You guys, I get it. You love your photos. You really do. But you take so many that you are completely overwhelmed. Like, totally shut down. I was there. As you can see in the image above, I have over 8,000 photos from 2015. Me. A professional photo organizer who is meticulous about going through and deleting unnecessary images. So I can only imagine the volumes of photos those of you who do NOTHING with your photos must have.

To prep for the launch of my new product offering, Year In Hand Family Yearbooks, I felt I should have one of my own to use as a sample. I always feel more comfortable marketing my own products vs. using products with my client's photos in them. In March 2016, I started to design a yearbook for my own family and by August 2016, I hadn't even completed the photo selection process. It took me over FIVE months to go back through the 8,000+ photos to even decide what should be in the yearbook. It was exhausting. I LOVE my photos. I love looking at them; I love the memories and feelings they evoke. I marvel at how my kids are growing and changing and yet, I tired of the process. 8,193 photos, y'all. From ONE year. Ugh.

Going through that process for my own family only solidified that my greatest desire is to solve this problem for you. Yes, you. The family memory keeper. The one who loves taking photos of your family. The one who loves documenting the up's and down's of your life story. And yet, the one who rarely looks at them again, if ever, after you click that shutter. You owe it to your family to share your stories, to reminisce on the good times and maybe even the bad. To laugh at the grumpy face in the photo or the sharpie drawn all over your walls. To re-live special vacations and the daily minutae that you deem important enough to capture.
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I set out to design a service that would be simple, not overwhelming, and cost-effective, not cost-prohibitive. Signing up for Year In Hand Family Yearbooks monthly subscription service will cost you less than a Starbucks a day and will reward you with a stunning retrospective of your family's prior year to proudly display in your home. A gorgeous book that will allow you to bond with your family, to share your stories and to enjoy your photos again. The process is a breeze! I set you up with a privately shared Dropbox folder and send you a monthly e-mail reminder to send me your favorite photos from the prior month. I design your book as we go and you get to review & make edits quarterly. That's it! That's all you have to do! Send me 30-40 of your favorite pics each month and shortly into the New Year, you'll receive the best gift of all: a full-color retrospective of your family's memories, sitting right in your hands.

If you're one of the 2 out of 3 parents who don't enjoy managing your family's photos or one of the 60% of families who haven't printed a photo book in FIVE years, don't hesitate to contact me today!

Photos courtesy of Yehudis Goldfarb Photography

Downsizing your home can be stressful and overwhelming. When my grandmother relocated from the apartment she’d lived in for decades, it was filled with things... SO.MANY.THINGS. Shoes, clothes, magazines, trinkets and, of course, her life’s worth of photos. Everything was piled everywhere, hardly any of it being stored properly. Her photos ended up being distributed between her three children, thus separating her life’s story into three new households. Her story matters* and so does yours. Your life’s story is a treasure for your grandchildren and the future generations of your family. Studies have shown that KNOWING their family history, their family’s struggles and triumphs, has a tremendous impact on a child's self-esteem.
 
Your photos are an IMPORTANT piece of this legacy. Photos allow future generations to literally SEE what life was like in the past, the clothes, the cars, the households their elders lived in. In the immortal words of Bob Dylan, “The times, they are a-changin’,” and nowadays at an unbelievably fast rate. Having an organized photo collection helps document your story to show future generations what life was like in the “olden days.”
 
But where to start? Many of my clients feel completely overwhelmed when they reach out to me for help. Photos are strewn throughout their households, in closets, drawers and boxes. Many of them have inherited photos from loved ones and they’re at a loss as to how to begin the task. There are a few simple steps you can take to organize and ultimately DOWNSIZE your photo collection.

1. Go through your home and pull out your photos from all their many hiding spots. Check under beds, in drawers, closets, your basement, wherever you think your photos may be hiding. Collect all the photos you can find and put them in one location of your home. With my clients, it’s often the dining room. This will give you a great idea of the size of your collection and the task at hand.
2. Most importantly, don’t let the size of your collection overwhelm you. Tackle the organization project one box or bin at a time for an hour at a time. You might find that looking through your photos and reminiscing can be emotionally draining.
3. Find a large table in which to work. When sorting through your boxes, put photos into piles according to categories. For example, childhood, school days, birthdays, weddings, children, pets, cousins, etc.
4. At the end of each working day, keep the piles intact by placing them into gallon-size Ziploc bags.
5. Once you have categorized all the photos in your collection, take each category one at a time, look through them carefully and throw away any duplicates, any photos of people you can’t remember, blurry photos that have no meaning, excessive scenery, etc.
6. Once this pruning step is complete for ALL categories, you can then arrange your neatly categorized piles into an archival-quality photo storage box. These often have separate sections inside that you can label according to category. For example, the section might be titled “Weddings” and each individual tab can then be labeled with the names of those people getting married.

