The Digital Cleanse Day 8:

Curate Your Photos (and videos)

More than ever, you need to curate your photos. With the arrival of digital cameras and mobile phone cameras, it’s very, very easy to take thousands of photos a year.

But think for a moment, who needs 40,000 photos of their six year old? A generation ago, when film reigned, it was unusual and expense for a family to take more than a few hundred photos a decade. Go back two generations and you’ll find a couple dozen photos, at most, for a lifetime. Three generations back and their might be one or two images of each person.

So, back to our digital cleanse. How can you curate your photos? I recommend a two prong attack.

Starting today, follow these best practices for new images.

• Review photos taken daily.
• Delete out of focus photos.
• Delete unflattering photos.
• Delete near-duplicate photos.

In addition, schedule time to deal with your backlog of photos. You’ll drive yourself crazy looking at thousands of photos at a time so narrow your approach for older photographs.

• Pick a particular date range – a week, month or year that makes sense to you.
• Pick a specific event – a wedding, the birth of a child, a grand opening.
• Pick a central person – yourself, the CEO, a grandchild, a celebrity.

Once you’ve selected a manageable batch of photos to review, apply the same best practices you use for your daily photographs.

The same strategies apply to curate your videos. Lather, rinse, repeat.

More on the 30 day #digitalcleanse tomorrow. Hope to see you then!

(If you missed yesterday’s installment, take a couple extra minutes to explore Consolidate Your Data. For links to the complete Digital Cleanse series, click here.)