Do you feel the need...

[BernardandMissBianca]

......to scrap every picture?

I do! I thought it would get better but I have actually gotten worse about it. Since going digital I have at least deleted most of the blurry, fuzzy, and down right horrible pics. But if it's one of those once in a life time pics I still save it. Example, the Yeti on EE, not a great pic but I still can't get rid of it. It was our first time riding EE.

And what the heck do I do with the thousand school pictures of the boys? I have some in my heritage album, some in their school album, some in their personal albums, and have given others away to family but I still have several pics left.

What do ya'll do?

 

[Mickster]

Put them in a photo box? LOL. Actually, I have kept many of the pictures of DS so he can use them for school projects. He always needs to bring one in for some project or another.

I too scrap almost every picture. I order mine from Shutterfly and I always over buy. I use some for each kid's book, some for my book and then DS takes some for his album. He's just learning and it is fun for him to use "real" pictures, as he calls them.

 

[Mickster]

This darn computer. Sorry for the double post...

 

[PrincessNancy96]

I end up attempting to scrap every one.. If I have duplicates or some that are so similiar I put them aside for the kids' books.. My DH laughs because with digital now I'm always tweaking the photos (cropping, lighting, etc).. Now that we both have digitals... DD is now taking pictures with the 35mm for me too! LOL

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

Nancy, your comment on tweaking leads me to my next question. I love stuff I have seen that has been photoshopped, enhanced, altered, etc. I just can't bring myself to change the integrity (for lack of a better word) of my photos. At most I will change the color to black and white or sepia.
Question- am I being obnoxious about it? Should I just jump in there and mess with my pics?

As for boxing up pics, Mickster. That's what I'm trying to avoid. I have 1 CM power box with well over 2400 pics in it and I really need to buy another but I'm avoiding it. We have so much garbage in the house as it is, I'm clean sweeping. I've have gotten to the point that if you store it in the basement or the attic you don't need it. Unfortunately my craft cabinet has borne the brunt of my cleaning frenzy. My parents and brothers have become such pack rats that I refuse to be that way, I guess I swing to the other side of the extreme. A happy medium would be good, but alas I am fated to the dumpster gods.
Of course everything I just said makes no sense in conjunction with my first question, but mom has drilled it into my head from infancy to never ever throw pictures away. So now I feel obligated to hoard away every one.

Am I over analyzing this???

Ok if this post doesn't get the Tag Fairy's attention, I don't know what will!

 

[JandJ]

Funny that I saw this thread today because I have finally overcome my fear of throwing away pictures and not scrapping every single one. It has taken almost 7 years but today while scrapping our honeymoon pictures I realized that I do not have to put every single picture in my albums - only the best ones. I do have a lot of pictures in photo boxes (the CM Power Boxes are great ) but I intend to get them all in albums, or at least the best ones. I have so many albums now and I do one album a year plus individual albums for special events. I can't imagine how big they'd all be if I scrapped every single picture.

Also, as for tweaking in Photoshop and programs like that, heck yeah! I just started working in Photoshop and I love it! DH thinks I should keep the "integrity" of pictures too, so I know what you mean, but I think if you have the ability to make them better, why not? I wouldn't do it to every picture, that would get ridiculous, but for the ones that are perfect except for that one little thing, why not fix it?

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

Our wedding pictures were truly horrible, we had a quickie throw it together in a week wedding. DH was being transfered to Hawaii and it was make or break time.
I bought a predone album at Target and had a hard time finding 30 pictures that were ok enough to put in there but I just can't get myself to toss the rest. I made duplicates of some of the better ones to put in the heritage album so I really don't need anymore.

I do throw away pictures that aren't relevant to us and I have started giving away pictures of friends kids on field trips and such so I guess it's a small start.
I think I may pull out some pictures tomorrow to see what I can do with them. I think I could put our Hawaii pictures in an 8x8 album. W only lived there for 9 months so it shouldn't take to long to put them together. I really need to find the time to scrap more.

 

[goofinoff]

I have used pictures of the same theme that aren't close enough, clear enough, etc. as boarders or headings. I went to Sea World and took pictures of the Shamu show. We were too far away and all that you could really see is the water. So I ended up taking the pictures and making letters out of them (I traced them but now I have a sizzix that i can cut letters out with) for the heading of the page that said Sea World. It ended up looking pretty cool. If i can figure out how to take a picture of it and send it I will.

