there are some activities that is better to be engaged in (concerts for example, and fireworks (because they are over so quick) you will never capture what you observe) - but also I think sometimes taking photos for me is a good distraction from interfering with what the kids are doing and getting involved (because I love playing) - they need to be left to do their own thing, and at the age they are at I can't just leave them at the park - so the camera gives me something to do, it could be reading a book, but for me it is the camera.

I have a tough road ahead ... even with the "camera free outings" (including the zoo today! incredible! impossible! but we did it ...) we're still taking millions of photos.

I want to start only keeping the really good photos, but even after culling, there's still hundreds and hundreds every month ...

So part of me is thinking that when I do the cull for the printing, I should just *delete* the others...

Thoughts?

I actually wish I remembered to take more photos. I feel like this time with the kids so young is slipping by so quickly and I'm going to miss it, and I want to be able to look back on it.

I definitely don't print enough. Any. I've just outlined how photos will go in our house, just need to choose the pics. Our walls are bare right now so we'll be getting some special ones on canvas and others will be interchangeable. I can't wait to actually get them done, I don't know why I've waited so long! After that will be year books for the kids.

It's really hard to pick them!

I have to keep reminding myself that the photos I pick and reject are not actually going to have any significant impact on the future and livelihood forever and ever...

Why do you feel you need to get rid of some? I don't think I could do it! I'd just keep them somewhere separate. But when you're old with lots of time just hanging about, you might want to look back over all of them? Write the most detailed and well illustrated memoir ever?? The kids might want to see them? Or they might become famous and others might be chewing at the bit to find out their history? It becomes a national treasure! Some sort of potential alibi or clue for a crime in amongst them??!! Future generations piecing together your life through photos?

>strange attachment to photos right here<

:

---

I agree there are some activities that is better to be engaged in (concerts for example, and fireworks (because they are over so quick) you will never capture what you observe) - but also I think sometimes taking photos for me is a good distraction from interfering with what the kids are doing and getting involved (because I love playing) - they need to be left to do their own thing, and at the age they are at I can't just leave them at the park - so the camera gives me something to do, it could be reading a book, but for me it is the camera.

---

Ooo I like this. And it is so true.

Lol Jellyfish! It's so easy to get attached to photos, they're a part of our history.

I never get rid of any photos that have been printed, they're all in a box in the office waiting for sorting. But all of those photos are also on the computer and skydrive, so therefore also on our phones and the tablet, and anything else we link up. They're not going anywhere even if the physical ones do.

I do find it hard to pick the best ones to display though, I could cover the entire house in favourites! I saw on tv (Better Homes and Gardens I think) where a photo feature wall was made using tape as frames, pretty tape holding the photos straight onto the wall. I'm considering trying it because it'll be cheap and temporary, but I'm worried it won't turn out well and then I'll have to go buy frames for all the prints.

Is anyone else here the main photographer? DH doesn't take that many photos, and the ones he does take are mostly just of the kids. So I find I don't have that many of me, and I really want more of me and the kids and DH, and I don't want them all posed. But if I'm not taking the photos they don't get taken, so I don't get in them!

:

---

Why do you feel you need to get rid of some? I don't think I could do it! I'd just keep them somewhere separate. But when you're old with lots of time just hanging about, you might want to look back over all of them? Write the most detailed and well illustrated memoir ever?? The kids might want to see them? Or they might become famous and others might be chewing at the bit to find out their history? It becomes a national treasure! Some sort of potential alibi or clue for a crime in amongst them??!! Future generations piecing together your life through photos?

>strange attachment to photos right here<

---

I also wouldn't get rid of them, what you might pick now as being keeping worthy might not be what you are interested in, in the future. Storage is cheap these days. When I look back at my parents photos - lots of the ones that are most interesting, probably wouldn't have been classed as good photos, some are just a blur - but they bring back memories they are a trigger for remembering.

Within Picasa their is a 'star/favorite' feature - so I tend to just star the ones I really like - so if I only want to see those then can just click 'show starred' lots of the photo organisation apps have something interesting.

Some of my pics I GPS tag, and they are all automatically date tagged - so they are even more useful for reminding of things even if the picture itself is not great.

Because the volume is overwhelming, and dilutes the appreciation of the good ones.

I'd rather have 200 great photos than 200 great, 300 good, 300 ok and 200 blurred, dark, crummy ones.

I am probably the more enthusiastic photographer, but DH takes heaps too.

Between the two of us, we've taken almost 10,000 photos this year. It's just too many. It drowns you ...

Wow, 10,000! We're nowhere near that many.

Being digital, I do delete on the spot if it's no good. Today I took three almost exactly the same. One was perfect, one was blurry and the third DS had his finger in his eye. I don't see the point in having three so similar when really, I get the point with one and the other two aren't very good.

:

---

Because the volume is overwhelming, and dilutes the appreciation of the good ones.

I'd rather have 200 great photos than 200 great, 300 good, 300 ok and 200 blurred, dark, crummy ones.

I am probably the more enthusiastic photographer, but DH takes heaps too.

Between the two of us, we've taken almost 10,000 photos this year. It's just too many. It drowns you ...

---

I suppose it just depends on how you look at it - I have taken 17,627 photos this year (well maybe I have taken 17 000 and DH has taken 627) according to Picasa - which is above average because in the past 5 years it says 54,543 - but I take alot of burst photos these days so I suspect that is the difference). I would rather spend the time on editing those that I feel worthy, than working out what to cull - but I am not really a photographer - I am a recorder, the photos I like are not really that great photos - but tell some sort of story, they picture something, someone or a moment I feel I would like to remember in the future.

I suspect it might be like either loving or hating vegemite - either you can cope with lots of extraneous photos that might not be great, or too many photos makes you feel like you are drowning.

Google+ has just made me a little movie - of my photos and movie files from this year - it (being some supercomputer somewhere) selects the photos and videos rather than me - and is interesting to see what it pics, some are photos I had completely forgotten. (I only started using it end of October - so is only the last couple of months but still is a nice little montage and mum and dad will love it :-))

Even with those slideshow things, I like to pick them :)

Organised control freak I am ... ;)

But as long as it works for us each, it's all good :)

I don't even want to think about how many hours I've spent over the past couple of weeks sorting out the last 3 months of photos ... gah!