245 Tips for Digital Photo Organization with Kiera Liu
We're diving into a topic that's a bit different from our usual pragmatic planning—focusing on looking back in time rather than planning for the future. I am joined by Kiera Liu, a professional photographer and memory preservation expert. Kiera shares invaluable tips and strategies on how to organize your digital photos and thoughtfully capture and store your precious memories. Plus, you'll definitely want to hear about her unique version of a daily gratitude practice.
In this episode, we cover:
- Importance of looking back and reflecting on past memories.
- Tips for organizing digital photos including creating digital albums, what your cloud storage options are, and the importance of backing up images.
- What Kiera's "Daily Delight Practice" is.
Connect with Kiera:
http://www.frameoflife.co
https://www.instagram.com/frameoflifeproject
Mentioned in the episode:
Intentional Memories Workbook
www.frameoflifeproject.ck.page/f1f8ac2345
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Megan:
Hey friends, I'm so thrilled for you all to meet our guest here today. It's a little off topic of our traditional kind of pragmatic planning and all of that, but it's such an important part of our lives which is looking back in time instead of planning for the future. And our guest here today, kira, is going to be sharing with you some tips and strategies on how to stay organized with all of those digital photos and think about how do we want to capture and store our memories so that we have them with us moving forward, and I really want you to listen to when she explains her version of a daily gratitude practice. I cannot wait for you guys to hear about this, so let's go ahead and jump in.
Megan:
Welcome to the Work-Life Harmony podcast. I'm your host, megan Sumrall. I'm the creator of the top program and top planner teaching all things time management, organization and productivity for women. I'm also a mom and wife and, just like you, I'm juggling hashtag all the things while running multiple businesses and a family. Guess what? You don't have to feel constantly overwhelmed, exhausted and stressed out. There is another way. When you have the right systems and tools to plan and manage your time, you can live a life of harmony. This is your show to learn from me and other amazing women how to master your time, planning an organization to skyrocket your productivity so you can have work-life harmony. If you're ready to stop feeling overwhelmed, this is the show for you, and if you're new here, I'd love to get you started with my Work-Life Harmony assessment. All you have to do is DM me on Instagram at Megan Sumrall with the word harmony and my team will send it right over.
Megan:
Hey everyone, welcome back to Work-Life Harmony. I have been looking forward to this conversation all day long. It is my pleasure to introduce you all to Kiera. I'm going to have her introduce herself here in a second and tell you a little bit more about herself, but I knew it was going to be a great opportunity to bring her on the show. It's a different angle of time management, not so much from a time management side, but from time and looking back and our memories and the things we want to capture and store and hold on to. So, kira, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself? And then I've got some fun questions that I'm here, eager to learn from you today.
Kiera:
So I'm so excited and, just as you were introducing me that way, it just brought this whole feeling to me of exactly why I do what I do.
Kiera:
I have watched time slip through my fingers as becoming a mom and losing several people that were super close to us when I was starting our family, we lost my mother-in-law and then my sister-in-law a year apart, right a year after we got married.
Kiera:
So we were just starting our family and I witnessed my husband's family basically completely unraveled right before his eyes and all that was left was his father and this new family that we were starting. And it really became abundantly clear to me at that point how precious time was Just watching my belly swell and watching the baby grow and then having her be born and seeing her face and she looks just like my mother-in-law and being like, oh my God, little mama just came out like a baby but also realizing that generations still live within us and there's some stories that are going to start building from watching my daughter grow and it just became abundantly clear to me as a photographer Like I wanted to document that and learn ways that I could make it easier so I could tell her the stories and she could inherit these stories and know what to do with them down the road.
Megan:
Oh, I love that and the fact that you said make it easier. So I was very intrigued when I first learned about what you did, because back in the day I was all in on all the paper scrapbooking, the creative memories in the scrapbook stores and all of that, and my sisters and I would plan girls weekends where we would just sit and scrap for two straight days. And I have years of these gorgeous albums that I poured through before the age of digital photography and even in the early stages of digital, where you then had to take your USB card to the drugstore or upload to Shutterfly and get your print and send to you. And my daughter was born and so I was working on her baby album and I will very openly admit she's 13 now and I my goal was just to do her first year of life and I got up to 11. And, guys, I've been sitting here without doing the last month for 13 years. Come on, megan, just do it. But this figuring out, this shift of storing our memories and all of that in paper ways, which was our only way to do it before Now, with this digital world, I get asked a lot like where does this fit into our planning and our upkeep.
