There are no photos or videos to share today, except this one:
I am in photo hell! I’ve taken way too many pictures (is that possible?) and haven’t edited or deleted many either and now everything is full. I’m out of disk space. My iPhoto library won’t take any more content and I have photos stored in a flat file structure and am trying to integrate them all to have them make sense and its taking hours and hours and hours! How did I get here and do you feel my pain? Do you have an easy solution? Please?!?
So while I was sitting here for hours all day and night with Jeff helping me to move, edit, delete and back up files, Charlie decided to sit next to me and look at YouTube videos for things to do together in Amsterdam tomorrow. I was happy that he was sitting near me and found something to do besides making noise and jumping up and down. All was good. The video was playing in the background and I was listening and multitasking, feeling proud that he searched and found a video with a list of exciting things to see and do in the heart of the city until I heard, “number 9. the red light district. just don’t take pictures of the ladies in the windows otherwise they may throw your camera in the canal.” I jumped away from my busy-ness and as I looked at what he was seeing, I saw flashes of red lights appear. Oh no! I grabbed the iPod out of his hands and turned off the video before he saw anymore. He was surprised and didn’t understand and said he hated when that happened. I’m pretty open with my kids but really don’t want them seeing that or even asking questions about it at the kitchen table. Yikes!
Back to the photo conundrum – taking pictures is to help us capture our memories from the past and that’s all great, but what happens when you’re trying to manage your past and package it into nice little receipts packaged into nice little albums with copies ready just in case you lose your package, but in the process you lose the present because you’re so busy remembering the past? What a dilemma. I struggle with that concept, but know I want to be able to look back one day to remember and share the journeys we have taken, explored and enjoyed.
I guess I have to borrow from the present, to pay to remember the past, so I can have the future benefit of being able to share our history. Huh. That’s weird. Boy, I’m exhausted now.
here i am 
My suggestion to you would be that you have some of your pics “saved” in your blogs, so maybe you could delete those? Or buy a removable hard drive that you could use only to back up your pics to…..
The little black box on the right is the back up hard drive. The stack of disks on the left are to create backups of the backup. The hardest part is to create meaningful folders and to integrate photos from different devices. Such a challenge, especially since I haven’t been doing it monthly or even yearly!! Guess what? I think I have a new default hobby!!
Sorry I don’t have any answers to offer, but I’m in the same boat–the digital version of shoeboxes full of photos. We try to keep batches of photos grouped by year, and within each year create folders that say “spring 2012” or “summer vacation 2012” or “christmas 2012”, etc. It’s not a perfect system, but at least it’s a place to start. If you come up with a better system, please share it with all your “blogees”. Hang in there!
I’m doing the same as you Kris – I think the best digital storage system is by year, and then my month or season, and then special events within that structure. My problem came when I started using iPhoto – you can’t easily organize that way and iphoto became too large and unmanageable. And once I stopped using iPhoto last year and went back to my old flat file storage system, I created two different filing structures and now I want to merge them and integrate the events. In the past I had one digital camera, and now I have my digital SLR, my iphone and an ipad that collect memories. And I haven’t even taken the kids pictures into consideration. Maybe I have to downsize – less pictures, less cameras, less storage? Oh my…