That sucking sound I heard after the birth of each child had nothing to do with breast-feeding—it was the morass of pictures under my desk pulling me into photo quicksand. Why, I wondered, hadn't someone warned me that three boys, a dog, and a large extended family would mean endless photos to sort, arrange, frame, store, and send?
About a decade ago (when it was just me and the dog), I considered organizing photos something fun and creative to do on a random evening. But three kids means three birthdays and three first and last days of school a year, plus soccer and lacrosse games, sailing races, sand castles, art projects, and endless vacations, holidays, and family get-togethers. Seemingly overnight, managing photos became a part-time job, albeit an unpaid one.
I needed a strategy. What I wanted was immediate and everlasting success—to blink and have all the pictures pasted into some beautiful book with gorgeous labels. But—unfortunately for me—it isn't that easy. Over the years, I have whole-heartedly embraced a gazillion methods to organize, file, and show off the snapshots of kids drooling, crawling, singing, etc. But for various reasons, these systems would fail me, or I them. I'd get busy or lazy and then fall hopelessly behind. Or I'd run out of replacement pages to fill. I'd switch photo websites and forget passwords. But eventually, I'd find a new approach that seemed manageable and happily start up again.
Turns out, managing my family's photo collection is like dieting. I've always wanted to be thinner, and over the years I've tried various fad diets, from cabbage soup to no carbs, only to learn that diets don't make me thinner, diligence does. Boy, does that lesson suck. The fact is, I just have to stick to a healthy eating plan that is simple and manageable.
Same thing's true of photos. Buying too much gear, spending too much money, putting forth too much effort means you're not going to stick with it. And sticking with it is critical. Unless you move to the moon, the photos will keep piling up, and that's not a bad thing. Here's the advice I needed when my first kid was born.