Megan:
How do I stay on top of my digital photos? How do I our planning and our upkeep? How do I stay on top of my digital photos? How do I? What do I save? What do I not save? How do I create and preserve not the future but the past in a way that's easy and doable? So I've been testing and trying a bunch of stuff and I feel like I'm recreating the wheel or creating something new every year. So I would love because one of the things I know you talk about is how you actually set these goals and then what you're doing to keep them and staying on track with it, because it's so easy in the age of digital photography to be like I'll do it later because it's all sitting on our device, but then fast forward 10 years and we haven't done a darn thing. I know.
Kiera:
You're just making my heart beat, so you're so close. Number one don't beat yourself up.
Megan:
90% of people have to be able to, and I've let go of it a little, I'm like okay, we'll get there one day.
Kiera:
Yeah, 90% of people haven't made their baby book. It is the number one thing people come to me for because they feel guilt that they haven't done it. And I'm like guys, it's okay, and you might have them all on your phone. That's where you're taking every single thing. And I like to tell this story about when I was leaving my career as a criminal defense attorney. I had my camera, my computer, I had my hard drive. I had everything laid out in my kitchen just right on the front door, and I went and walked the dog at 6 am, turned the deadbolt on and walked down the stairs, walked around the house, came back up. Everything was gone. Somebody came in my house, wiped literally everything off of our counters. We lived in downtown Boston. I should have known better back then, but they took phone, camera, computer, hard drive, all of it. It was all gone in one minute and for me it was a really eye-opening time.
Kiera:
Luckily I didn't have kids at that point, but it really changed my perspective on making sure I have those images backed up in multiple places so that if that happens, if there's a fire, if there's a flood, if there's some sort of emergency or your kid throws your phone down into the lake, what are you going to do? Some sort of emergency or your kid throws your phone down into the lake? What are you going to do Less traumatic catastrophe that can happen, where you could lose everything at once if you don't have it backed up? So I like to remind people that if you're using, say, an Apple phone and you have iCloud running and you think that's backing up everything to iCloud, they say that's a cloud. It should be a backup. It's actually a sync. It's syncing your phones, from your phone to your computer and making sure that anything you do on your phone is done on the computer and making it easy to access your photos on multiple devices, but it's not actually backing up everything. The it's not.
Megan:
It's good, I'm glad you have it if you do.
Kiera:
But you need to have a different setup. So I always recommend having at least another thing like Google Photo, or Amazon now has Prime Photos, which is free for Amazon members to have. So if you're looking for another way to have an automatic backup of your photos, that's a good way to have cloud storage. But I always also use like external hard drives and I will connect my phone to the computer and dump them onto here so that I have just another level of backup, because I'm just so afraid of all of us taking all these photos and then not having them when we do want.
Megan:
So let's say, we even get over the hump of okay, I feel like I'm protecting these memories that I'm capturing. I know one of your big things is setting out goals for what it is you want to preserve from that. Yeah, walk us through that process of someone saying, ok, I've got all these years of digital stuff. It's paralyzing. So it's like where do I even start? What is step one in getting this stuff organized and curated into something that's tangible, that can be passed down generationally?
Kiera:
teach my client to really start at what their goal is, and that goal can change throughout the year. It can be like I'm coming up, my mom's turning 60 this year, so I know that I want to make her an album of all of these things that have happened. There's an actual deadline attached to that her birthday, which is coming up soon. I know that I can backdate from that. In order to have it printed in time, I'm going to need to send it out to shipping at least two weeks before that and then back before that, I need to set up some time for me to start going through the images and finding them. Another part of that once you have that goal in mind, you can really be specific on what pictures you're going to look for. So, instead of going back and looking at all my college photos and all the vacations I've taken without my mom, I'm not going to even touch those.
Megan:
I'm going to be very lazy. Yeah, because otherwise it's so hard to go down that rabbit hole, right? No, we're starting from a. Okay, I used for me. I used to do annual physical scrapbooks. I stopped doing that, so I'm 13-ish years behind on having my memories sorted and documented and all of that. That's a pretty big goal to say I want to have these things done. I want to have a physical scrapbook that's clearly dated, with my thoughts and memories and just the photos that I want to make sure we have that I can pass down. How do I pare that down into something reasonable sized?
Kiera:
Yeah. So one awesome tip is reframing what you think of as a yearly book. So instead, maybe you look at yearly tradition, maybe it's just every year you go to Florida. Why don't we do the Florida trip for the last 13 years and take a look at how we've all grown in the 13 years and go specifically back and search those dates out dates out, I'm sure if you are keeping your planners the way you are when you were gone and you have a general idea.
