O/T - How do you store your photos?

[katiesmom2]

We are just back from Disney and I am once again faced with the big pile of photos from our trip! I already have a huge stack of other photos to file away, some as far back as Halloween!

Up until now, we've stored our photos in albums. I like being able to write beside each picture so that anyone can sit down and thumb through the albums and relive the memories.

The problem is, our number of albums is really growing. We do have a large bookshelf with lots of room, so I"m wondering - do I keep going and end up with probably hundreds of albums, or do I switch to photo boxes that can stack and are maybe a little more storeable. I figure I can write info on the backs of pictures.

I only do a little scrapbooking - a school scrapbook for DD who just started school this year and one for DS when he starts next year.

I don't like the idea of storing them on the computer. I like for people to be able to look at them!

So.....HELP! How do I store all these pictures??

What do you do?

 

[kldmom2000]

I'm an avid scrapper, but I actually got tired of coming up with Disney layouts esp. when I finished our Sept. 2006 trip only weeks before our August 2007 trip!!!

I ended up making an amazing 12 x 12 book on Shutterfly.com. I added an extra 30 pages... the book did cost about $140 when all was said and done, but I chose a lot of pics per page and the book is quite slim. The cost of the book was actually less than what it would have been for me to develop 584 photos and then purchase the scrapbook and embellishments I get tons and tons of compiments on it because it looks so professional. It was a cinch to do though it did take about 2 weeks of 1-2 hours per evening after the kiddos were asleep to get it just the way I wanted on the computer-totally worth it though!

 

[LuvOrlando]

Call me old school but I just love to drag out my albums and pour through them reliving my memories. Maybe its old fashioned but I just need to finger through to 'get it'... same thing with books. While I don't mind reading newspapers online I just don't connect with what I'm reading the way I do with a real life book.

 

[mom2aredhead]

I'm impressed that they're printed. I can't tell you how many pictures we have that go into the abyss of the hard drive and stay there forever!

 

[daisyduck123]

Ours are stored on the computer.

I'm a scrapper, & I just have DH print the ones that I need for whatever particular page I am working on. Right now, I am working on our trip from this past Christmas.

My only problem with my system is that I don't know how to print them myself. DH just left the house & I want him to print out my Animal Kingdom pics!!

 

[MRYPPNS]

I keep my pictures in several places. I download them to the laptop making sure to make a new folder for each photo type. Example: I have a folder marked Christmases with sub folders for each year. I upload photos that I want to print to www.snapfish.com. This gives me an off-site location incase of fire. And I'm trying to be good about backing up the laptop pictures to disk. In the last 5 years or so I have began to use albums for each vacation, not one big album. I don't scrapbook but I like to add the stickers and stuff right on the album pages. I do have a misc album that I'm using for small groups of pictures (always put in by date). I'll end up with a lot of albums too. Oh well, there are worst things to collect.
I was not this organized years ago. I'm now going thru all my old stacks of pictures and albums and throwing out doubles and bad photos and the like. I bought some 3 ring albums that have the pages you can add. I put them in those albums all organized by date and event.

 

[kitsch4]

One of the souvenirs we get when we go to DW is a photo album w/ the year on it. We put the photos from our trip in there. My 4 year old loves to look at them to "renember" our trips.

 

[MontanaZoo]

I'm an amateur photographer and take tons and tons of pictures and I'm also a scrapbooker. How I store my photos is I upload them to www.flickr.com (http://www.flickr.com/juliez_pics/collections if you want to see how they get shared...sorry it's mostly zoo pics up right now, I don't have disney ones set for public viewing currently) for sharing/offsite storage. Then I also will put them on an external hard drive (just a little box that hooks up to my laptop with a usb cord) and keep them in some sort of folder order like vacations, disney2008, animalkingdom etc. Since I do sell some pictures (and am also the primary photographer for our zoo) I'm super paranoid and also back them up by burning cd's.

To print them, I"ll either do it myself or if it's a big batch and I don't have much time, I'll upload them to Costco's website and have them print them. Costco also has photo books which I've done for my dad's retirement party.

For actual photos that I have printed and am intending to scrapbook sometime soon (a group of friends/family meets at my house once a month on a Friday night and scrapbooks), I keep them in a small photo keeper or in scrapbooking sorter pages.

I love the idea of getting a disney photo album with the year on it as a souvenir. Are these in most of the resort gift stores or do you have to go to the scrapbook store in DTD to get one?

 

[Doogan]

Having gone digital I found myself in the trap of never printing out pictures. Now, I have a 3 pronged approach. First, I keep a complete album of all the pictures I take, which nobody is likely to sit through, on my desktop. Second, I create a slideshow of the "best of" pictures that I use at family gatherings that is a small enough subset that it doesn't drive my family insane. Third I extract an even small set of pictures and purchase photobook from shutterfly or kodak or one of other sites so that I have a hard copy of my favite pics. The nice thing about the photobooks over a scrapbook is that they can actually resize the pictures for each page rather than just cutting them for each page. They are a really nice way to make a memory book. I actually do a yearbook for our family each year, too.

One other thing, for my main desktop computer, which contains all my pictures, I use Mozy, which is an online backup service. Another good online backup service which basically identical is Carbonite. They are both about $5/month. As a computer professional, I consider it well worth the money to guarantee that I don't have to worry about the hard drive crashing, losing everything in a fire, or just accidentally deleting something. I tell all my family members who have broadband that if they don't buy one of these services, don't come crying to me when they lose their pictures.

