SnowMoon, LLC

Posts Tagged ‘Organization’

When I was a kid, I loved listening to the grownups talk.  I’d sit and listen and suddenly find the conversation had taken so many twists and turns and then I’d wonder how they got to the new point in their conversation when the original topic was vastly different. I’d then go back through the conversation in my mind and make those connections. Once I had gone all the way back to the original topic, I’d tune back into their conversation and start the process all over again.  Tracking backward along the rabbit trails the conversation took fascinated me – and seeing how people make connections now still fascinates me.  We all think so very differently and Communication and Inspiration skip hand in hand – inviting us along – down one rabbit trail after another.

I think that’s one reason I really enjoy listening to the Paperclipping Round Table podcast.  Lots of rabbit trails, inspiration and thought provoking topics (at least for scrapbookers – of any type). This week during their discussion on Chronological Scrapbooking, I realized my concept of that focused on the organization.  Never in my wildest dreams did I think that ANYONE actually scrapped the pages in order!  You know, start Jan 1 of a year and crunch your way through your photos, creating layout after layout in order until Dec 31.  And someone on there (Stacey J?) did it for NINE YEARS.  Wow.  No way could I even start to think that way, let alone scrap that way.

That and other discussions got me thinking about how I’ve wrestled with recording and scrapbooking life.  How do you live your life and record it as well?  My answer is to have many approaches.  In a way, like my photos, I have to first collect raw data – my written and physical (ephemera) RAW files in a way.

I write a lot – always scribbling down something either with a pencil (.05mm lead, thank you) or typing a note into my computer journal (using David RM’s The Journal software).   And of course, I write here on my blog. These three spots work for me.

Well – there is a fourth spot – I take photos as a visual journal. On an email list I’m on someone mentioned how sad to watch life through the viewfinder. Yet I see it differently. Much of the time I focus better looking through the viewfinder – focusing what I take in – cutting out the extra. That click of releasing the shutter cements the scene and moment in my mind. Clicker training works incredibly well with animals because clicks register deep in the brain.  Maybe that’s what photography does for me – that click tells my brain to remember the moment and set it apart from other moments.  It works well for me.

From that raw data – photo and words – I scrap.  I create.  Pulling a past moment together becomes easier with my notes and photos.  I can almost time travel right back to that moment.

Yet I crave the linear framework that time creates – and I definitely prefer to organize chronologically. My layouts have a chronological home to go to when finished.  In the six years I’ve scrapbooked, I find I don’t mind my first layouts next to a current one next to a printout of blog posts.  In fact, I’ve disassembled all of my old albums to get everything together in a neat set.

Maybe scrapbooking is really just a collection of rabbit trails of thoughts and events along our journey through this life.

A mini-book disassembled to include in my regular scrapbook album

Pages from an 8x8 Album now in my Childhood Album that's divided by Decades

Basically the past decade's album is divided by Years

I like this vacation album too much to disassemble, but will reprint layouts for the yearly albums.

CREDITS:

• Page Kit – Artifacts Large Value Collection by Elizabeth Weaver
• Layered Page Template – by Cathy Zielski (from her Design Your Life class)
• Photos – © SnowMoon, LLC
• Font – Century Gothic

Yesterday I started to pull together a list of kits I’ll be bringing with me on my smaller external hard drive on vacation.  Then I decided to see just how quickly I could pull together a layout using this idea. It would have come together in about 20-25 minutes except I hadn’t yet pulled together my photos. Now I know the work flow I’ll need.

• Pick Photos
• Choose Template
• Choose Kit
• Assemble Page
• Journal

And I probably should just keep this tip in mind all the time. Choosing photos often slows me down, so making it my first step will get me over that hurdle. I also used a trial version of PSCS5 which I noticed in saving has the default of “public domain” in the file info. I put the credits in the description field to keep track of what I used. I don’t like that default and will have to see if there’s a place to change that. If you know how to fix that, please leave a comment – I’d be ever so grateful!

All of this planning ahead for how I want to scrap makes this feel manageable. Of course, looking ahead a bit helps with most everything in life, though, doesn’t it?

The more projects I have on my plate, the more I realize how crucial organization and looking ahead become – as well as working to move each project forward even a half step keeps everything on track.  And I’ve taken a couple more steps to getting my Nature Journal Albums going. I have many pages to assemble still from this spring, but creating a location for these layouts to land in has to come first.

