How to organize baby pictures

I find myself today in almost the same situation as when I started this blog. In the summer of 2006 I had my first baby, my daughter! That was three years ago. Now, three years later I had my second baby, my son! This is a great blessing indeed! Because we live in modern times with digital cameras, babies come with…well, among many other things, lots of pictures. And all these pictures need organization. There are a few things about organzing baby pictures that make the task a little different especially if you’re only using folders for organizing your pictures.

Many people love to see your baby’s pictures

I have a large family, and my wife has a large family as well…so we have lots of relatives and lots of friends. Some have access to a computer while others don’t. Our challenge is to send pictures to everyone. We have used email, Facebook and Fotki as our means for sharing the great news of the birth as well as send new pictures almost every day. For some family members however we have to print pictures and send them via regular mail.

Well everyone wants new pictures so they see how the baby is growing up. It is true, the first months of a baby’s life are the most dramatic in terms of their growth and development. Facial features as well as gestures change constantly with babies. So, it’s only normal to take lots of pictures. And it’s also normal to want to share them. Our challenge is to produce pictures for different formats: email, web publishing and paper printing. So how do I organize my folders to accomplish this?

Organize baby pictures with folders first

I have found out with our first baby that I need another layer of folders on top of the events since with babies there are no real events other than the passing of time (Read Organize your pictures in 5 easy steps). Every day is an event for babies. I take pictures every single day, sometimes more pictures and some times less pictures. So here is my folder structure:

    My Pictures
      TRANSFER
      CHILD'S NAME - Create a folder with your child's name
        2009
          2009-06-Birth
            2009-06-23-Birth
            2009-06-24-First_day_hospital
            2009-06-26-home
            2009-06-27-misc
            2009-06-29-doctor_visit
            email
            print
            selected
          2009-07-One_month
            2009-07-02-park
            2009-07-02-church
            email
            print
            selected
          videos
    

Organize baby pictures with tags…if you have time.

Having a new baby in the house leaves little time for anything else. This applies also to tagging your pictures because usually this process can be time consuming. But if you want to add tags to your baby’s pictures I suggest an approach similar with the directory structure I was suggesting above.

This means that you create tags for the different stages in the life of your baby. This is still event focused organization but a new baby’s events have more to do with the passing of time than with concrete one time events. So I suggest tags that fit in the events tag category: first month, birth, first tooth, third month. Then you can add other tags that fit under other tag categories like actions: simile, cry, sleep and feed…well this is pretty much what a baby does so you’re pretty much set. (Read Create precise image tags).

My photography workflow for organizing pictures of my baby

So, here is what I do to avoid being overwhelmed by all these pictures. I transfer my pictures from my camera to the Transfer folder. I use software (I use FastStone Image Viewer) for creating a folder within transfer for each day I took pictures. Then I transfer them into the appropriate subfolder under Benjamin/2009.

Almost every week, I go through the pictures and add to the selected folder the best pictures that I have taken. I do some light processing and cropping and save these in the selected folder. Then I do the appropriate resizing: 800×600 for email and web publishing, and 1800×1200 (corresponding to 4×6 at 300dpi print resolution) for printing on paper using fotki.com.

You should also notice that I create a separate folder for videos. I don’t like to mix videos with pictures. Videos are a different beast to me. And since I take a lot fewer videos, I will only create one single folder for videos for the entire year.

Essentials for organizing your digital photos

Here are the essential products and services I have come to rely on for many years to keep my media collection organized and safe. Even though these are affiliate links, I wholeheartedly recommend them.

Excellent Lightroom and Picasa alternative. If you need a cheaper and simpler photo manager then ACDSee Photo Studio for Mac (save 40% until Aug 9th) or ACDSee Pro for Windows (save $40 until Aug 9th) is my preferred solution for organizing all my media. It has a very fast browser, great image editing and it's simple to use.

If you do a lot of image editing like I do, I recommend using Adobe Lightroom Classic CC via the annual Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Lightroom has best photo editing capabilities even though it comes with a steeper learning curve. If you do image editing, Adobe Lightroom is my favorite.

I recommend Backblaze Cloud Backup for affordable & reliable unlimited cloud backup. I have been using Backblaze for backing up all pictures & videos for more than 5 years now. All my invaluable digital memories are safe and secure. This is the best solution especially if you have a large quantity of media files.

Use a reliable & affordable external hard drive for backing up everything on your computer. It is absolutely essential for keeping all your memories backed up and safe.

Start organizing now using detailed, step-by-step instructions and videos:
Personal Coaching (closed) Independent Course Private Lessons
Reference book Basics book Picasa book

YOURS FREE! 10 crucial steps most people miss when organizing their digital photos

Most people want to just organize their digital pictures and ignore these crucial steps right at the beginning...when they are shooting and transferring their digital pictures. Then they wonder why they can't organize their digital photos! Avoid most people's mistakes and start on the right track!

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