Photo Finish

I’m not sure exactly how many photos I have, but suffice it to say, I have a lot. Whether it be paper photos previous to digital, crappy digital photos from that technology’s infancy or full rez photos, I have quite a collection.

I always teased the kids and said, “If there’s a fire, run and grab some photo albums and then meet by the tree out front”. Thank goodness that never happened, because I totally think they would have done just that. Careful what you say to small people!

I’ve begun the oh-my-gosh photo project from hell.

I tried to keep all my digital files in order, because that seems like it would have been easy, right? But between multiple back-ups and drive failures previous to accessible cloud storage, I now have a jumbled mess.

I downloaded a program that supposedly used AI to recognize photos that were duplicates, and it did just that, but with older files, there wasn’t always a (1) or (2) behind the file name to indicate that it’s a duplicate, so that program sometimes deleted both of the files without leaving one on the drive. So I had to go through my trash and restore some photos after I’d realized I’d lost a few older photos of grandchildren. Grrr.

Toss in a persnickety RAM issue that is starting to corrupt files and that’s where I am.

I finally bit the bullet and got a cloud storage account and am in the process of backing up and syncing 578K+ of photos, many of which are probably duplicates. There are also files I still need to back up, so it’s taking quite awhile. I think we are on day 4 and just getting to about halfway. My new dilemma is that there are files that are deemed “too small” and some that are considered “too large” and then others that are “unsupported movie formats” and while it does tell me with files it’s not processing in the moment, I don’t see a way to get a report of which files are not being backed up after it’s done. C’mon, people!!

I’ve resigned myself to a very long process of sorting and sifting digital files. And when I’m tired of sorting digital files, I’ll go upstairs to my photo albums and begin the process of sorting and sifting those. At least the majority of my paper photos are in chronological order and in dated albums. I’m only sifting those because the albums I’d used were smaller fat books that are taking up quite a bit of space in my smaller office.

Sounds like the stage of life I am in. Sort and sift, pitch and purge, save and delete. Making room for new thigs or just reclaiming space, which is peaceful.