Scrapbook organization is highly personal and what works for one person may not work for another.  So, when deciding where to put a layout, it has to come down to how you use them. Normally I keep all my layouts in chronological order.  I keep my photos that way and along with my morning journaling and notes I keep in The Journal software, it’s the logical way for me to work.  But, because I create mainly digital layouts, I can put multiple copies in multiple albums.

Organization that works stems from knowing how you will use your albums.  I have my nature journal pages entered in our yearly albums, but I want to use them also as a comparison and reference.   So, to that end, I ordered a couple of brown 8.5×11 American Crafts albums that line up neatly next to the red ones I use as yearly albums.  The Nature Journal Albums need dividing by the month.  And I finally got a start on the monthly divider pages – starting many ideas and finally settling on a few digital scrapbooking products: Lisa Carter’s Framed in Foliage (not currently available – but I’ll link/post about it if I can find out where it is available) and Meryl Bartho’s Defining Layers.

Next step – double check that I have all the previous layouts I’ve completed uploaded and ready to have printed (again) at Scrapbook Pictures.  Most of them are already uploaded and just needed to be shifted back to the ‘to print’ album there.    Today’s step is done for the Nature Journal Album.

I spent about an hour or more organizing heritage scrapbook pages and sorted out the system that I plan to use.  Basically, I’m sorting by generation, starting a ‘new’ generation by when the parents married.   I came to this decision when sorting out my husband’s and my childhood photos.  Our childhood album starts with this layout (created with Elizabeth Weaver’s digital kit):

I carry this throughout my albums.  This morning I dug out the folder tab punch I bought, punched out some tabs and stapled three at the top of page protectors (digital hybrid scrapping again). These three main sections are:  Grands, G. Grands, G.G. Grands. Then in each section along the side, I put the family surnames. The album for my parents will mix with our childhood and get included in our own album from when we were married.

The next step I’ll do at some point, hopefully this week, is to put  a chart of who is in that generation and how they’re related.  Maybe a short bio of each person.

There are a million ways to organize your scrapbooking – many people do an album per family member, but that to me would be difficult simply because nobody exists alone.  Your story is tied to others.  My family has a generation of cousins that all grew up together, so naturally all the photos from this time contain multiple families.  The thing in common was the time that generation spent together.

Working it by generation and time (usually decade or year), things seem to find a place easily and no layout is at a a loss for a spot in an album.    Just one way to tackle it.

I’ve been doing a LOT of work on my photo organization since my last post – mainly because my camera’s shutter went out and I got the dreaded Err99 – code for “something went wrong.”  Off to the Canon Repair Center it went and I hope to hear from them sometime today.  As nice as it would be to upgrade to the 7D, that’s not in the works right now, so I’m hoping the repairs will come in at a decent price.

But I digress…back to how I organize and get my photos ready to use.

What works for me may or may not work for you – and that’s how it is with so much with photography – one person’s path to where they are probably really won’t fully work for someone else, but then again, parts of it might be a wonderful solution.  As you may know, I’m against specializing – life is too big for me to specialize too much, though my focus for awhile might be on one thing or another, I just flat out like making images.  I take them for a variety of purposes – for stock, for someone’s portraits, for sketching reference photos, for scrapbooking, to tell a story, to create a series, just a lot of reasons.  That means my workflow can be a bit complex at times.

But for cataloging and copyright purposes, I have a spiral bound notebook that I’ve vertical lines on to create checkboxes.  Here’s basically what it looks like:

And I just start filling it out – each of the smaller boxes gets a date in it of when I completed that part of it – or a checkmark if that task was done at some point before I started this.

I could do this part online, but I find having that spiral notebook to hold in my hand and sitting on the desk staring at me in the face helps to keep me on task and not get lost on where I last left off.   Once these things are done, then I feel free to jump to the processing workflow.

But I also have a file on the computer now (using DavidRM’s software The Journal) that I enter in other data that must be tracked and kept organized for stock purposes and tracking the uses for copyright protection (once they’re registered, you have a ton more protection, but if you have a track record of each photo, all the better if when you run into a copyright infringement case).  I have this on the computer because I’ll keep going back and adding in how I use various photos – even for a scrapbook page.

Here’s a look at a section of my image tracking file:

Looking at this, I see I need to add in here a column for model/property releases I have on file.

