My name is Vlad and I love photography. However, just to set things straight right away: I’m not a professional photographer but an engineer, building large and complex software systems….so I know a lot about data organization. And no…I do not live from this website.
Even though I’m not a professional or even a great photographer, I love taking photos of my family and the many places we travel to…lots of photos and videos!
How Many Photos & Videos do You Have?
One thousand? Ten thousand? One hundred thousand? More ? Do you know?
I like to brag that I have over 200,000 pictures by my latest count. They are all organized and easy to find using my own simple and efficient system I call STORE.
But I did not start this way when I bought my first digital camera. All these many digital photos and videos have a story that I want to share with you.
My journey into organizing my digital media started with my first digital camera and two assumptions…both of them being wrong assumptions.
I said to myself : “Having a digital camera is no different than having a film camera. I have been keeping my film photos nicely organized in shoe boxes, so I will not have any problems keeping my digital photos organized on my computer. Right?”
Well…at least that’s what I thought many years ago when I bought my first digital camera. I was wrong!
Now, over 200,000 pictures later (see the latest counter), I keep my all my pictures and videos organized. And best of all, because I’m organized, I am free to enjoy all my photos and do lots of fun projects with them.
The short story that follows will show you how I went from being completely overwhelmed by my digital pictures to being an organized photographer.
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.
Pictures started coming into my computer, and they started coming fast and in large quantities.
Then one question kept coming up: “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. 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…many and fast.
Frustration sets in: “I have too many pictures!”
After a few more months, the few frustrating moments, when I couldn’t find my photos, 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 my pictures folders differently every time and searching for pictures became very 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 learn how to organize my digital media! How did I do it?
I started thinking, reading, thinking, testing and slowly I developed the simplest and most efficient method for organizing my pictures 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 teach 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. However, while learning all these things is cool, there is one most important reason for learning how to organize your pictures. It’s pretty obvious!
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.
OrganizePictures.com can help you in many ways
OrganizePictures.com provides practical advice and coaching for those who want to learn how to organize their digital pictures. OrganziePictures.com focuses on suggesting free solutions and when free is not possible I’ll try to find an affordable solution.
I have created 6 great ways for teaching you how to organize your pictures.
- Take my online video course. Over the past many years I have learned that everyone’s computer setup is different and things don’t work exactly the same way for everyone! During this course, I will teach you step-by-step how to organize YOUR pictures on YOUR computer. This is the best way to learn!
- Get my “BIG” reference book. This is a detailed manual on how to organize your digital pictures regardless of what software you are using. It covers everything from organizing your folders and tags, to scanning old pictures and backing up everything.
- Get my Picasa book. Even though Picasa has been long discontinued, many people still use this great little program. If that’s you, then “Organize and manage your digital pictures with Picasa” will show you how to keep your pictures organized and easy to find using Picasa.
- Get my free tips & tricks by e-mail. Get my new articles with tips and tricks by e-mail.
- Complete my free tutorials. Step-by-step tutorials for managing your digital photos.
- Read my latest articles. Fresh articles and ideas for organizing your digital photos.
OrganizePictures.com will NOT teach you how to take great pictures
This is not the best site for learning how to take great photos. There are many other resources for learning photography.
While I do 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.