Wednesday, January 30, 2019

The Next Sort



Now that you have all your photos into "like" piles (either by themes or by year).  You need to sort through each stack again.  This second sort is to place the photos in some semblance of chronological order.  

Second Sort for Theme Organization


If you are organizing by theme, you will be trying to place each theme in chronological order.  Let's use a Christmas stack for example.  You will pick up your Christmas stack, going through it again in an effort to put your Christmas photos in chronological oder.  You are looking to put Christmas photos from 1995 together with each other, 1996 together, 2000 together etc.  If you come across a photo that you aren't sure of the date, look for a few clues in the photo, like hair length, missing teeth in children's smiles, or the same pair of pajamas as in other pictures.  If you still can't tell, make your best "guestimate".  Chances are great that no one else will know the exact year either.  Again, you want to try to move along at a quick pace, not overanalysing ever picture.  Once the photos for Christmas are all in chronological order, place them into your Legacy Box and label the section "Christmas".

Second Sort for Chronological Organization


If you are organizing by chronology only, you should have a bunch of stacks by year (or decade in the case of old heritage photos).  At this point I recommend making 12 index cards, one for each month of the year.  You will now pick up a stack that holds all the pictures from one year, let's say 2005,  and start to go through each photo and place in into a new stack with the month the photo was taken.  Again, if you don't know for sure look for clues, like summer or winter clothing, to make your best guess.  Once you have placed all photos from 2005 in our example into twelve stacks, pick them up and place January on top of February, on top of March, etc. ending with December.  This stack is now ready to be placed into your Legacy Box and labeled with the year.  Just repeat this step for each yearly stack.

Digitizing Your Printed Images


You probably would like to have some of your printed photos scanned so that you have a digital version to use in making photo books, slideshows, prints or sharing on social media.  As you are sorting through your pictures during this second sort, it's a good time to pull out any photos you'd like to have scanned.  I recommend that you pick your favorite pictures unless you really want to have all your photos scanned!  As you go through a stack, just place any photos you want scanned on the side and place them into a ziplock bag labeled with the theme or year that they belong to so you can easily replace them in their proper group after scanning.  We will discuss scanning options in another post.



Congratulations!  You now have all your photos organized, put into photo safe boxes and labeled!  Doesn't that feel great?  If you still need help, your local APPO photo organizer is happy to work alongside you to get the job done.