Much of what I do is probably overkill for most folks, but if you’re even considering doing ‘something more’ with your photography, starting out with good records will save you a ton of time.  When I get quiet here, chances are I’m buried deep in past images working frantically to catch up on the behind-the-scenes organization.

Photo organization can be rough and with all I do with my photos it’s crucial.  Every photographer comes up with their own system, and mine developed over time.  Since I get asked this fairly often, I’ll start sharing more on how I have it working for me. Feel free to borrow what ideas work for you.

When downloading files, I name a folder for the date.   I may not download each day and don’t worry about that.  The file folder heirarchy on my external hard drive looks like this:

• Raw Files
  • Year
    • Month
      • Date

The next step is to rename the files.  In Adobe Bridge (I use PS CS3), I select all the photos and use the Batch Rename function under Tools.  Here’s a screenshot of the pop up box you get (I just selected one file from 2006):

Under the Text, I add in J to denote that I took  the photo.  And I preserve the last 4 digits by typing in the last 4 digits in the file name from the first photo in the batch.  The renamed file lets me easily find and track images as well as giving each a unique name needed to register the copyright.  It’s the first and probably the most important step in keeping track of all the photos and how they’ve been used.

This morning, though, I’m working on another part of the tracking process.  I used to keep this on paper in a 3 ring binder, but now want to transfer that information to The Journal software.  I’ve created a category for each year and tables with four columns – one for each month, but that may not really be needed – one table would work fine, but I like to break it into smaller chunks so I can feel ‘done’ with each month.

• Folder Date (One folder for each day I download)
• Subjects (for easy searches)
• Image Used (for copyright tracking)
• Where/When/How (for copyright tracking)

Once each year is done, I’ll print it out as a hard copy (in my opinion) offers the best assurance of archiving data.

More on the software I mentioned:  I’ve been using DavidRM’s The Journal software for over a year now to help me stay organized.  But with all the record keeping and writing I do, version 4 slowed me down as I bumped into the size wall of 2 GB.  I emailed David about the problems I saw and received a response in less than 20 minutes.   After walking me through a couple of possible fixes, he had me upgrade to version 5 which got me going again as it can handle over 200 GB in the database.   All I can say is WOW!

I was thrilled before to find a solution for my writing and records, but I now I absolutely adore all the additions and changes he did for Version 5.  You can organize, search, and write to your heart’s content knowing it’s all contained on your computer (you can even password protect it).  I know I haven’t even scratched the surface, I find myself breathing easier and relaxing knowing that now I’ve got room to get everything in one place – to print out what I want as hard copies, to act as a second brain for me.  It’s this writer/photographer/organizational nut’s dream!

If you want to record memories, do research, or just keep an extensive journal, give it a try – I’ve tried other software with lots of disappointment and regrets, but this one has me flying.

Disclaimer – No, nothing free from David, just the same great service he gives to all for an awesome product!

Have a great day all!

To help me reach my goals this year, I plan to spend the last week of each month going through my accomplishments of the past 3 weeks.  You see, normally I beat myself up for not sticking to resolutions or finishing as much as I thought I could at the beginning of the month.  Then discouragement sets in.  (Why do the negative thoughts come so easily?) The only way to change this pattern is to set a new one in its place.

This is where the little journal where I jot down what I do each day and my scrap daily project comes in handy.   It  gives honor and validity to what I do.  All those small steps taken add up to more than I realize and looking back on them builds me up.  Writing it down also works to keep me tuned in to how I choose to spend the hours of each day.

I also look ahead.  Where do I want to be in various projects by the end of February?  What steps do I need to take to get there?  By the end of this week, I should have a better idea.   Plus, I have this whole week to hunker down and crunch out work to add to the list of January’s accomplishments.  How wonderful!

In doing this, I find myself jazzed about this week – this month and next – and 2010.  It seems like 2010 may look much like 1988 – a year when so many folks found huge shifts happening in their lives.  I’m ready for that shift – for the next step.  How about you?

