As of writing this article I have 34,388 photos on my phone.

Crazy, I know.

I think I speak for the majority of us when I say that most have a LOT of digital clutter. We take screenshots of random things we need to remember and snap images of precious memories we want to preserve. And if you have a photography business like I do, you have even MORE photos that you don't want to delete but aren't needed close at hand either.

So what do you do with all of these images?

First off, I am a firm believer in printing pictures. I used to think that technology had made physical images obsolete. However I've discovered that I enjoy printed photos more than digital ones; I love the tangible aspect of holding a print in my hands. Prints also make fantastic gifts for friends and family. I've started giving people images I've taken of them or things they love and they're always delighted to receive them.

In order to find the memories worth printing, you must weed out unnecessary photos. I recommend setting aside some time to go through your images. It may seem incredibly tedious, but as you get into the swing of things it's rewarding to watch your photo album number drop. Delete pictures that you obviously don't need anymore (like screenshots of old receipts, etc.) and set aside images that are extremely similar to each other. Eventually you'll go back and choose ONE of these images and discard the rest.

Don't try to conquer all of your digital photos at once. Instead, consider starting with a specific goal in mind such as "I'm going to organize my Hawaii vacation photos" and stop once you're through.

After you've considerably thinned the herd it's important to set up a manageable system for keeping your photos sorted in the future. I have albums on my phone dedicated to various things such as "friends and family" and "client photos." If I take any pictures that fall into this category, I try to immediately dump them into the right album. It doesn't have to be perfect; it just has to be streamlined enough to make future sorting easier.

As far as printing images go, my favorite company is Social Print Studio. They have a great selection of services to choose from and a sleek app that allows you to order prints directly from your phone. I absolutely adore their minibooks. They are the perfect size to put in a bowl and flip through randomly when you're feeling pleasantly nostalgic.

Minibooks are also the perfect solution if you want printed images but don't want to haul around cumbersome photo books. I've tried a few different regular-sized photo books from various companies and I'm never happy with the image quality or the size of the books themselves; they are always too large/wide and never seem to fit properly on a bookshelf.

The customer service at Social Print Studio is FANTASTIC. Recently I was ordering more minibooks and there was a glitch on their app. They quickly responded to my email and were extremely nice about the entire ordeal.

I suggest trying a few different printing companies to find the one that's right for you. After you have a specific company and product you like, stick with it. If you love photo strips from such & such company, make them your "printing staple." There's no need to reinvent the wheel every time you want physical copies of images. In fact, sticking with a specific style of photo printing makes all of your memories look more cohesive wherever you decide to store them.

If you choose to do any type of photo book, I recommend making a cover photo template to use for all of them. For example, my mini books all have a fun photo on the front and a title that says what's inside. At the end of each one is a "Highlights" reel that denotes some of the fun things that went on.

Examples:

A few tips on picking out photos to print:

1. You think you want all of those landscapes but you don't. Choose one or two to print out. Photos of people you love are much more meaningful later on.

2. A series of similar images is only fun if it's organized like a comic strip (I.e. Friend looks super serious in first photo, then makes a silly face in the second, and goes back to serious in the third). Otherwise I can't stress enough that you should keep ONE picture from a bunch of similar images.

3. Snapchat photos look awful when printed. Just trust me on this one.

And finally, if a photo isn't perfect but it makes you laugh or smile, print it anyways. There's no point printing a bunch of "professional" pictures if they don't invoke any sort of emotion in you. After all, the memories contained within the pixels are the most important part of any image.

-Annabelle Linker
www.annabellelinker.com
www.cagethemoment.com