Water Wine Travel™

I love to travel and I love to take lots of pictures…of my kids…scenery….attractions…you name it.  Over the years, I devised a number of methods for “organizing” my photos.  

Initially, I was using standard film and would buy tons of photo albums each year.   Then I moved on to various digital cameras and photo organizing software.  I resisted saving my photos on my PC.  It didn’t seem safe.  I was always getting a virus and losing documents and data.  I didn’t want to trust technology with my family memories.  I kept printing out photos and stuffing them into boxes.

Two summers ago, I took the kids and one of their best buddies to Mystic Seaport in Connecticut.  We had a blast.  I took a ton of photos. There was no way in the world I could email all these photos.  Some of the pictures were lousy and wouldn’t  even make it into a standard photo album. I decided to upload the photos onto a disc.  When I handed  the disc to the other kid’s mom  she looked at me like I was crazy.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

Uh…put it in your hard drive and download or print the photos out.

She gave me a look like she would sooner do all her  family’s  laundry by hand.  This wasn’t going to work.

I decided to select the best photos and make a photo book for all three kids.

Photo Momma was born.  I used Kodak Gallery to do this Mystic Seaport book.   Snapfish also offers this option.   Now that I have a Mac, I use iPhoto software to organize photos by person, place or event.   The Mac also has an option to create photo books or upload photos to MobileMe.

MobileMe allows users to create unique websites to store, upload, and share large numbers of photos.  Your site can be password protected and you can sync your photos with your iphone, ipod touch, desktop and laptop.

Trust me, this is all very easy to do.  If you can send an email, you can do a photo book. To save money, I only place my favorite pictures in a photo book. The remaining photos I organize on my computer.  I also backup my files and photos on an external drive.

If you still aren’t convinced, I challenge you to find your kid’s 5th birthday party photos in the next 30 minutes.  I know where mine are!