Does LA Need Photo Help?

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This past week, I had the opportunity to take Pixologie on the road to LA for Craig Duswalt’s Rockstar Marketing Bootcamp. We love talking about photo organizing and thanks to seeing Craig at our national conference back in March, Pixologie produced its first book, A Simple Guide to Organizing Your Family Photos (more about the book in another post!) We thought we would have a blast attending his full conference.

Our booth at the conference

Here’s what stands out . . .

  1. Visiting with a statistician on our plane ride to LA – Susan explained that she really didn’t think she cared about saving her photos, wanting to look forward instead of back. Our conversation led us to a description of her antique family scrapbook albums from the late 1800s. When we described how we would save the photos that mattered (identifiable people, situations, etc.), she was horrified at the thought of disassembling the album. She admitted she cared more than she thought.
  2. Meeting a woman who lived not far away from our conference – her house had recently burned down in the wildfires that plague California. Fortunately, her family is safe, having been evacuated from the area prior to the fires getting to her home. However, the evacuation process was fast and allowed for no time other than getting the family and dog out safe. She said, “We were given 30 seconds to grab what we could. Taking the photo albums was not an option.”
  3. Considering our host, Craig Duswalt’s own story of lost photos from decades ago. As the Personal Assistant to Axl Rose and touring with Guns N Roses, Craig experienced a world we can only imagine. He was fortunate enough to attend an event where he could get pictures with musical legends . . . but he accidentally left his camera at a restaurant with all of those amazing moments gone forever. Now, back then, the camera was loaded with film, but we know how it feels in today’s digital world what it is like to lose priceless photos.

We thought this would be a fun time and it was! And, yes, the people we met while in Los Angeles have photos they need to sort and get back into their lives – as do people everywhere we go!

Darla DeMarrow, HeartWork Organizing and Melinda Hartman Hollis, Out of the Box, joined us in helping to talk about saving photos.

 

 

 

Do you need help with a place to start organizing your photos? Give us a call (414) 731-1881 or email us here – contact@pixologieinc.com . . . we’ll send you our QuickPix Guide to Organizing Your Photos & Media!

Pixologie – www.pixologieinc.com

Follow us on Facebook: Facebook.com/pixologie

 

Setting An Audacious Goal – 250,000 Photos Saved!

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By Ann Matuszak

Goals. We all have them, personal and professional. Goals. We set them frequently, achieve them more sporadically. If you have truly set a goal, then you don’t quit until you achieve it and if necessary you bring in the support you need to make it happen.

Pixologie is known for setting big goals, in fact, we call them Audacious Goals. On the cusp of Save Your Photos Day, Pixologie and Friends is inviting everyone in the Photo Organization, Family Story Telling and Photography world to join us on achieving a truly Audacious Goal. In the next 10 days, we want to save, preserve and protect 250,000 photos by scanning and digitizing them.

As reported by Gary Pageau in PMA, a recent study by Kodak Alaris found that fully one-third of British smartphone users have lost photos and that 46% of them are worried about accessing their photos in the future. As members of the Association of Photo Organizers (APPO) and one of the founding members of the Save Your Photos Alliance, we are committed to offering solutions for these realistic fears. We all know that photos matter. Photos connect, inspire, enrich and celebrate lives.

With the power of our Kodak Alaris Picture Saver Scanner PS50 and PS80, we are ready to get to work. Well, to be honest, we have already done 20,000+ but we are just getting started!

We are thrilled to have Pixcel, PixologieCarolinas, PixologieTeam and E-Z Photo Scan already committed to sharing their numbers. Want to be part of an Audacious Goal? Join in by scanning a photo, back it up in two places, save it to offsite storage like Reflectera or Forever and then get on board by sharing your scanning numbers using #Audacious Goals in your social media posts or emailing me – annm@pixologieinc.com!

We will collect numbers thru October 4th and post the total on October 5th. Scan a photo; save a story. Scan 1,000 photos; save a family history. Every single one matters. Ready to blow the lid off an Audacious Goal? Let’s start scanning!

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Feel the Memories Coming Back . . .

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And Grab a Kleenex!

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We had two of our clients cry this week . . . the emotions of really looking back at their photos caused tears to well up and overflow. Kleenex anyone?

I can empathize . . . See the photo up above – that’s me, my dad, sister, mom and Grandma along with the family dog – Duchess. I honestly don’t even remember this day but we were having some fun! To see us all from over thirty years ago, young, alive together makes me want to grab my own kleenex and blow my nose.

Amazing the power of looking back. Here’s the low down on the client tears this week:

  •  a 70 something grandma watching a digitized 8mm film from 1962 – when she saw her dad walking her two-year-old on the computer screen, she put her hand to her mouth, sucked in her breath and her eyes glistened. Long, long gone memories instantly bringing about feelings and emotion.
  • a 30s mom with her two little children in the studio – scanning photos for a project for her husband’s 40th birthday and then editing them for a Pinterest project. . . just saying “he’s not going to believe I did this” and she teared up as she looked at the memories in their photos.

