Get ready. I’m about to reveal just how dorky I am.
First, does anyone else remember sitting around with the family watching home movies or slideshows back in the 70s or 80s?
This was long ago before we all had mini-computers in our pockets and could watch a slideshow of family photos anytime we like.
Maybe I’m goofy and nostalgic, but to me, it seemed more special when we sat around together and watched them on a big screen. There was something magical about reliving shared experiences and travels together while watching those photos and videos.
That’s why I’m so happy and geeked out that our little fam recently had a wonderful evening watching a slideshow of every photo I have of my husband and daughter together.
It was super easy to create this slideshow, thanks to a few incredible Apple/iPhoto features. Technology allows photos to easily be organized by who’s in them, making it very simple to create a folder of all your photos of a particular person or people.
Then, you simply right-click from the photo folder and choose “slideshow” in order to watch a fluid presentation of all your photos and videos strung together. It overlays generic instrumental music with the show, but you can easily mute that and play better music while you watch together on your iPhone or Apple computer.
Better yet, if you have a Roku device or Apple TV, you can stream the slideshow to the largest screen in your house. That’s what we did and it made for a nostalgic and heartwarming evening as a family.
I’m so glad we discovered the ability to do this right before my parents’ visit. I can’t wait to show them a slideshow of photos of our family all together on our various travels and adventures. I’m sure my folks will love it as much as we do.
Having a gazillion photos on your phone is so much more enjoyable when they are nicely organized and easy to find. I have a ton of memory on my phone – after all, it’s our family’s photo library (and also backed up in the cloud) – so keeping them organized is key for me.
I take time each month to put that month’s photos in an album (I name them with the year first, i.e., “2022 January,” for ease of use later). I also take a bit more time to select all my favorites and save that into a smaller “best of the month” album. If we’ve taken a trip that month, I organize trip highlight photos in their own separate album.
In addition, every few months when I find myself with time on my hands, I also go through my phone and organize all my favorite images of E, Z, E and Z together, Z and I together, or other family members into their own albums, too.
This makes is so much quicker and easier whenever I want to go back and make a slideshow, video or another photo project with those particular images. You might be thinking, “why not just search when you have the need for a particular photo?”
And I do use photo search – but with more than 162K photos and videos on my phone, searching can be time-consuming. It’s better if I stay organized as I go.
Photo search can help you find photos of particular people or things. It can also help you find images from a specific date – like Christmas Eve or Christmas. Put all those photos into a folder and then you have the perfect slideshow to stream on your TV on the big morning while you all open your gifts. Talk about Christmas magic.
Are you a pro at keeping your photos organized – or is this something you hope to start in the new year? Let me know if you think I should share more about photo organization and all the ways I use our family’s photos. As you can see, it’s somewhat of an obsession for me!