 

[rlovew]

I don't scrap all my picture or even print them now that they are digital. I choose out my favorites or those that are really cool and use them but the rest just stay on the computer. As for my old pictures I tend to go through them every so often and get rid of a bunch and then the next time I go through them I get rid of more. I am more likely to wish I had taken a photo than to use all of my photos up. I always have a list of a few photos I need to take for pages when we go up to Disney (about once a month). I don't have children so I mainly swap our trips and not so much our everyday life.

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

I don't scrap all my picture or even print them now that they are digital. I choose out my favorites or those that are really cool and use them but the rest just stay on the computer. As for my old pictures I tend to go through them every so often and get rid of a bunch and then the next time I go through them I get rid of more. I am more likely to wish I had taken a photo than to use all of my photos up. I always have a list of a few photos I need to take for pages when we go up to Disney (about once a month). I don't have children so I mainly swap our trips and not so much our everyday life.

When DH and I went in Aug without the kids we made a list of stuff to get that would take time to get, mostly night shots. I'm always making lists of stuff to shoot. And I am officially jealous that you get to go every month. I would love to live closer but the heat doesn't like me very much.

 

[PrincessNancy96]

Nancy, your comment on tweaking leads me to my next question. I love stuff I have seen that has been photoshopped, enhanced, altered, etc. I just can't bring myself to change the integrity (for lack of a better word) of my photos. At most I will change the color to black and white or sepia.
Question- am I being obnoxious about it? Should I just jump in there and mess with my pics?

As for boxing up pics, Mickster. That's what I'm trying to avoid. I have 1 CM power box with well over 2400 pics in it and I really need to buy another but I'm avoiding it. We have so much garbage in the house as it is, I'm clean sweeping. I've have gotten to the point that if you store it in the basement or the attic you don't need it. Unfortunately my craft cabinet has borne the brunt of my cleaning frenzy. My parents and brothers have become such pack rats that I refuse to be that way, I guess I swing to the other side of the extreme. A happy medium would be good, but alas I am fated to the dumpster gods.
Of course everything I just said makes no sense in conjunction with my first question, but mom has drilled it into my head from infancy to never ever throw pictures away. So now I feel obligated to hoard away every one.

Am I over analyzing this???

Ok if this post doesn't get the Tag Fairy's attention, I don't know what will!

I don't photoshop any of my photos.. Don't have the program.. but what I have done is cropped the pictures on line before printing.. or like you have done change to b&w or sepia...

As for being a picture pack rat.. Go for it.. This are our memories for our kids and future grandkids (oh, keep that a long way away). They are our heritage.. I keep every picture unless of course they are too blurred or of the floor (my ds5 loves to take floor pictures).

 

[PrincessNancy96]

When DH and I went in Aug without the kids we made a list of stuff to get that would take time to get, mostly night shots. I'm always making lists of stuff to shoot. And I am officially jealous that you get to go every month. I would love to live closer but the heat doesn't like me very much.

I thought I was one of a few that made lists of what shots need to be taken at Disney.. I told DH one day this trip we were just taking pictures.. I thought the dkids were going to freak out! What you'd rather ride rides than take pictures for mommy?

 

[kaddjr]

I have a list started too! I told DH I wanted to take a short trip alone just to take pictures. His response was, "NOT without ME! If you go, I go!" Then if we go, the kids will just about have a cow if we don't take them! Unfortunately, the first time I threatened leaving my kids at home if they didn't behave, my parents told them not to worry about because if we ever did that, grandma and grandpa would take them down.

I also want to scrap all my pics. I do delete the really bad ones, but have many I want to try to clean up a bit. I tend to get prints made as I go though. I download all the pics from the camera, then put them on discs, as I don't want to bog down my hard drive. If you didn't want to do that (or in addition to), you could get an external hard drive to use just for pictures. As for the prints you have now, I wouldn't toss them unless they are just extras and you have a way to reprint them if needed (negs, hard drive, cds, etc).

ETA- I borrowed my mother's photo albums about 4 years ago to make copies of some of the pictures she had. I KNOW I returned those to her when I had finished. To this day, we cannot find those albums. We have gone through their house from top to bottom. I hope someday they mysteriously show up but I'm not holding my breath. They were in a box and my father has a tendency to just pitch things w/o looking things over first and I suspect he may have thrown them out on accident. I get knots in my tummy just thinking all those lost memories- I feel like it's my fault they're gone.

