My name is Vlad and I love photography. Even though I’m not a professional photographer, I love taking pictures of my family and also I love taking pictures when we travel(see my travel blog). My regular job is an engineer and this alone should qualify me right away as an organizer. Well…at least that’s what I thought a few years ago when I bought my first digital camera.

The story that follows shows you how I went from being completely overwhelmed by my pictures to being an organized photographer. Now, over 75,000 pictures later, I keep my pictures organized and I am free to enjoy them.

It all started with…”I love my digital camera…this is great!”

I bought my first digital camera in 2002. It was a great little Canon PowerShot S45. I loved my camera and I started taking lots of pictures everywhere. The whole digital photography experience was great for me. The ability to take lots of pictures and keep only the ones I liked felt like true freedom. So, pictures started coming into my computer, and they started coming fast and in large quantities.

Then it turned into: “Where is that picture?”

It wasn’t long however, until I had my first moment of intense frustration. I had some friends come over and I wanted to show them some of my pictures and guess what? I couldn’t find the pictures I wanted to show them. Well eventually I did find them but I was frustrated because I couldn’t find them quickly.

I kept saying: wait, it’s in this folder…oh no…maybe here.

But oh well, I loved my camera and the pictures kept coming.

Afterward, frustration sets in: “I have too many pictures!”

After a few months, the one frustrating moment I had earlier, became very frequent. I started realizing that I have too many pictures to keep track of…and I wasn’t keeping track of them. I would pile them all in folders that didn’t have any rhyme or reason at all. I would name them differently every time and searching for pictures became pretty hard very soon.

The fundamental reason why most people are frustrated with digital photography is not because they take terrible pictures, but because they are overwhelmed by the large quantity of pictures they can take. There are simply too many pictures to keep track of and unless you learn how to organize your pictures you will also most certainly be overwhelmed and frustrated as well.

Aaaahhh! “I have to learn how to organize my pictures!”

After a couple of years, we had our first baby and I realized immediately that I would be overwhelmed by all the baby pictures I started taking. We were taking literally hundreds of pictures every day for months on end.

As a consequence, I said to myself: “I have to learn how to organize my pictures!”.

And I did! I started thinking, reading, thinking, testing and slowly I developed a great method to organize my picture folders. That was a great first step toward organizing my pictures and that’s how OrganizePictures.com was born.

In August 2006 I started OrganizePictures.com to share what I was learning…and indeed there was a lot to learn about.

I can show you how to organize your pictures…really!

OrganizePictures.com captures my journey from a frustrated photographer to an organized photographer. Along the way I learned about folders, tags, geotags, metadata and I also learned a lot about taking better pictures. While you can also learn all these things too, the most important reason for organizing your pictures is very simple.

Why learn how to organize your pictures? It’s simple: learn how to organize your pictures so you can be free to enjoy your pictures. If you can always organize and find your pictures, you can really enjoy sharing them with your friends and family.

What to expect from OrganizePictures.com:

My goal is to provide practical advice and coaching for all who want to learn how to organize their digital pictures. I focus on suggesting free solutions and when free is not possible I’ll try to find an affordable solution.

I have created 5 convenient ways for learning how to organize your pictures.
1. Download my “BIG” book. This is an in-depth and detailed manual on how to organize your digital pictures regardless of what software you are using.
2. Download my Picasa book. Not only the best Picasa users’ manual, “Organize and manage your digital pictures with Picasa” will show you how to keep your pictures organized and easy to find using this popular free program called Picasa.
3. Free E-mails. Get new articles by e-mail.
4. Free Tutorials. Step-by-step tutorials for managing your pictures.
5. Free Articles. Fresh articles about ideas for organizing your pictures.

What OrganizePictures.com is NOT:

This is not the best site for learning how to take great pictures. There are many other resources for learning photography. While I would offer great tips on how to improve your photography, the primary focus of OrganizePictures.com is to help you learn how to organize your digital pictures.