 
And voila! Your project is complete! Depending on the size of your collection, you may whittle your collection down to just ONE storage box. One of my clients ended her project with three boxes that each held 2,400 photos. However, she is now able to open the boxes and clearly see photos from her travels, from family reunions, school reunions, etc.  And when her nieces and nephews come to visit, she is able to sit with them and share her life’s adventures with them in a meaningful way.
 
 *My grandmother passed away suddenly in May 2014 and like the cobbler with no shoes for her family, I never found the time to document her stories. I had strong intentions to have her select 20 of her favorite photos, document her stories about each of those photos and create a book of her memories. Alas, I lost my chance. I have to rely on the memories of the stories she told me, and to be honest, I don’t have a very robust memory. Born in 1923, she lived a fascinating life and I want my two children to know the substantive woman who was their great-grandmother. So if this article does nothing else, I hope it inspires you to start documenting your legacy both for your current family and future generations. Your STORY matters.

This week I read an article about a California couple whose camera bag was stolen while they were enjoying a day at Disneyland. In it were all the memory cards they owned filled with every last photo and video they'd taken since their baby girl was born. They are now pleading with the public via social media for those cards to be returned. This sad story got me thinking about our memories and how misguided many of us are about how to properly store and archive our photos.

First and most importantly, memory cards aren't ideal for long-term storage of your photos. They're small, easily lost and/or stolen and are more fragile than, say, an external hard drive. If you DO choose to use them as long-term storage and they are the ONLY place you have your photos, then by all means, store them some place secure, like an in-home fire-proof safe or in a bank deposit box. Carrying around and traveling with your entire photo collection of your first born baby in your camera bag is a disaster waiting to happen. And in this couple's case, DID happen.

Second, and I've written about it before, your photos need to be backed up in several locations. For instance, an external hard drive at home, an external hard drive at a friend or neighbor's home, prints of your 5-star photos and somewhere in the cloud. This means that if your hard drive crashes or your house burns down, you'll always have another copy of your photos accessible elsewhere. All too often, when disaster strikes, we see on the news that the main possession people come back to find are their photos and the memories and comfort they provide.

Third, so many of us harbor stress and anxiety around losing our photos, yet don't take the proper steps to back them up. It's not rocket science and does take a little effort, but once you have a solid back-up system in place, you can rest easy knowing that you'll never lose all those precious memories. And removing even one source of stress in our lives can make a HUGE difference!

Alex Beadon threw out a tough challenge for Day 6 of her #FeelGoodBlogging challenge. We were asked to be vulnerable and share something about ourselves that might push us out of our comfort zones, but would ultimately allow our readers to learn even more about us. So let's dive in!

I was always a hard-working, dedicated student. Pretty much all straight A's from the get-go and by high school, was on a path towards all Honors and AP courses. That is, until my sophomore year. I was placed in the Honors English class and after turning in one of our first writing assignments our teacher announced to us that only a handful of us were "A" students, a few more were "B's" and the majority of us would be "C" & "D" students, according to her [highly subjective] opinion. At least that's my recollection of her speech. And you can imagine, for a girl who always strived for A's, this terrified me. But here's the thing about me, most definitely as a teenager, and even sometimes to this day: that rather than rising to her challenge, and BELIEVING IN MYSELF that I could get an A in her class, I shrunk in fear that I would get my first C or D. This had me in a state of panic, so much so that I arranged a meeting with her, my guidance counselor and my parents. The outcome of which was the decision to drop out of her class and return back to the non-Honors English class. That switch began a snowball effect that eroded my self-confidence, the belief in my intelligence and my academic abilities and by the time I graduated from high school, I was in NO Honors classes. I didn't even want to go to college, but wanted to pursue dance full-time.

Thankfully, my parents wouldn't hear of it and I did head off to James Madison University in August of 1990. It was there that I first encountered the notion that maybe my sophomore year Honors English teacher only had one opinion about my writing skills, not a hard fact. After turning in an essay about "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," my college English professor called me to his office. I was terrified. I thought I was in for a lecture on my poor writing skills. Instead, he said to me, matter-of-factly, "Megan, this is the most well-written Freshman essay I've ever read." Can you guess my reply? "That can't be true. My high school English teacher told me I couldn't write well." I was shocked to say the least. And thankfully, he was very encouraging. But it has literally taken me decades to erase the doubt that ONE teacher planted in my mind and in which I so readily believed. I would give anything to go back to my carefree days as a young girl, when the world was my oyster and I hadn't given anyone else the power to erode my confidence.

