Is The Shoebox or Hard drive Easier?

We all have one or more; mine used to be under my bed... and in my closet, and oh, I think there still is a box in the attic. Pictures from all points of my life. Some I took, others my friends sent me, lots from Mom and Dad. Classic shots from college, embarrassing shots from my senior prom, tons and tons of shots of my kids. My Mom has always loved nature photography and regularly sends us photos of animals and birds she sees on the lake and mountain they live on in Maine, complete with captions and names for each animal on the back of the photo!

So many photos piled in boxes, storage containers and drawers, unseen for years, awaiting some elusive quiet time I will spend creating amazing scrapbooks and photo albums. Thank goodness for the digital photography revolution! No more unwanted prints, piles of photos, or un-categorized heaps. We can just shoot our pics, upload them to our home computer, and sleep easy each night knowing that the archiving of our lives through photographs is safe, organized and accessible.

Or is it? Now I have gigabytes of files with cryptic numbers for file names, and so many different ways to organize, tag, save, file and view my photos that I don't know where anything is anymore! My system tray on my desktop has so many different software program icons all running something related to my photographs, I am sure I am giving away some terrible rights to some unknown cyber foe.

All I know is that 98% of the pictures I have taken throughout my life go unseen, stored away and pretty much inaccessible. There has to be more I can do to make it easier to see my favorite images, enjoy the memories and moments captured in my mind and in photographs, and share them with friends and family. I'm going to use this blog as a way to sort out everything from cool ways to manage and enjoy my photos digitally to new ways to share them with the people in my world. I'm also going to put ideas and projects that celebrate personal style and the things that make us unique. My mantra - Dude, it's your life. Make it your own.

Please share your ideas and comments with me as well. I'd love to make this a spot for cool, creative people to share the ways they celebrate themselves and their friends and family's uniqueness.