 

[kitsch4]

I love the idea of getting a disney photo album with the year on it as a souvenir. Are these in most of the resort gift stores or do you have to go to the scrapbook store in DTD to get one?

They do have them in the resort gift shops. We usually pick one up at the World of Disney at DTD when we are loading up on our souvenirs.

 

[bellebud]

just wanted to warn everyone... do the uploading to a site, or burn cd's, or something... my hard drive crashed, and i've lost about 4 years of ALL of my family pictures. heartbreaking! i've sent the hard drive to 2 separate recovery places and had 3 local computer 'experts' look at it too. It's hopeless.

I now upload to Kodak, and it's really SO easy, I can't believe I didn't do it before. I'm also ordering the prints from them periodically and doing albums (I have the albums and the prints, but i'm still having a hard time actually putting the prints in the albums). I'm glad to read this thread... i'm going to try to order a 'book' from their site instead of ordering prints and putting them (or realistically, NOT putting them) in the album myself.

 

[The Disney Bunch]

I buy a photo album from the park before I leave - one set of pictures goes right in there with nothing extra done to them. I get a second set to play with.
I ditto Bellebud with backing up your photos. Be sure to burn them to a disc & keep them off yuor hard drive! We lost pictures too this way!

 

[ilisao]

I also do the Shutterfly photobook. They are slim and attractive, and make a nice collection. I have my pics on my computer, but after having my hard drive crash a couple of years ago and losing 4 YEARS worth of family photos (including DS' first trip to Disney), I've learned to backup AND find a more reliable way to show my photos.

 

[Doogan]

If you do your own backups there are several things to keep in mind. First, CDs and DVDs have fairly limited shelf life. Second, you have to make sure you do it because it's a manual process. Third, make sure you get them off site so that they are protected in case of disaster.

Also, if you are using one of the photo web sites as your "backup" mechanism be aware that some of them have limits on how much you can store and how long you can store images without purchasing something. Also, some of them automagically process your images as you upload them unless you turn that option off, so you may not be storing your "raw" images.

If you can afford the $5/month, the off site, automatic services like Mozy or Carbonite are the way to go. BTW, both have free limited services. Because they automatically backup files on your hard disk you don't have to remember to do it. It's heartbreaking when you lose pictures or video because you forgot to make a backup. (And, "No," I don't work for them. I just hate to hear about people losing their data when there is such a good, cheap solution available. That's why I tell people about both services.) You can read about them in relation to the wild fires in CA this past summer. I don't remember which company it was, but they were in the news.

 

[montesimo]

Thanks for the Shutterfly tip. We also have many photos that have been swallowed by the hard drive folder storage system , and never seem to get around to printing them out to create an album. I have thought about putting together one using an online tool - I need to look into that again.

 

[jacobsmom]

We put our photos on cd as well as scrapbooking them! DS8 took his scrapbook of our vacation to school twice!!! It's our most looked at scrapbook! I have books of all shapes and size around our house, I use some photos in frames all crazy, craft with them, get creative! It's fun to look around the house and have everyone able to see where you have gone and who you are! Get the family involved! Kids are really creative and have GREAT ideas!

 

[grlpwrd]

If you do your own backups there are several things to keep in mind. First, CDs and DVDs have fairly limited shelf life. Second, you have to make sure you do it because it's a manual process. Third, make sure you get them off site so that they are protected in case of disaster.

Also, if you are using one of the photo web sites as your "backup" mechanism be aware that some of them have limits on how much you can store and how long you can store images without purchasing something. Also, some of them automagically process your images as you upload them unless you turn that option off, so you may not be storing your "raw" images.

If you can afford the $5/month, the off site, automatic services like Mozy or Carbonite are the way to go. BTW, both have free limited services. Because they automatically backup files on your hard disk you don't have to remember to do it. It's heartbreaking when you lose pictures or video because you forgot to make a backup. (And, "No," I don't work for them. I just hate to hear about people losing their data when there is such a good, cheap solution available. That's why I tell people about both services.) You can read about them in relation to the wild fires in CA this past summer. I don't remember which company it was, but they were in the news.

You make excellent points.

I have been using Carbonite. Plus, I have my photos stored at Snapfish, I have some pictures stored on my image hosting site (Inkfrog) that I use for ebay, and I have made DVDs, too, and store those in a locked fireproof file cabinet. I have a lot of my valuable stuff kept in my fireproof cabinet in case of fire or break-in, but even that is not absolute.

I had my computer crash a few years ago and I was fortunate I had backups. Never again. Now I make sure I do it right.

In regards to my pictures, sure, digital cameras are wonderful, but sometimes I think I am cursed because I have had to make backup files or DVDs. ugh I do admit Carbonite does make it easy, though.

 

[Corb341]

If you can afford the $5/month, the off site, automatic services like Mozy or Carbonite are the way to go. BTW, both have free limited services. Because they automatically backup files on your hard disk you don't have to remember to do it. It's heartbreaking when you lose pictures or video because you forgot to make a backup. (And, "No," I don't work for them. I just hate to hear about people losing their data when there is such a good, cheap solution available. That's why I tell people about both services.)

I actually had been looking into this (also after a very sad computer crash where I lost way too many pictures that I hadn't saved anywhere else) and both companies seem pretty similar - is there anything you would recommend about one over the other? I try to back things up on my flash drive - now - but I don't always remember and would hate to have a repeat of losing all those pictures and files. Also, do you know would they back up my itunes (another thing lost - ughh)? Thanks!