Living in a Digital Age as a Momtographer

Alright, moms. Time to confess: How many digital images do you have on your phone? We posted this question to our Facebook page and so far,  the winner has just under 50,000 images! Her kids must be ADORABLE! 

But seriously. Isn’t that all of us? Snapping pic after pic of our kids because we just can’t get enough. And we want to remember every single fleeting second. 

How will you keep all those memories though? They can’t stay on your phone forever. We’ve all had the dreaded storage full notice rudely interrupt the picture-perfect moment. Instead of scrambling to delete whatever unused app for a single image worth of more space, we’ve got some ideas for organizing and safekeeping all those precious memories in the making. 

First things first. You likely don’t need to print all 50,000 images! So you need to think through how you’re going to tackle your organization process. It’s a good idea to break up your photos into manageable chunks to sort through which ones you want to keep and print. 

Working year by year chronologically makes the most sense. Or you could even go month by month for smaller, more accomplishable portions. Once you’ve settled on your initial timeframe for sorting, get your first device and look through the photos. 

Time to do some eliminating here. Delete duplicate photos. Get rid of blurry photos or irrelevant, not meaningful photos. I suggest doing this step for the allotted time frame on all devices that have photos stored. I know it sounds time-consuming, but it’ll cut down significantly on what you have to upload in the end. So it’s a good idea to make organizing and cutting your first step. 

When you’re ready to upload the images, you have several choices. 

Groovebook

Our Facebook follower Ashley recommends Groovebook. Groovebook prints 100 photos into a booklet for $3.99/month. They also offer a variety of ways to print into additional books or other design projects. 

 

Free Prints

Our Facebook follower Janna queued us into this awesome-sounding platform. It offers 85 free prints every single month. So if you ration it out right you could get all your prints for free. And if you’re an over shooter like me, well at least you’ll get the first 85 free. 

 

 

Chatbook 

Chatbook was recommended by another follower, Brecken. This recommendation got many echoes and is known as producing “such cute” memory books!   

 

Shutterfly

Shutterfly is a win-win deal that most of us are familiar with. You can print from your app or your computer, and there are frequent discount offers. Facebook follower, Danielle, recommends creating a yearly Shutterfly book, organized by month. That sounds like the perfect way to reflect on the year behind. 

 

Old fashioned prints

You really can’t go wrong with following in your mother’s footsteps on this one. My mom has probably 50 photo albums in numbered order to keep them straight through the years. One of mine and my siblings’ favorite things to do when we’re all home for Christmas is flipping through the years of memories. You want your kids to have this too! If you choose this route, one blogger Delightful Order, suggests boxing photos by year. 

 

The most important choice is keeping your photos in the same spot so that you know where to find them and how to enjoy them. 

One last friendly reminder: you don’t need multiple variations of the same photo documenting the same event. When you look back years later likely even a single photo representing a special event will suffice for commemorating the occasion. 

You worked hard to capture those moments. Keep it up. And make the photographs available for your whole family to enjoy!