We believe in tidying up – and that includes our photo library. But, oh, what a time-consuming task that is! We take a LOT of photos as we endlessly travel. If we don’t keep the photo library under at least some control, we know we’ll soon be overwhelmed.
Organizing is not all misery. It’s gratifying to revisit our old photos again and to remember those wonderful moments when we clicked the shutter. When we waded through hundreds (and thousands) of photos, we started to see “collections” we didn’t know we had – and that brings us to our newly found “wedding album”. Not our own wedding album but snapshots of brides and grooms we’ve seen on our travels. It was heartwarming to snap the moment and share in their happiness.
We took our first wedding album photo in Shanghai, China.
Our next photo may come as a surprise. This one was taken on an evening walk in Hanoi, Vietnam.
We knew it was time to organize our photos when we could no longer find a particular photo in the endless jumble. Beth started by creating albums in her Apple photo library based on our travel destinations. Every photo made it into an album. Her rookie mistake came in not labeling the albums so they would naturally stay in chronological order. So, all albums eventually had to be relabeled. Tedious, but effective in the end… Here is the system: the album name started with the date of arrival to our destination, such as “2017-12-08: Portland, OR.”
On a different continent, a very different scene was captured of a bride and the wedding car in Cusco, Peru.
The same day, another couple was spotted in Cusco, Peru’s historic square.
We created a few “interest” albums, too, for birds and wildflowers, in addition to our album for wedding photos.
As soon as we uploaded images to our computer, we tried to delete any photos from our library that we thought we’d never use or were “duplicates”. It became clear that one session of deletions was not enough. A few months later, Beth took a second look and was more critical. Delete, delete…. At the same time, she would do a little photo editing. If she really loved a photo, she’d give it a 3-star or 4-star rating. Someday when we have a cottage to live in, it will be handy to pull up our best photos and print some to display.
We spotted a bride and groom dashing by in front of the Cathedral in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. We were happy with the image’s dreamy effect.
In a most unusual place, we saw a wedding couple crossing the street in front of the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC.
Tidying up our photos was (surprisingly) easier than we thought. Each layer of organization had a satisfying result. As we dove deeper into the task, the more satisfying was the result. Of course, it did take time, but we wonder: can this be a life lesson?
January 2018
simpletravelourway 
Your photo organization inspires me, Beth & Joe! Not necessarily to action, per se, but is inspiring, nonetheless! We miss you two! Please come & visit us in ATL if you’re around this part of the world! Love, Betsy
Oh, we do plan a visit to see you. How about 2019? Really. A trip is in the works. More on that later….
A charming concept: the weddings you’ve noticed along the way. I too have seen weddings this way, and like you been drawn to them.
I need to be better organized with photographs. And the longer I put it off…
Loved the wedding photos – particularly the dreamy one, and the one with the Beetle (my first car was a Beetle, and it may have been temperamental, but it had character!)
We wondered who would mention that Beetle. Our first car was also a Beetle and Joe loved that car!
I am pleased that you have found a similar method of photo organisation to us – it is reassuring to know that we are not alone (so to speak). It has become one of those jobs that we do as the photos are loaded onto the laptop – I usually try to do that after each session. Unfortunately, the Fuji does not have location based data so I have also started manually putting some more precise location data for each group of photos (to counter memory fade) in addition to putting them in chronological trip/location albums. Weddings do seem to regularly features, especially around more notable landmarks.
I started tidying as we take photos a couple of years ago. I sort them into trip folders and then within that folder into days. Now I have folders for each year, with each trip folder in that. They are easier to find. We’ve come across at least one wedding during every holiday we’ve done. It’s nice to share the joy for a moment.
In the “old days” we organized all of our photos in albums that sat on bookshelves and might be looked at once a year. Now, we look at our online photos rather often. Why do you think that is?
If your albums are like ours, they’re stacked on top of each other in a cupboard and too heavy to be bothered getting out. Digital photos are so easy to access.