Photo Night is one of my favourite nights of the month. Aside from Goals Night which I will talk about next week.
(you can now see I’m very creative with naming things!)
It’s the night I “tie up” all my photo-taking and memory-making activities for the previous month.
In other words, it’s hugely satisfying for a J like me who likes closure. I’m ESTJ.
- I copy my favourite photos to the M faves, kids together, C faves and K faves, etc. folders.
- I make sure I have small versions of anything I want to blog about. A full post to follow about this process.
- I print my 4 photos of each kid for their album, 4 of them together and my 6 – 8 project life photos for the month.
- A new thing for me this year until the photo album is full … I also print all the instagrams I want to keep. E.g. I had 82 from April and I printed 48 I felt best represented the month – 6 into a 10 X 15 collage, so just 8 actual photos.
- And then, most importantly, I back it all up.
Dotted throughout the post are some of my instagrams from March – the ones that made it to my album.
Confession time
I used to DREAD photo night because truthfully, it was a huge schlep, but it’s important to me to have my things organised just so. I even have a system written down on a Project Life card (!) with months on the one side, my steps on the other, and I tick them off as I go along.
So, huge sense of dread I until I decided to time it one month.
And it took me one hour up to starting the back-up (and then I go tidy something, cook something, read something, go to dance class, etc.)
One hour!
I was getting my knickers in a knot for one measly hour.
Since I now know it only takes an hour, I don’t dread it anymore.
It’s actually been as quick as 35 minutes some months but never goes longer than an hour.
My coaching questions for you
Is there something you currently dread doing? These are usually the things you also procrastinate on.
Is it worth it to you to continue doing?
- If no, scratch it off your mental/ physical to-do list. Done!
- If yes, time it and see if that changes anything for you.
Or write down the steps so you don’t have to go through the mental gymnastics to organise your thoughts every time.
Let me know what that thing is for you!
I love love love taking photos but I am terrible at organizing them. That is something I need to do. I am also bad at filing. I usually let the pile grow until I can’t stand it anymore and then tackle it.
Terisha, I do the same with filing. Did you see my annual filing post late last year? 🙂
Re the photos, I just got into a habit a few years ago and now I do some organising every week.
Now that I’m taking more and more photo sessions, getting to edit the pictures within a decent delay is getting harder. I have timed how long it takes to fully edit one photo and knowing it (10 minutes for basic edits) helped me by pushing me to put stronger limits: if I promised 20 pictures, I won’t say yes to 45 even if the client can’t decide on less. Or they have to pay me extra for the time spent. It helps ME stick to my limits and it helps MY CLIENTS understanding the value of my images, even if they only buy digital negatives…
PS: Marcia, I’m really happy that you are back to allowing comments, I love that!
I LOVE that you’re doing photo sessions and that you know how long your workflow takes you. Such great boundaries – I’m proud of you!
PS I have the time to respond to them a bit more now 🙂
I hate doing bills and cleaning up my desk. I think it’s because coming off school, the desk is a mess. I’m about to go clean it up right now and then I’ll be back in business again. I do need to organize and backup some photos. I used to be good at getting that done, again school has been my excuse! No more excuses!
Can’t wait to see the old Heather back in action 🙂