Learn how to organise your digital photos with certified photo organizer Caroline Gunter!

One of the areas I wish I had gotten control over much, much earlier in my photography journey was having an organisational framework for managing my digital photos. My older files are in such a mess, scattered over different devices (and some precious baby photos are currently held hostage on a broken laptop!) that will take me a long time to sort out. That is why I’m always recommend that one of the first things you do is get yourself organised for successfully managing your digital photos.

Which is why I’ve invited an expert to come onto the blog and give us her tips for organising your digital photos! Caroline Gunter is a certified photo organizer, with years of experience helping people organise and manage their photos, so she’s the real deal when it comes to this topic!

In this blog post, Caroline is going to break down her 3 part framework for successfully organising your digital photos, step by step. Let’s do this!

“Wait, what do you do? Is that a real thing?” Those are questions I have to answer anytime I tell people that I’m a Professional Photo Organizer. YES, it’s a real job! And YES, I absolutely love it!

I’ve run a successful organizing business for over a decade now, and I still pinch myself that I get to do what I do - share my love of memories, family history, and photography with others across the globe. I get to teach what I know online and I help preserve memories every single day. It doesn’t get much better than that!

And here’s what I know: Everyone loves their memories, but most people take them for granted. Because of those two basic facts, I have made it my mission to reach as many people as possible and encourage them to get organized before it’s too late. So be honest with me - are your digital photos organized and backed up? Or do you find yourself with a bit of a scattered mess?

If you feel great about your system, kudos! If feelings of overwhelm and guilt bubble up around this topic, that’s OK, but I really want to encourage you to take action now. The keyword (pun intended) is action, however imperfect.

Usually what I hear is “I’ll get to it...someday,” but someday might be too late. As someone who has experienced a tech crash and who has countless clients who have been impacted by natural disasters, let me tell you - there’s no going back once those memories are gone.

But I’m not here to scare you. I want to empower you to take action in the quickest way possible. Getting organized doesn’t have to be difficult or overwhelming. You just need a plan of action. To help as many people get a bird’s eye view of this, I have developed a 3-step framework for digital organizing success, and it involves consolidation, organization, and maintenance.

Let me explain.

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Step 1: DPO Flow

Step #1 is what I like to call DPO Flow (digital photo organization flow).

This means that you consolidate your digital assets in one central place (on a DPH - digital photo hub). What I see everyday is that people have multiple places where photos are stored, often in more than one cloud account and on multiple devices. Add to that older family photos that are being scanned, and you’ve got yourself a digital mess. Then, the more photos you take, the more it snowballs.

DPO Flow means that you press pause, and actually plan what you want to see in your photo system, how it should work, and what that would mean for you when it does. Your photos have a clear (ideally, automatic) way of getting to your DPH, so that you can keep them safe and consistently backed up with minimal effort. It’s all about helping your photos find a way from point A to point B, and by what means, a.k.a, a workflow.

This is important for 3 reasons:

It helps you visualize how your system should work, so that you have a clear picture of your goal.
Figuring out your DPO Flow lays the foundation for all of your organization.
Understanding your DPO Flow lets you replace any tools or devices in your workflow at any given time, with minimal disruption to your digital life.

The foundation of all organization is sorting like with like, and overlooking this piece will have you running in circles. This is your foundation.

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Step 2: Customized Organization

Part two of the framework is implementing customized organizing techniques to keep your memories stored in a neat way and to let you find them faster.

Here’s the thing. There are lots of ways to organize your digital photos:

Folders
Albums
Stacks
Smart Collections
Renaming Files
Facial Recognition
Keywording
Numbering
Twin-Labeling
Geotagging
Ratings

…just to name a few. I’m sure you’re familiar with many of them. The trick is to use the ones that work for you. I don’t believe you have to do everything to be considered organized. Can you? Absolutely. But is it absolutely necessary? No. Choosing a few select techniques that work for you is more than enough.

If you’re a travel photographer, you probably want to use location tags because that would make sense. Do you have to use facial recognition too? No, if you’re shooting landscapes that’s obviously a waste of time.

If you’re a genealogist, however, you might enjoy using facial recognition, but you may not need the locations. Right?

If you love photo editing, you will love having a ratings system in place because it will let you find the photos you want to improve with the click of a button.

What I see happen so often is that people assume they have to do all of it, and the overwhelm of perfectionism holds them back from doing any of it. But picking a few techniques to implement and then improving the system over time is a much better place to start.

(Audrey here - if you have Lightroom Classic and you want a step by step system that lays out exactly how to use it to organise and maintain your photos, be sure to check out our Get Organized In Lightroom Classic course which will help you get organized so you always know where everything is, develop a system for maintaining your image files, and steps to help make sure you can find any image again, at any time!)

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Step #3: DIGITAL MAINTENANCE

The last step of my framework is digital maintenance because it’s not just about getting organized, it’s about staying organized in the long run...and that can be just as tricky.

Maintenance is crucial because you’re going to keep taking photos as life goes on, and your maintenance strategy will help you stay on track with minimal efforts. Most people fall off here because they don’t have the right system in place to begin with, or they think that they don’t have the time for it, but maintenance should be easy, and shouldn’t take you very long. If it does, the system needs to be improved.

So to recap, if we put together your DPO flow, your custom organizing techniques, and your maintenance strategy, that’s your recipe for digital organizing success.

I hope that was helpful for you to hear! Remember - the sooner you get started, the better, and the more memories you will be able to share with those you help you make them!

I wish you all the best in your organizing endeavors!

Thanks so much to Caroline for coming on the blog and sharing her system with us! I have a feeling half of you reading this are thinking that now is the time to get organised, am I right?!?!

If so, my advice is to not put it off for another second, because the longer you leave it, the worse it gets - and I am definitely talking from personal experience here! You don’t have to have to get the whole thing done at once - just get started within the next 24 hours by implementing ONE thing that you learned here today, and that will get you on the right path.

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