Kiera:
Like I went on spring break it's probably in February or April, something like that Go, identify the date and then find the pictures that way and pull them all together revolving around a theme. A recent client of mine just did it around a holiday like Christmas. He hasn't done the baby book yet Her son's three. She's super guilty feeling and I was like break it down. What do you want to do? Right now it's December. You need to get something done fast. Why don't you do all of his Christmases and you can see his first, second and third Christmas and make it in a chat book, something easy and it's done and don't have it be so perfect.
Megan:
Yeah, I think if you're of my age and you're used to traditional scrapbooks, it is very. It's always very. The expectation is chronological in order and we're doing it that way, whereas maybe we get to have that change of no, I want to capture all my memories from this tradition that I want to preserve over the years, want to preserve over the years. I love that because, yeah and I was thinking about holidays, birthdays or whatever holiday you celebrate in around the winter season to be able to collect all of that together is a really great idea. What are your best tips for organizing all of our photos and digital memorabilia?
Kiera:
I get asked all the time.
Megan:
How should I organize it? I'm like it depends yeah.
Kiera:
So you can go down a rabbit hole like I think, with all organization you can.
Kiera:
It's addicting. At one point you get started and you can be like, oh, and I can get even more specific and even more specific, and it can just take so much time and effort moving and adjusting and shifting things when really I think it's most important to focus on the MVPs is what I call them like the most valuable photos and videos. That are like the things that if something were to happen, you want those. So I like to make sure I go through and look for those little golden nuggets and throw them in an album on my phone. So I use different albums inside your camera roll to start just shifting them over. So I know these are some key moments that happened this year. I'm going to throw them in my MVP, if there's. If you really are focused on doing a yearbook, you can be like each month, try to go through and pick your favorite five pictures and try to limit it down to not being so much like it doesn't have to be everything.
Megan:
You're saying that 23 photos I take of my dogs every day. I probably ought to or whatever cheap now.
Kiera:
It's cheap now. If you have your most favorite these albums over here behind me, have um, they're all of my dogs, which is really embarrassing, because it was hey I'm here for that, hold on. So I'm not here to say you shouldn't make dog pictures. Their lives are short. They deserve to be photographed a lot.
Megan:
Yeah, and Rufus, I'm staring at her on her new little bed curled up. They're just so cute it's hard not to want to capture those. Now are there activities that you do on a regular cadence to stay on top of keeping all of this digital memorabilia cleaned out, flagging your MVPs or whatever that organization process looks like for you?
Kiera:
So this is like my favorite trick is called the daily delight. I learned this. I had a baby April 2020. So, like the height of the pandemic, it was my second kid during, but I knew, going into it, that I was prone to having postpartum anxiety and I had used her. My daughter when she was born was part of anxiety and I had used her my daughter when she was born.
Kiera:
This method of I captured everything, just because I felt so overwhelmed by life and I just documented the good, the bad, the ugly. I needed to see it all and at the end of the day, I would go back and look at my pictures and I would do the heart on my favorites and delete the rest. I would like scan back out and delete the rest, and then what was left, I found, was this highlight reel of my life. It was only the moments that brought me delight and it became this practice, almost like a gratitude practice and something that really helped me see that these days weren't that bad, like it felt bad, there were some tough moments, but look at the smiles on the faces, look at what's happening and, in the whole, there was so much to be seen and it would help me appreciate not only the life I was living and the overwhelm I was feeling, because it was real, like I could see some of the things, like it was a real thing happening, but also there was so many golden nuggets there and in doing that practice it really just helps to eliminate some of that clutter and I could pick the one in focus picture of my dog.
Kiera:
The other ones they're all blurry, and doing that active zooming out you can get detached a little bit. I hear people have problems with deleting ones. They just don't want to do it. But if you zoom out they make the pictures a little smaller. So I'll use the hearts and you can select the pictures and delete all the ones that aren't hearted and then you don't feel so personal.
Megan:
I was in a perpetual state of overwhelm as a new mom and anxious, and I now, looking back, realize I had postpartum depression. I didn't know that at the time, but I know for me I tend to relook at my photos once a week, but I'm remembering back to when I'd go look at the photos and, like you said, it would make, it would bring such joy. It's, I think, a different spin on a gratitude journal. It's almost like a gratitude photo thing and I'm realizing now if I had re-looked at all the photos every day, I think I would have ended my day feeling very different than maybe waiting till the whole week. So I think that's a really interesting idea for folks to consider. How often do you, if you're people that, if you take a lot of photos like I do, like you do to maybe almost do that every evening, for probably only takes five minutes to go back and look at it all?
Kiera:
Much better than doom scrolling Right.
Megan:
You really try to replace it.
