Photo Connections

So I have been doing something I have wanted to do for year.  Go through my photos and organize them.  Now the good news is/was, I already had them arranged chronologically.  You know being an engineer everything has to be in some logical order, and chronologically made perfect sense to me. I even had a system down for scrapbooking, I scrapbook the previous years photos in the current year, so for example, right now I am working on 2010 scrapbook album.  It has worked for me so far.  Here is the kicker, I noticed more recently that as the kids get older I take fewer pictures (i still take a lot) and that there were connections I could likely make with current photos to older photos.   I had started to make those connections in my head when looking at a current photo of Phoenix showcasing her fashion style or shoe obsession I would say ohh..I know I have a photo  of Phoenix when she was 2 with daddy's shoes on her feet, or with some crazy outfit on, so I would go back through my years of photo box and search for that photo (this was a several hour process, finding the old photo) ..and find it and make a page.  I thought to myself, there has to be an easier way.

And there is...a fellow scrapbooker and Club Scrap aficionado (Pam Butler) made a comment either on Facebook or in the Club Scrap message boards about Stacy Julian's Library of Memories which Stacy teaches every two years online at Big Picture Classes.   And basically as I ready more and more about this I realized this is exactly what I am looking for.   So I signed up.   I will not go through the nitty gritty, but the whole process involves going through your photos (digital and otherwise), purging them (yes I through away thousands of photos..egads...but it felt good), rating them (deciding what you definitely want to scrapbook, three stars and which ones you want to keep but not scrapbook, one star) storing the highest rated photos in storage binders (this is where those who cannot let go of chronological scrapbooking can still maintain chronological scrapbooking if they want, I have storage binders labeled by year with my 3 star photos in them, and I will scrapbook from those) and triaging them.  Triaging them, probably the hardest step.   Triaging is the act of taking those photos (that have aged a while in storage binders)  out of chronological order and putting them in four basic categories: All about us, People we Love, Places we go, and Things we Do.  And then those categories have further subcategories.   Oh my goodness can I tell you how liberating and exciting this turned out to be for me.  So many connections to be made.  I had pictures from Griffin's first fishing trip, some more from a trip he went on with his Uncle Kevin and Grumpa,  and some random trips he took over the years since then.   How many fishing layouts can you have?  They get old after a while, but a layout featuring all of these, and the relation ship between him and the men in his life...PRICELESS!

Or how about the photos of my grandfather, Uncle, Brother and Father in their sailor uniforms, then a photo of our family in front of the Navy Memorial in Washington DC....again..Priceless.

Oh....and I picture of me and my great grandparents in their front yard on Caroline, a picture of my Nana and Phoenix  in the same yard on Caroline 25 years later, along with a picture of this beautiful tree in that same yard all covered with snow and a picture of my Nana all dressed and ready to go for my cousin's wedding in that same yard...again PRICELESS...to be able to document over 30 years of memories in that yard is priceless, and connection I might never have made if I did not have a Places We Go/Nana's Caroline House.

Pictures of me and my cousins at Cedar Point when I was 10, then another Picture of me and my cousins when I worked at Cedar Point in College....

Here is a good one, a picture of me rolling in the mud at age 2 or 3....and a picture of my husband rolling in the mud about the same age...you think we were meant for each other?

Making connections all over the place, problem is I have to carry a notebook around so I can write them down as I think about them....

I love that our scrapbooks will have that much more meaning, and I have  totally, totally have broken free from Chronological Scrapbooking...feels soooo good.