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

It's not your fault they are gone, Kayla. At least you have some of the pictures! Maybe they will turn up soon.

My grandparents threw away boxes of pictures when they were clearing out their house before moving into a retirement home, we went dumpster diving as soon as they went back into the house. We found a framed photo of my grandfather as a teen and when we took it apart to scan the pic we found one behind it when he was a toddler. I don't know why they threw them away, I guess they figured no one would want them.

 

[StitchIsOurHero]

Yep, I scrap them all! I'm so very anal retentive, though! This is probably why I am SO very far behind on my scrapping (3 Disney trips still to scrap!). I like for all of the pics to make it into the album! As for the picture taking list, I do that, too! I actually made a list of everyone's CJ topic in group 1 so that I could get pics for it on this trip!

Buffy, this is way but the other day, I saw a thread where someone had posted a pic of an altered paint can with Jack Sparrow on it. I was thinking you had made it? If you did, would you pm me what you used and where you got the pics? Thanks a bunch!!!

 

[Honeybehr1]

I went through all of my pictures recently and it wasnt an easy feat. I have tens of thousands literally - I am the family photographer starting from Jr. high. But I did have about 500 or so pictures from various zoos that I was never going to scrap. I kept the ones I wanted too, I boxed them up and donated them to an art teacher who does a mix media art class for the city I live in and she was so excited. Now the kids can do a collage with those.

Also a thought is donating them to a day care or a preschool.

 

[New England Eeyore]

I do feel the need to scrap everything. There was a point where I was once caught up. I have every picture I ever took between 2000 and 2004 scrapped. After that, not so much. I also went back to my childhood pictures and took them all out of their (magnetic!) albums with the goal of scrapping them. I'm realistic now that I won't truly scrap them all, but I want to do at least the best and put the rest into safe photo albums.

I'm anal about saving ALL pictures. I like to have 3 copies of everything - one scrapped, one in a regular photo album and one in my computer. I don't have a digital camera yet (can you believe it?) so that means scanning everything in one by one so I'm no where near caught up to that goal. I started keeping the duplicate photo album when one of the girls needed a photo of herself for school and everything was cropped and glued down in scrapbooks!

I can see firsthand how important it is do more than just get the photos into albums though. First with my girls - my middle stepdaughter, 16, brought her boyfriend to our house for the first time earlier this year. I was shocked (and thrilled) when one of the first things she did was take him through the scrapbooks, page by page, reading the journalling out loud and adding her own details to the stories. She is our difficult child (she hates us more days than she loves us ), so it meant so much to be able to see how much the albums and the memories contained in them meant to her. Second, with me - I have so many pictures from my childhood, but I'm missing a lot of the stories that go along with them. My Mom died when I was 9 and my Dad can fill in some of the gaps, but he just doesn't remember what amusement park that was or who's sitting next to Aunt so-and-so at that wedding or all the little stories behind the pictures. I wish scrapbooking had been as popular as it is today when I was little because I know my Mom would have been as into it as I am. (She was a crafter too. My Dad went to AC Moore with me one time and he said, "Your mother would have been in her glory here!") But of course she never knew she wouldn't be there to pass along the stories, so there is so much that I'm missing. That's why I'm dedicated to this hobby, and why I'm destined to never be caught up!

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

When we did the heritage albums last year for the 9 cousins my grandfather and uncle had already passed away. My older brother brought a tape recorder so he could record the stories so I can journal later. also my cousin Steph was engaged and it was a nice way for her fiancee to "meet" her dad.

It's nice to know that even though your DD gives you so much grief that she appreciates what you do!

 

[Spinning]

This is what I do:
I still take at least 100 pictures at each event. I ususally take the very best one and blow it up to a 5x7 then I will take about 4 four more and have them printed. I scrap a 1- 2 page lay out for what ever event or activity is going on. Since I am now totally digital I still save all the pictures on Disc but I make a nice photo DVD slide show of the day or season etc.....
I found that I was getting overwhelmed trying to scrap everything. So now I scrap only the really good ones that capture the day. I found this way I can be more creative too! Of course initially it helped with cutting down on tons of pictures....but as my digital skills improved...so did my pictures that seemed scrap worthy LOL! So now I am re thinking! But to answer the question, no I don't scrap every picture I do save every file!

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

See that's our issue too. The better camera has improved our over all shooting skills which turns into less tossable pictures and more usable ones.