What do you do with your photos?

[msmatcha]

I used to make photo books with Photobox but it's so time consuming I haven't made a book for about ten years. I have so many wonderful photos and I am worried they will be lost to the cloud along with the memories if I don't do something with them.

What software / app do you use to create books or similar?

I currently have 245 photos in my basket on Snapfish (from February) but I really need to try and get that down to 100 or less as it’s too expensive to get that many 😩 When I’ve managed to get it down to a manageable and affordable amount I’ll order them and then start on March 🤷‍♀️🙈

I made photo books of my baby’s first holiday, Christmas and Easter but I haven’t gotten around to doing this years yet 🙈

I got a canvas made from photos of his first birthday cake smash and I have an a4 sized card of a photo of him every month on the birthdate date until 11 months framed above the canvas.

All of the other photos I print go into ring binder photo albums. I think I have 4 so far with between 500-700 photos in each. I’m writing on record cards a bit about the things he/we did and how he was to fit with each section of photos too.

I want to make a little photo book of his first year or maybe just the first few months (I’m not sure yet) to put in his newborn memory box.

I take A LOT of photos. Probably way more than most people but I have Aphantasia which means I have no visual memory/can’t picture someone or something so I need photos to ‘remember’.

Thanks for the reply. So you print out photos every month and put them in albums? That hadn't even occurred to me! I took nearly 200 in February but no idea how many of those is actually print. Where do you get your photo albums from?

I download and save all of my photos onto a portable hard drive.
On the drive, I have folders - a folder for each year, and within that, folders for every month. Then for every year I add a word document where I write a little narrative of the year as I go along, not pouring out my feelings or anything like that, more a record of where I've been, who was there, etc.
I enjoy photography, I take loads of pictures and enjoy looking back at them so I keep them organised.
I also keep copies of bills and paperwork on the hard drive too. And I keep the hard drive inside a fire proof bag!

I take hundreds every month, then delete all
the crap ones, I try and keep up with that. They are all in the cloud but I also make monthly albums with the best ones, import them onto my laptop and then make yearly photo books on Photobox with the very best ones. It also means its fairly easy to go through the month folders in Photobox and pick out ones for special albums eg I did a birth to 18 one for DS's 18th. It is all quite a lot of effort but it is a bit of a hobby for me, especially on holiday or days out where I can easily take 100 in a day but only keep half a dozen of the best ones.

Before I used the cloud I always backed them up onto a portable hard drive as well as the laptop.

I put them on a hard drive every so often. I also use https://www.freeprintsapp.co.uk/landinggoog?pid=Web%20mobile&c=fp-uk-webmobile-google-wizard-lp-20free-brand&deeplinkkvalue=freeprintsapp%3A%2F%2Fopen%3Futmcampaign%3Dfp-uk-webmobile-google-wizard-lp-20free-brand%26referral%3Dwebmobile&affdp=freeprintsapp%3A%2F%2F&afxp=custom&gclid=CjwKCAjwge2iBhBBEiwAfXDBR0U1tesjEn1RgkO2ZPXPAMib0F89jjqJkDGBhFvQwAFcfI8QRSV4ahoCiQIQAvDBwE for prints every so often

We've got a chromecast plugged into the tv so both DH and I add photos to a shared google folder which displays onto the tv when in standby mode. It goes through a cycle a bit like a digital frame or powerpoint.

Portable hard drive hadn't occurred to me either. I love taking photos but I don't curate or care for them in any way. This is about to change.

You sound incredibly organised to me! I am going to start organising my photos by month too and deleting junk. Might give 30 mins a day to this and call it a hobby.

I get photobooks made with Printastic of holidays and special occasions. Once the book is made and received by me I delete some of the photos from my phone and ipad (views for instance, or duplicates).
Other photos, just general day to day ones, not holidays or special occasions just stay on my phone and ipad.
You can us an app called Freeprints to get free 6x4 prints every month - you just pay the postage. I’ve used this a couple of times, I htink you can get 40 per month or something

Oooh thanks spaniels - I will check FreePrints out.

That's the same app I use and linked to :) it's fab

Oh yes got it, thanks Reasonable.