Two things have occurred since then that have helped me start believing in my writing abilities again... first, in starting my own business and associated blog, I am regularly amazed at my own posts, how easily the words flow out of me and in a clear and coherent manner, no less. Second, I found out this year that my high school English teacher had passed away and I thought, a la Elsa, "OK. It's time to LET IT GO." I've allowed her opinion to eat away at my confidence for far too long. It's time to release her hold on me and move forward with the knowledge that I can, in fact, not only write, but write well.

We all have negative self-talk that erodes our confidence, instills guilt and makes us generally feel lousy. So today, try a dose of self-love. Try BELIEVING IN YOURSELF. Because the only opinion of you that truly matters in the end, is your own.

It's only mid-October and already I'm swimming in my daughter's Kindergarden art projects. I'd imagine any of you with school-age children are in the same boat. I also imagine there are some of you who aren't overly sentimental and are comfortable tossing them away after a while. But for most of us, we want to hold on to every bit & piece of our children's childhoods, for them to look back on as they grow older, maybe even to show their OWN children some day. But if we were to actually keep every piece of paper and project they bring home over their school years, we'd need to rent a storage unit to store it all. So I'm here with a helpful tip for you. Design and print a book of your child's art. I did this for my daughter's preschool years and am preparing to create another of her more recent artwork. 

It's actually a quite simple process. Gather all the artwork you deem special, AKA "Keepers," then either scan if small enough, or photograph if larger and/or three-dimensional. Upload all the images to a folder on your computer (I called mine "Caitlin's Art") then upload them to your favorite digital photo book site. For the one pictured here, I used Shutterfly's 12x12 size with lay flat pages. You can decide to arrange your book chronologically, by season or school year (you can combine several years as I did) or you can arrange by category. Perhaps they had phase of drawing rainbows, self-portraits, etc. You can group those images all together to visually SEE the progression of their skills. You can leave the book as simple as images alone, or provide captions when necessary to explain a project. Or even have your child tell you a story about the image and include the entire text on the following page.

Once your book is completed, ordered and received, your child will LOVE "reading" it with you. They will feel a sense of pride that you cared enough about their art to turn it into a book, which will in turn increase their self-confidence. As they grow, they will also enjoy being able to pull a book down off the shelf that houses their art in one simple package vs. digging through bins and bins of original art. Once you feel comfortable that your artwork images are backed up in several locations, you can take that final step of throwing away the originals. Maybe not ALL of them, but enough that your house isn't overflowing with children's artwork.

If you've enjoyed reading my #FeelGoodBlogging challenge posts so far, I invite you to sign up for my monthly newsletter subscription list. Once you join, you'll receive access to my exclusive ABC's of Photo Organizing video!

My father passed along his love of photography to me at an early age. He was definitely our family historian, documenting every important event throughout the years. I began taking photography seriously in middle school when I signed up for a class where we got to use classic manual cameras, develop our own film in the dark room and also process our own prints. I absolutely LOVED every minute of my time in that lab and watching the magic appear as my prints developed. Although I pursued other interests in college, including dance and archaeology, and dabbled in many different jobs post-college, my love of photography stood the test of time.

When planning my wedding seven years ago, I knew I wanted to hire a solid photographer who would give me full digital rights to use the photos as I wished post-wedding. Don Mears and his wife, Lindsay, did a stellar job to say the least! While a traditional wedding album was included in the package, I wanted to make digital wedding albums to give our parents as a gift. I did a bit of research and learned of My Publisher and I've been using them for various photo book projects ever since. I cherish my traditional album from Don & Lindsay, (it is absolutely gorgeous!) but it remains safely tucked away in its storage box most of the time, while my digital album is out and about for anyone to flip through any time. And let's get back to the gifts... it's an understatement to say that both sets of parents LOVE their books. It's a stunning documentation of our special day and we all still flip through and cherish the memories of that sunny September day seven years ago. Seeing the joy this gift brought to our families made me want to give more. Photo gifts are unique, personal and truly priceless; they share our memories and tell our stories.