Kiera:
Instead of scrolling on Instagram in the middle of the night and amping myself up about how bad of a mom I am because somebody else does it better. Whatever it is or buying another pair of shoes. Whatever it is for buying another pair of shoes, I'd rather instead control my camera a little bit and really get a reflection chance to see how much we've done and how much joy there is actually around.
Megan:
And even if you don't do, even if you aren't a scrapbook or a photo album person, that one practice alone, I think, could be a very life-changing way to bring a close to our days, especially when it's felt like A lot of times, as motherhood. The end of the day just feels rough, right, and you forgot what a beautiful morning you had, or the fun at the park, because by the time you finally just get them into bed, like you're done, you got nothing left to give. Oh, my goodness. Now I know you have some goodies that people can grab to help get started on thinking about this. Tell us about that yeah.
Kiera:
so I have an intentional memories workbook that a lot of my clients have been using, especially in the beginning of the year, but you can use it at any time. It goes really well with you, do? It's really mapping out your year in advance and taking a look at some events that are coming up so that you know when to have your camera ready. I'm all about saving time by doing less, so I think it's really important to not be taking pictures every five seconds of every day, because you don't necessarily need that much in your camera roll and in your life to go through. So it's getting a lot more intentional about what we're actually documenting. So by looking at your year in advance, you can see I have a few vacations coming up. Oh, it's the first day of kindergarten or the last day of school, or these are some major milestones I anticipate, or we're going to be losing teeth like somewhere can start to map out some of these things and use this workbook to document when things happen too.
Kiera:
So I can say, oh March, my daughter lost her third tooth and just make a little note of it In the workbook. There's also a page to reflect on the year past and it's a great time to take your camera roll and use that as your reflector. So you basically go in again, zoom out, look at your year in advance and you just can go in by month and get a recap of everything that happened, especially if you're taking pictures on a daily or weekly basis. You'll know the vacations you took. You'll know the people, the family who visited, the milestones, like they learned to ride their bike. You might not have thought to write it down, but you might have a picture of it and you can use your camera roll as your reflection point and map it out there.
Kiera:
This workbook also helps you get like reflective on your life and start to weave in some of the stories we're big Swifties over in my family and I pulled it together to call it the key eras of your life. I like to talk about those pivotal moments that really have changed your story and your trajectory. I feel as humans if you're living a full life. Your life is moving and changing every day, but there's some big moments that start to weave together that when you look back, you can see how it's framed your life. So I have a couple of pages in there, like with this exercise, to look at these pivotal moments in your life.
Kiera:
So I have a couple of pages in there, like with this exercise, to look at these pivotal moments in your life. Just pick three of them and describe what happened, where you were, the places you were, and then there's a spot to write down. If there's pictures of that time, maybe it's when you moved to college for the first time by yourself, and you have a picture of your apartment and you want to share that. But where is it? It gets you that chance to think about right down where it might be and then remind yourself to back it up, and there's just a great way to just start collecting and thinking about these stories in a different way.
Megan:
So you feel like you're making progress well, it's staying on top of organizing and deleting and all of that. But I love this ideas of being able to reframe what it is. I want to group up and maybe create an album around, and this idea of the workbook, because I realized I used to use my calendar for that years ago but a lot of times these events pop up that aren't related to an event on my calendar. So I feel like your workbook brings that nice kind of missing link that ties, brings the photos and the calendar part together into one place. That then, if we do want to sit down and create something physical, we have this beautiful workbook to help guide us through dates and memories and thoughts and things like that around that.
Kiera:
So special and you can easily throw it into your calendar so that when you're storing that for the year, you have that paired with it. It's all. It all works together.
Megan:
Oh, fantastic, oh my goodness. Thank you so much. And friends, we've got a link in the show notes for where you can go grab that. Is it an easy URL to throw out there and share? Okay?
Megan:
I don't know that I figured out the URL, but let's don't worry, we will have the link in the show notes where you can go grab your workbook. I know I'm gonna go get it right now and think about where I want to fit this in with how I'm doing my memories, because I I'm always so focused on helping people with planning and future and making sure we're not getting overbooked, over scheduled. But it's so important to remember that time to reflect and look back right, planning and thinking about and having our relationship with time doesn't always just have to be a future event. So I love that you are bringing that importance in of that reflection back. So thank you so much.
Megan:
Getting on top of all things time management, organization and productivity doesn't have to stop just because this episode is over. If you want one tap access to all of my training and current top podcasts, go to the app store or Google play and download the pink B app. It's one word, the pink B. It is jam packed with simple yet powerful tips and strategies to get you out of overwhelm and into harmony. And if you have a question you want me to cover on a future episode, go to iTunes and ask your question in the podcast review section. And while you're there, don't forget to leave a five-star review.
