I was recently working on a photobook focused on a little girl’s first year of life. After initially discussing how she was hoping to structure the book, her mom promptly sent me her pictures, apologizing for the fact that she had never taken the time to sort through them, and that there were loads, LOADS of photos. How many photos? 6,854 is the exact number she sent me.
Once I downloaded them all, and started scrolling, I felt truly discouraged. How could I possibly sort through almost seven thousand pictures?? This was going to take me DAYS. All I wanted to do was close my computer and go do something else.
If you’ve ever faced a similar situation, you probably understand how discouraging it feels to be faced with an apparently unsurmountable mountain of pictures. It’s the pictures overload problem that is so typical in our digital age. And it is the reason we often don’t even get started with our photobook projects. But the task is not nearly as daunting as it appears. How long did it take me to sort through the 6,854 pictures? About 4 hours. And here are a few tips that helped me get this done, instead of giving up on the project altogether.
1. Only pick out your favorites
When I think of properly sorting pictures, I imagine looking at each photo in detail, deleting all the unnecessary ones, and arranging everything in neat little folders. This is an extremely time-consuming process, and, I would argue, not necessary in most situations. Instead, all you need to do is pick your favorite pictures. Imagine you’re going on vacation: it would be nice to have your entire house cleaned and sorted, every drawer organized, and each piece of clothing washed and ironed. Then you can start packing your suitcase. But you can just as well pack your absolute essentials and be on your way. The same goes for your pictures: if you don’t have the time, motivation or bandwidth to tackle a whole big project and sort everything, just pick the pictures you want to include in your photobook. You will still end up with a beautiful, meaningful book that contains your favorite memories, and that end result is all that really matters.
2. Go for a lot of short sorting sessions
Going through thousands of pictures is really tiring. We get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data we have to process, and we get decision fatigue, because we have to make yes or no decisions for each and every photo. This is why setting a time limit is so effective: deciding at the beginning that you are only going to sort pictures for 15 or 30 minutes will help you stay on task, not get distracted, and remain efficient. Alternatively, I also like to set aside a fixed number of pictures that I want to go through, and challenge myself to go through them as quickly as possible. “200 pictures in 10min? Sure, I can do that!”
3. Mark your selected pictures
I find that the quickest way to select my favorite pictures is to simply mark them as favorites. As you go through each picture, it barely takes a second to mark it as favorite, or move on to the next one. After you are done, you can then sort the folder by rating, and be left with a clearly marked selection of pictures to work with.
These 3 tips helped me go through my seven thousand pictures really quickly. I hope that they will also encourage you to power through your own pictures overload, and move on to the fun part: actually building your photobook!