Fast forward to 2012, after I'd been a stay-at-home mom for three years and was looking to return to the workforce. I had so many business ideas during my time at home, but one kept coming back to me. Photo books. And yet, I couldn't see how making photo books could be a profitable business. So I signed up to attend Tory Johnson's Spark & Hustle conference that summer, hoping to get some inspiration for starting my own business. It was there I ran into Coach Jenn Lee, who I'd exchanged e-mails with earlier in the year. I was excited to introduce myself and to thank her for offering business advice to me (that I failed to follow up on!) The first business I told her I was considering was a career as a Virtual Assistant, after all, much of my corporate experience was in executive assistance. But then I mentioned photo books. And her face lit up. And apparently so did mine. She immediately pounced and could see that making photo books was my passion. And ironically enough, she'd been hired by the recently formed Association of Personal Photo Organizers (APPO) to provide some coaching support. So she asked if I'd ever heard of them. "No," was my simple answer. Within a week, an employee of APPO called me to follow up on the interest I'd shown Coach Jenn. Two weeks later, I joined APPO. Three months after that, I'd completed their certification program and had officially launched Picture This Photo Solutions, LLC. It's been a whirlwind ever since!

Many are confused by my varied background in dance, then archaeology and now photo organizing, but I find a connection between all three. For one, I was never a "cubicle" person, even though I toiled away in one for many, many years. That's the dancer in me. Wanting to be up and moving around. And two, I've always had a deep love for history beginning with day trips to Colonial Williamsburg as a young girl and being absolutely fascinated by the "living" history represented there. It truly was like stepping into the past. So pursuing archaeology made a lot of sense to me. And it's also quite a physical activity when working in the field. But what does photo organizing have to do with any of this? Every person has a story to tell. And those stories are often buried in their boxes of photos. And as mentioned in yesterday's post, there are many treasures to be found at the bottom of those boxes. So photo organizing gives me the opportunity to be up and moving around, helping my clients sort through their photos, while also hearing fascinating stories about their lives and, like icing on the cake, I get to HELP people, which is another lifelong passion of mine. To sum it up, photo organizing takes everything I love and wraps it up into a nice, neat career that fulfills every passion of mine while making a difference in my clients' lives.

It’s safe to say many of us have experienced the following: grieving a lost loved one, tasked with cleaning out their home and coming across a photo collection piled into dusty cardboard boxes. So what do we DO with these photos?

First, determine the best family member to take ownership. I have a client who found out from a sibling that her grandmother’s boxes of photos were out on the curb waiting for the trash truck to pick them up. Her father, for whatever reason, felt no emotional connection to the thousands of photos his mother left behind. However, those photos were extremely meaningful to this woman’s grandchildren. So they were rescued from the curb and ended up at my client’s house where, even though she knew she wanted them, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them (more on that in the steps below.) So if you’re tasked with clearing out a home and have no desire to keep the photos yourself, ask your family who’s interested in taking them. I can guarantee you that photo collection is valuable to somebody.

Second, take your time. Sometimes the grief is too raw and painful to dive right in and start an organizing project. I had a client hold on to her sibling’s photos for years before she initiated work with me. And even then, there were moments of breathtaking pain as she sorted through her sister’s memories. But there can also be moments of sheer joy. Another client who stored her mother’s photos for years was surprised to see baby pictures of herself that she’d never seen before. So, store them well, in enclosed boxes to keep the dust at bay, in a temperature-controlled area either in your house or at a storage facility. They’ve lasted this many years, so another few months or years won’t damage them beyond repair.

And third, when it’s time, enjoy the organizing process. You’ll find it easier simply because they aren’t YOUR photos. You won’t recognize half the people in the pictures, so you can either pass them along to another family member who might or you can throw them away with minimal guilt. Also, it’s a wonderful opportunity to get to know your loved one better, to see through their eyes what they felt was important enough to document on film. One of my clients found dozens of pictures her grandmother took of flower arrangements. At the start, she wanted to keep them, but as the process moved along, and we found more and more of them, she realized she could toss most of them. Still, she found humor in the photos and was able to learn a little bit more about the grandmother she’d lost. It’s always difficult to lose a loved one, but the photo legacy they leave behind can be a great source of comfort as you move through your grieving journey.

As tempting as these Groupon and Living Social offers might appear, you are trusting these companies with your precious memories. You ship your photos, home movies, slides or negatives away, trust the provider to handle them with care and return them safely back to you. Oftentimes, my clients are stressed just imagining shipping these items away; however, did you know that many of these companies further outsource your memories? Sometimes even to foreign shores? A quick scan of Yelp reviews for these companies are enough to keep me away from their tempting offers.

