I'm a Digital Pack Rat

It was pointed out to me recently that it has been over 20 years since I got my first digital camera. The camera was purchased on December 1, 2003, when our girls were 10 days old. I continued to use my film SLR camera along with the new digital point-and-shoot and within a month there were well over 200 photos.

One of my first digital photos - my dog Sam

Digital Convenience - Becoming a Pack Rat

I soon discovered the convenience of the digital camera and not just the ease of a point-and-shoot with two little babies. Being able to review the picture before snapping more was an obvious bonus when shooting children. There was also the financial savings of shooting 25 digital photos instead of a roll of film and development. Especially when only one good photo was needed.

one of over 30 digital pictures for a birth announcement

By the time the camera was a year old, I had snapped 1863 pictures. I don’t know how many roles of film were also developed in that period but easily enough to top 2000 pictures for the year. In my defense, it was the first year of my children’s life. In comparison, it was WAY more than my mother's collection of pictures of my sisters and me from ages birth to 18!

That awesome 3.2-megapixel Sony camera had a 16GB storage card! I would transfer pictures to my computer and back them up on CDs. (I would worry about dating myself with that statement but we have established it was 20 years ago.) From there, some may have been loaded to Snapfish or Shutterfly for printing or sharing. Not all of them because we were still on dial-up. It would take too long and tie up the phone line (again 20 years ago). While several (not even half) of the digital photos were printed and put into scrapbooks, most of them resided on my computer. The digital pack ratting began.

Pressing the delete button

Some photos were deleted. If the photo was very bad - so blurry you couldn't tell what it was or the shutter was snapped without realizing it then it would be deleted. I was always hesitant to delete the not-great but still ok photos. If it was a series of photos leading up to a good one I had to keep them for proof of how hard it was to get the good one. It is so easy to be a pack rack with digital files.

These photos aren't good but they do tell a story:

Some were lost due to card issues that corrupted them before I could get them to a computer. Others may have been lost in transferring between computers over the years. I know at least one of the CDs ended up corrupt when I tried to copy photos that had been lost due to a computer crash.  The frustrating part is that even if they did make it onto the computer there was no real way to organize them or tell the stories behind them. So then I was becoming an unorganized pack rat.

Getting some control

I learned about a program from Creative Memories called Memory Manager which today is known as Forever Historian. It allows you to tag, rate, organize and put text with photos so you can remember why they are important. It helped cut down on the photos in storage because you could easily see the photos and determine the best ones. This cut down the need to keep 20 or more of the same pose. It is excellent software but still makes it hard to share as the photos are still on your computer (or external hard drive) in addition, you are still at risk of loss due to computer crashes.

I have now loaded my photos into FOREVER storage. It allows you to organize the photos into albums (folders and sub-folders), tag by words, search by names, and tell the stories behind the pictures. I can put the photos into albums for easy locating and sharing as it is all cloud-based.

Do better

Do I still keep too many photos? Yes. No question. But now I have a system and you have to start somewhere. While I could keep every photo I ever took (and keep them for my lifetime plus 100 years thanks to the FOREVER guarantee) I actually don't want to.

I want to create a curated collection that tells the stories of my life. Sure most of the photos are in scrapbooks that include the stories but even those are subject to loss and time. The goal for my collection is that when I am gone my loved ones will be able to find the photos that tell my story or their story if they were too young to remember it. It is going to take some time and I work on it little by little. It will be a work in process until I take my last photo.

Are you a digital pack rat? What digital legacy do you want to leave your family?