I did it! I managed to go through all the Christmas pictures and place them into the album! I feel so accomplished, even though there are thousands of images still looming in my phone. But it's okay.
I learned something through this one task; that placing limits is what helps me now and moving forward. I can now see the value in quality over quantity. By taking just a few "photo worthy" photos, and keeping the future in mind, I can set my own limit on snapping pictures willy-nilly. The less photos in, the less photos to be dealt with later on.
More reasons limits are useful:
The size of the photo album
I don't want the book to be so bulky that it becomes hundreds of pages, or something that my daughter will never want to look at. Talk about overwhelming!
"Happy birthday, I hope you cleared 10 hours of your day to sit and look through thousands of pictures!" No child has that attention span.
So I was forced to choose the very best images from a certain time period or event. I managed to get 9-10 photos from each Christmas for each year. It took up only 8 pages of the album. Not too bad!
I'm still playing with the layout and colors, but I figure the most important part is to get the photos out of my phone and on the page.
The cost of the project
Each extra page I add to the album will cost additional money. This can easily turn a $20.00 memento into a squandered college fund. Having that in mind, I really trimmed back the number of pages, in turn photos, that I will be adding to her book.
I'm also being realistic and know that if I do go over by a few pages, that's okay. I'm throwing around the idea that I may break up the books and make this one "holidays and events". I am setting a limit but being flexible. I think this will help me not stress too much over the details.
The quality of the photos
When I tried to put more than 10 photos on the page, they were beginning to look terrible. The images lost their quality/value as I stuffed more on the page.
9-10 is the limit for me, before they became blurry and too small to see clearly. I don't want to have to make out fuzzy blobs on the page and explain to my daughter that, "This is a photo of your 5th birthday party, remember?"
Higher quality images and resolution make for a more magical viewing experience.
By placing limits, I was able to choose my favorite Christmas photos out of hundreds. Ones that brought back wonderful memories, funny photos I wanted to share with my daughter, a few that may embarrass her (that's the point of photos, right?) and lots that contained family members that shared the moments with her.
Next up, I think I'm going to continue with the holiday theme. I find it easier to pick out special occasions than it is to weed out smaller, though equally important events. I figure once the holidays are out of the way, I can create other categories to keep me organized.
What do you think? Should I continue this way of going about it, or is the better way you would do it? I'd love to hear what you think!
Following the journey?
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