Here are some common questions that will help you understand how Professional Photo Organizing works. If you have a question that is not answered on this page, please ask.

What can you do for me?

• Organize your life collection of photographs. This involves organizing your digital photos, and digitizing your prints and albums. Many people feel overwhelmed and stressed by the prospect of organizing their digital photos, not to mention their life’s photo archive. Letting a competent professional handle the job could save you hours of headaches, stress and anxiety.
• Back up all of your photos and data onto an external hard drive and show you how to easily continue backing up your files. Read more about back-up strategies.
  
• Build you a new web site. For that matter I can supply the photographs that will make your website sparkle. Read more about our website design and photographic services.

Why should I hire you?
Experience and expertise. The methods I use to organize your photographs are the very same ones I have used every day for years on my own digital photo archive of almost 200K images. I am an imaging professional with 35 years in business, and an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop.

How do I get started?
The first thing you do is contact me to set up a free 30-minute phone consultation. During this initial conversation, I’ll get a pretty good idea of the size of your collection, the scope of the organizing project, what it will cost you, and what you might need – if anything – for backing up all of your photos.

So how does it work?
Briefly, we schedule a Gathering Session, usually at your premises, to gather your photos from all of your devices (phones, cameras, memory cards, disks, drives etc.) onto an external hard drive. I take the drive with me, and sort your photos into chronological folders. I return your external hard drive to you, containing all of your digital images, freshly organized. At this time, I set you up with a back-up plan, training you how to back up your photos to keep them safe, going forward. Read a detailed description of the digital photo organizing process.

What about my physical photos – prints that I have stored in shoe boxes and albums?
Prints and slides are scanned on professional equipment at high resolution (600 dpi). If you have albums you want digitized, I scan them page by page, or if they are large-dimension books, photograph them using professional high-resolution Canon DSLR cameras. The scans are integrated into your Photo Hub, in their own folder/s. The loose photos are returned to you in acid-free archival boxes. Read more about scanning prints and albums.

Will I need to buy any products or software?
You will need an external hard drive for this project, or a cloud back-up service. I strongly recommend both. “Industry Best Practice” is to have one back-up nearby (the external hard drive), and one off-site (either another hard drive, or a cloud back-up). Hard drives (1TB) start at $70. Both Mac and Windows have built-in backup tools so you may not need to purchase software, though there are some excellent programs available at low cost. I’ll do my best to find the most cost-effective solutions for you.

What will it all cost?
The price depends on the size of your collection, the complexity of image retrieval, and the breadth of services that you need from me. When you call for your free consultation I will be able to give you an estimate. When it comes to organizing, everybody is different. One question you want to ask yourself: “What is the cost of not organizing and not backing up my life collection? What is the cost of losing my photos and documents if my hard drive fails?” Hopefully you will think of this project as an investment, not as an expense.

Can I do it myself?
Yes it is possible for you to do this yourself, and if this is the route you choose, you can hire me at an hourly rate for training, if you like. However, it is time-consuming learning these new skills; most people prefer to take the aggravation out of it and hire a professional. Learn more about training and coaching.

Are you a photographer?
Yes, I’m a photographer, artist, teacher and website designer. It was shortly after going fully digital nearly twenty years ago that I developed an organizing system of renaming my photos using a combination of eight numbers and letters that identify the subject and date of the photo.

Will my files be safe?
First, we back up all of your files before we embark on this project. Second, your files will be far safer organized onto a single hub than they would be scattered all over your computer, where they are prone to be accidentally sent to the trash bin. What’s more, you can sleep peacefully at night knowing that they are entirely backed up.

What computer platforms do you support?
Mac and PC.

Where do you do the organizing?
I do it both at your house (or place of business) and at my office. It’s usually easier for the initial Gathering Session of photos to take place at your site. Then I take the external hard drive with me, to organize it at my office. I return this to you after it has been organized.

So let’s say you organize my photos. What happens going forward? What’s to prevent me from falling back into chaos?
When I deliver your freshly organized hard drive to you, I show you how to download new photos to your library, and how to back up, both to your external drive, and to the cloud. The goal is to get you to a place where you are comfortable maintaining your Photo Library. If you want me to return for periodic maintenance you may certainly do so, but you are not locked into any maintenance plan.

What else can you do for me?
I take pictures. Lots and lots of pictures.
Read more about other services.