Create Organize Visualize Identify Define - Covid - MyFotoPal Style

Wow, what a whirlwind life right now! How are you doing? What are you doing to fill your day (mind you a lot of eating, homework and exercise going on in our house right now ;)

Right now I'm working on a project for a dear friend. She's had pictures and photoboards of her Dad at her home for over two years since he passed just waiting for her to find the time to do something with them. It wasn't getting done.

Even with all of the Stay-at-Home order, people still have a lot going on. Keeping up with their jobs, their kids and their homework, and continually feeding everyone is easily a more than full time in most family's worlds.

So, now I have all of her stuff! With an easy, no contact drop-off, she was able to bring me picture boards, photo frames, photos albums and file folders. So, looking at a new acronym - here's what you need to be thinking of as you tackle such a project.

1. Visualize: Visualize what you want your end product to be. In my friend's case, she wants everything put into digital photo albums.

2. Define: Define your parameters and timeline for the project. She gave me a year to do this project (she isn't in a rush and wanted some flexibility for me as well). While it's plenty of time, there will have to be an exchange of information once everything is scanned. Digital photo albums take some time (just like scrapbooking) but the end result is very fulfilling. Our steps are to scan everything, get everything into a digital album, and then have her interact with it and add text as she sees fit.

3. Organize: Once everything is dropped off, I start the organizing process. I have taken all photos out of albums, and kept them together in the order they were taken out. Her Mom had attached post it notes to some pages, so I have kept those photos together so we can easily replicate the information on the digital pages. All photos are now safe in an organizer - keeping them much safer and in a much smaller space for storage. This is key!

4. Identify: Once scanning is done - it's time to compile into digital albums. Digital albums can become costly, quickly. One needs to determine how much they want to spend, what quality they want the final product to be (this adds to how much they want to spend), and then how much time they want to personalize it. When I worked on my brother's photo album (see previous blog) I didn't spent as much time personalizing as I could have because my mind was a bit numb. If I were to go back, I would go through page by page and write something special about the pictures so the book and knowledge would be there for future generations. However, one thing I did his his case was took screen shots of memories that other people shared on his Facebook page. This did personalize it and was a great gift for my parents.

5. Create: After all of this is figured out, creation begins. In some cases, people want a hands off approach. In others, they want to help along the way. In the case of my present project, photo album replicas are to be created, and then my friend will take it over from there. She will add the text I haven't added with her Mom. It will allow a lot of sharing touching stories as well as creating loving memories for future generations.

COVID-19 is such a stressor - but maybe now is the time to get working on something like this to take your mind off the world around you and remember different days (mind you I couldn't necessarily use better days as lots of memories can flood your brain while tackling such a project). On a rainy day like today here in Minneapolis, I'm blessed to be sitting her with two dogs next to me, doing some writing and continuing scanning. Today it is document scanning - seeing the printed letters from her dad to her mom from wartime is tearjerking - but so interesting to take a look.

I'm the keeper of knowledge for my family - are you? Take the time when you have it to have the knowledge ready for future generations. It's a rewarding thing and will be cherished in the future. Also, make sure you are keeping up with deleting unwanted photos - even 15 minutes a day will get you to your goals!

Stay healthy and safe!