I am!  I’m not sure what it is about the new year, but to me it’s sort of like an empty journal – 365 fresh new pages waiting to record the day.  The past week while on vacation from work, I’ve turned my attention to my scrapbooks – printing out 2009 blog posts, organizing what I’ve done over the past year and getting ready to start recording 2010.   One of my favorite gifts this Christmas came from my husband who fulfilled my request for albums that matched the one I kept in 2009.   He got me five of them and here they sit – waiting to hold more pages:

As I’ve sorted through my pages, and inserted them (for now at least) into page protectors, I can see where the holes are in the stories to be told.   I’m excited to get this far on the organization and realize that THIS is what I’ve been seeking in my scrapbooking – the cohesiveness I’ve longed for and yet couldn’t quite pinpoint.  For awhile I thought perhaps mini-albums might be it, but that felt even more scattered than ever to me.  DSP has the scrapolution going and all year I tried to figure out what’s stopped me from really scrapping.  I kept thinking having a number of layouts to reach would help – and it did somewhat, but it wasn’t really working for me to focus on that.

It turns out all I needed was a home for the stories to land in – scrapped, typed, handwritten, or however they come together.  A place to put the things I save and yet wonder why when they have no home.  Now they do.  So simple it’s one of those “AHA!!!!!!  That’s it!!!!……well, yeah, duh!” moments for me.   But I did reach the goal I had with filling out my 2009 album to justify even asking for more albums.

I’ve divided the albums up to encompass both my story and my husband’s.

• Heritage is still in need of work – dividers for the various families.
• Childhood starts when our parents met and married – afterall, our stories start with our families and that started when parents met and decided to marry and goes up through to the year we ‘launched’ into the world on our own.
• That really was 1988 for both of us, so I have two albums to cover 1988 – 2008.  As they fill, I’ll add in an album and divide the content into three albums, adding more albums until they seem finished.
• And then last year’s album and this year’s album rounds out the list.

EVERYTHING I could possibly scrap should fit in there somewhere.  That’s my scrapolution for 2010.  That’s my gift to start the new year with.  What’s yours?

Slow Down - Hitting an elk will ruin both his day and yours

That’s my guess at how many photos I’ll take in 2009 – actually it’ll probably be closer to 21,000.   And, it’s time to slow down because – no, I didn’t hit an elk with my car (but that IS my favorite road sign – graphically clear) – but my ‘working’ external drive died.   We’ve tried reviving it and occasionally get it to take  breath or two, but not long enough to retrieve the files there.  I’m now slowed to a crawl as I start just with my 2009 images.

I’m not terribly upset, but annoyed more than anything.  I regularly  backed up all the basic raw files.  But I lost the organization.  I have around 100,000 images to manage and I had gone through – deleted ones that aren’t worthy of the space, or that I have enough multiples on.  Save the best, and ditch the rest.  I had them half organized in Lightroom, many keyworded.   But now – I have a clean slate.  And this is ok.  I can work at a consistent process and get them done.  I’ll share what all I do to stay on top of this monstrosity of a collection.

If I can do this twice – you can get your photos together as well.  Join me, won’t you?  I know it’s the holidays, but with Lightroom (I’m putting LightRoom 3 Beta through it’s paces with this), it’s something you can set to work on while doing something else.

STEP ONE – Get the photos all in one spot. Start with 2009.  Get them together.  One month at a time.

I have them sorted by date.  One file for each day I download from my camera, each of those under a monthly photo, and all the monthly files under a yearly one.  Sorting by date is the only way it works for me – I use keywording to sort by event or subject.  But just for now, get your photos together.  For scans, I have those in a separate folder, loosely organized by decade.

Countdown Chain © 2009 SnowMoon, LLC

When I first did this, I thought it silly – you remember making paper chains to count down to something or keeping track of something in school.   Last year I decided to make a paper chain to count down to our vacation and mark the weekends in another color.  It hung in our bathroom where we both looked at it while brushing our teeth.  It worked to help both of us think about getting the prep work done at a sane pace. 

And the one for this year hangs in the bathroom.  It’s amazing how fast the summer flies by – and each year we vow to do it differently this year.  We need one for the whole summer.  The number of warm days is small up here and we really want to make the most of them.  But I’m not sure I’m fond of the idea of hanging up the entire summer and fall as a paper chain.  So, instead, I’ve got another idea to work on.  The past few days have been so warm and inviting, I’ve actually closed the blinds to stay focused on the many things that need to get done between now and the day we leave.  surprisingly, that has worked to signal to me to stay on task – and when they’re open, I can play.  It’s still well far away on the calendar, but in looking forward, those dates seem closer than ever and throw me into overdrive.  And even thinking about it now – it’s time to get back to it!   Have a great day, everyone!