It's true that iPhone photos are a slippery slope to perdition. I used to swear I'd never store as many on my phone as others, but dang, they creep up. Maybe they're breeding like rabbits in there.
Your suggestions are great, and I'd add one bit: be ruthless. You're never going to say, "oh I miss that one particular angle of that one particular scene". Deletion is completion.
My sister took on the gigantic undertaking of sorting, culling and uploading all of my childhood photos and all of my husband's. We now each have our own photobooks (we used artifact uprising) that are GORGEOUS and solved the problem of not knowing what to do with them. Like you said about how you have 100 photos of your childhood, years 0-18 fit in their really nicely and we aren't missing anything so I think that will be a guidekine if I have kids some day. Think college graduation gift or something when they actually get that physical copy.
I'm due for a big photo project for my husband and I for the last 10 years we spent together. Once all of those are organized and bound in a book, I know I'll feel better.
We always like to laugh and say we are doing everybody a big favor by making our funerals a lot easier when we are organized in this capacity. Just put out our photo books! Done!
Oooooh, LOVE THIS. And very much resonate as someone who has a 1-year-old *and* shows up frequently on social media for work-- so. many. photos.
One recent discovery that has helped a TON is the app "swipewipe". Similar to your deleting by day of the year method (that is what I used to do, as well), it automatically sorts the "on this day" and then you swiftly swipe left or right to keep/delete. SO MUCH FASTER!
The Gemini app gamifies photo deletion by grouping duplicates or similar photos and suggesting the one to keep. It’s rewarding to cull a few hundred photos each day.
Searching today’s date and purging the photos from past years makes this task feel more manageable! I realized a few months back that most of the cloud storage I pay for (~$8/mo) goes to photos that I never review 🤦🏼♀️ I decided to go through and delete the duplicates, photos of receipts, etc. only to discover 1) omg and 2) iCloud makes it quite difficult to truly delete anything! It makes backups of backups until all I want to do is back away! Breaking the task down to a day-by-day process will help with the first problem at least.
Oh, looking at photos from the day’s date is so sweet! I know iPhones suggest memory slideshows but seeing the sequential collection of one offs is really fun.
I realize that it’s wonderful to keep photos of some people, but I’m not the “photo keeper” in many relationships. My super organized cousin with beautiful children doesn’t need me to have old photos of their kids in my phone. And then I do have memory storage/mental energy for the relationships in which I am the dedicated photographer.
Definitely not easy these days, with awesome/available cameras! My kids grew up in the 'print doubles for the grandparents' era so that's not an issue. But we travel a LOT and love looking back on trips and reminiscing. So after we return, I combine each of our photos, delete the terrible, edit the remainder, delete the not-great and semi-duplicates, and typically end up with 100-200 trip photos which I put in a Google photo album of the trip. That group also makes it into my 2-year photobook, and gets put in a sub-folder in the year's archive folder, and double-backed up (I don't store in the cloud, I like retaining the control of what is/isn't backed up). Works for me, but I'm a geeky organizer and I love to do it!
Loving some of the tactics shared in the comment section as well as your own today's date tactic!
I've been into photography since long before smartphones, so I think I'm lucky that I had a good rhythm for "dealing with" photos before they became as easy-to-accumulate.
I have Dropbox automatically back up any photos I take. Weekly, I sit down at my computer and edit those photos, which means culling the ones I don't need for posterity, editing the ones I want to keep in Lightroom, uploading the edited keepers to Flickr, and sending any extra-good ones to our digital photo frames. Then every once in a while (truly whenever I think about it, maybe while waiting in line for something or whatever) I just go through and delete all the photos and videos off my phone.
It is time-consuming, but the tasks themselves are easy and they're worth it to me as the sole historian of our family (and my extended family, if I'm honest).
3 steps to conquer the psychic weight of your iPhone photos
It's true that iPhone photos are a slippery slope to perdition. I used to swear I'd never store as many on my phone as others, but dang, they creep up. Maybe they're breeding like rabbits in there.
Your suggestions are great, and I'd add one bit: be ruthless. You're never going to say, "oh I miss that one particular angle of that one particular scene". Deletion is completion.
My sister took on the gigantic undertaking of sorting, culling and uploading all of my childhood photos and all of my husband's. We now each have our own photobooks (we used artifact uprising) that are GORGEOUS and solved the problem of not knowing what to do with them. Like you said about how you have 100 photos of your childhood, years 0-18 fit in their really nicely and we aren't missing anything so I think that will be a guidekine if I have kids some day. Think college graduation gift or something when they actually get that physical copy.
I'm due for a big photo project for my husband and I for the last 10 years we spent together. Once all of those are organized and bound in a book, I know I'll feel better.
We always like to laugh and say we are doing everybody a big favor by making our funerals a lot easier when we are organized in this capacity. Just put out our photo books! Done!
Oooooh, LOVE THIS. And very much resonate as someone who has a 1-year-old *and* shows up frequently on social media for work-- so. many. photos.
One recent discovery that has helped a TON is the app "swipewipe". Similar to your deleting by day of the year method (that is what I used to do, as well), it automatically sorts the "on this day" and then you swiftly swipe left or right to keep/delete. SO MUCH FASTER!
The Gemini app gamifies photo deletion by grouping duplicates or similar photos and suggesting the one to keep. It’s rewarding to cull a few hundred photos each day.
Searching today’s date and purging the photos from past years makes this task feel more manageable! I realized a few months back that most of the cloud storage I pay for (~$8/mo) goes to photos that I never review 🤦🏼♀️ I decided to go through and delete the duplicates, photos of receipts, etc. only to discover 1) omg and 2) iCloud makes it quite difficult to truly delete anything! It makes backups of backups until all I want to do is back away! Breaking the task down to a day-by-day process will help with the first problem at least.
Oh, looking at photos from the day’s date is so sweet! I know iPhones suggest memory slideshows but seeing the sequential collection of one offs is really fun.
I realize that it’s wonderful to keep photos of some people, but I’m not the “photo keeper” in many relationships. My super organized cousin with beautiful children doesn’t need me to have old photos of their kids in my phone. And then I do have memory storage/mental energy for the relationships in which I am the dedicated photographer.
Definitely not easy these days, with awesome/available cameras! My kids grew up in the 'print doubles for the grandparents' era so that's not an issue. But we travel a LOT and love looking back on trips and reminiscing. So after we return, I combine each of our photos, delete the terrible, edit the remainder, delete the not-great and semi-duplicates, and typically end up with 100-200 trip photos which I put in a Google photo album of the trip. That group also makes it into my 2-year photobook, and gets put in a sub-folder in the year's archive folder, and double-backed up (I don't store in the cloud, I like retaining the control of what is/isn't backed up). Works for me, but I'm a geeky organizer and I love to do it!
Loving some of the tactics shared in the comment section as well as your own today's date tactic!
I've been into photography since long before smartphones, so I think I'm lucky that I had a good rhythm for "dealing with" photos before they became as easy-to-accumulate.
I have Dropbox automatically back up any photos I take. Weekly, I sit down at my computer and edit those photos, which means culling the ones I don't need for posterity, editing the ones I want to keep in Lightroom, uploading the edited keepers to Flickr, and sending any extra-good ones to our digital photo frames. Then every once in a while (truly whenever I think about it, maybe while waiting in line for something or whatever) I just go through and delete all the photos and videos off my phone.
It is time-consuming, but the tasks themselves are easy and they're worth it to me as the sole historian of our family (and my extended family, if I'm honest).