While I know the price is right, your memories are one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable, so isn't it more valuable to place them into hands you can trust?

If high-speed scanning and/or slide, negative, and home movie conversions are what you're looking for, trust me, your certified photo organizer, when I recommend you avoid those Groupon deals and stick with a highly reputable company such as Fotobridge. I have personally met the owner and am looking forward to seeing her again at the APPO Conference this week. I know that once your memories arrive at their New Jersey facility, that is where they stay. I know your memories are handled with kid gloves from the minute they arrive. I know they have NEVER lost anyone's memories. And I know, while you might never see their services discounted on Groupon, you will NEVER be disappointed with the quality and level of service you'll receive when working with them.

So give the gift of scanning this Valentine's Day. Any orders* placed using the code McCourt01 will receive an extra set of JPG DVDs at NO COST. Hooray! It's no Groupon, but you can rest assured your precious memories will be in the best hands!

*Code expires Tuesday, February 18th

We all lead busy lives… so busy that even the things we enjoy the most get put off not just by days, but possibly by months, maybe even years. And like many of my clients, I am very often too busy to ENJOY my photos. But 2014 is the year we’re changing all that, right???

I am embarrassed to say that in the summer of 2013, I ordered a phenomenal new photo product called WeMontage, a customized, removable photo collage wallpaper. I was SO excited, I couldn’t WAIT for the package to arrive. At the time, the smallest size you could order was a 4’ x 6’ panel, so that’s what I ordered. And even though I’d marked out the dimensions on my wall, it wasn’t until the package arrived that I realized just how large that really is. But back to my embarrassment. So my beautiful WeMontage wallpaper arrived in August 2013 and can you guess when we got around to hanging it? January. 2014. Seriously. When I think about it, that’s just ridiculous. But the truth is, it was TOTALLY worth the wait. I now have this stunning collage of my family with larger-than-life photos proudly displayed on a wall that is the focal point for guests entering my home. I have received so many compliments on the product and it has inspired me to share my ideas for its application with practically everyone I meet.

Throughout the entire process, I have gotten to know WeMontage’s owner, James Oliver, and he is simply fabulous. He is so pumped about his product and will bend over backwards to please his clients. He is uber-responsive and so very helpful every step of the way. He listened and responded to feedback from clients wishing for smaller sizes and now offers a 2' x 3' poster-size, too. I envision his product in yoga studios with images of serene landscapes, in gymnastics facilities with images of all the young team gymnasts, in dorm rooms (what a great graduation gift!), in schools, in offices, and of course, in our homes.

So if you’re looking for a creative, one-of-a-kind way to display photos in your home or business, check out WeMontage today. If you'd like assistance creating your own, I would be thrilled to help and can offer you 10% off the retail price through the month of February. Contact me today and let’s get started helping YOU enjoy YOUR photos again this year!

Happy New Year, everyone!

So there’s always lots of resolution talk at the beginning of the year… something like eat healthier, exercise more, spend less money, for example. We always have great intentions, but more often than not, they fall through and the guilt sets in. This year, I have one FUN and EASY resolution that I just know you can keep!

Let's make 2014 the year to ENJOY your photos again!!! I know you’re out there taking loads and loads of photos, not only of special events, but also of the everyday minutiae of your life. But are you taking any time to ENJOY them??? More than likely not. We are taking more photos than ever before, yet enjoying them less. And I want 2014 to be the year that changes.

You’ll be surprised to hear me say this, but forget the fancy digital photo books, scrapbooks and slideshows for a minute. Most of us get overwhelmed trying to figure out where to start, not to mention finding the time to design them. So why not go old-school and print a batch of your favorite photos, throw them into a traditional album (Michael’s has great archival quality ones!) and cuddle up on the couch to enjoy the memories with your family? Or pick your favorite photo from the holidays and have it printed on a large format canvas to hang on your wall? Or even print a large format photo and frame it, like the old days? Another great place to enjoy your favorite photos is on the case of your mobile devices. Personally, I love using our photo mugs from Shutterfly which take NO time at all to design and order. And seeing the smiling faces of our kids on my tea cup first thing in the morning makes me happy, especially when the faces staring at me from the kitchen table aren’t so cheerful. ;)

These are just a few quick and easy ways to start enjoying your photos in 2014. Feel free to add your ideas in the comments below.

And please, I'm begging you, find a way to start enjoying your photos again. I guarantee you won’t regret it!