What photos bring tears to your eyes? It’s natural to have these feelings, after all, photos connect generations and celebrate life. When you haven’t seen those memories in years, sometimes, decades, the photos can have a powerful effect on you. Don’t let a mess of photos stop you from looking back. We would be happy to help get you a starting point for your memories.

More of my own reminiscing – see the photo below – that’s my dad sending our lab down a slide. Thank goodness Duchess seems to make it down without flipping over the side!

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Lastly, a couple more photos from the few taken that fall day in the park with our grandma. . . For many reasons, I’ll take those tissues again!

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The Secret to Organizing Your Photos While Exercising!

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Oh the joy of killing two birds with one stone!

I really hate that analogy because I have never willingly killed a bird (just accidentally with the car.) Okay – on with what has to be one of the first times ever someone has organized her digital photos while exercising!

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Seriously, this is me this morning with my iPhone 5 and my trusty elliptical. (Sorry you aren’t getting a photo of me running on the elliptical organizing my photos – lol – I have some dignity!)

About a month ago we started testing a new photo organizing solution called Mylio.

Mylio is a photo management software system that works both on the desktop and as an app on phones and tablets. Mylio helps you gather, organize and access all of your photos across all your devices, anytime, anywhere. Mylio is available via annual subscription

I have Mylio installed on several of my devices including my laptop and my iPhone with an account dedicated to our Pixologie photos from our studio and our events. This means all my Pixologie photos are synced between my devices. When I make a change on one, it will update on my other devices. I needed to do some catch up sorting photos from the last month which I hadn’t gotten to yet.

While I was running on my elliptical this morning and playing my Bonnie Tyler Pandora station, I thought, how am I going to get through the next half hour of boring exercise? Then it it hit me, I could organize those photos waiting for me. I picked up the iPhone started up my Mylio app and sorted over 200 photos and deleted ones I didn’t need. The time flew by!

Then, when I went to my laptop sitting on my kitchen table, I could see that my updates from my phone had already synced to my laptop. See the screenshot below.

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This is my Pixologie Mylio account with 1800 photos in it. My personal Mylio account has 17,000+ photos in it.

Unbelievable! Two tasks that sometimes seem like a chore (exercising and photo sorting) – when combined was amazing, beautiful, wonderful!

If you have photos on multiple computers, tablets and/or iPhones, you might want to learn more about Mylio. We are excited to be offering it in person at our studio and online at our Pixologie Store. For clients who purchase it through us, we offer a complimentary Open Studio Time to get you up and running comfortably with it!

Want to learn more about Mylio? Check out their website at www.mylio.com.

Happy exercising & photo sorting!

Top Three FAQs About Family Slides

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We wrote about the importance of families looking at their slides a few weeks ago. Here’s some frequently asked questions about getting slides converted at Pixologie.

Question: I have thousands of slides and have heard it is pretty expensive. How much does it cost?

Answer: We have two main options for our clients to have slides converted to a digital file.

  1. WE DO IT – Slide conversions cost 59 cents each and include color correction, dust removal and digital organizing.
  2. YOU DO IT – Our clients are welcome to come to our Open Studio Time which is $15 for three hours. You can use our simple Wolverine Converter at no extra charge and scan your slides yourself. We will be there to help answer any questions and assist with technical difficulties.

In either case, we can work with clients to prepare a quote that meets your needs while ensuring your memories are ready to digitally save and share.

Question: I think there are way too many travel scenes from my parent’s vacations with nobody in them. Do I need to save those?

Answer: We believe that the best slides are pictures of people you know – families doing things together, celebrating milestones and growing up. With that being said, we have seen that many, many slides have been taken of landscapes. We recommend perhaps saving a few of the very best landscape shots to keep with the family vacation photos.

Question: How do I save the digital files of my slides with my other photos?

Before answering this, we need to mention that we recommend saving all your digital photos on your computer in one place (free options include Pictures folder on a PC and iPhoto on a Mac). Here are some naming recommendations for your files of digital photos:

MAC – Save your slides as an event in iPhoto:

  • 1970s Slides or
  • 1960 to 1980 slides

PC – Name your folder as follows: YYYY-MM-DD Description.

Examples of this on a PC include:

  • 2010
  • 2010-01
  • 2010-02-17 Valentine’s Day

And then, so your folders will fall in date order, name your slide folders with the date first:

  • 1970s Slides
  • 1950s to 1975 Slides

If you are feeling ambitious, you can subdivide the folders into months and family events.

We’d love to help you get your slides converted now! There are too many family lessons and stories to be told from those memories to wait any longer. Here’s two ways we can help:

NUMBER ONE – COMPLIMENTARY SLIDE PICK-UP!

In February – FREE SLIDE PICKUP! We will come to your home and meet with you to pick up your slides. Please contact us to arrange this (within 100 miles of Milwaukee) at 414-731-1881 or email: contact@pixologieinc.com.

NUMBER TWO – OPEN STUDIO TIME TOOLS

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Come into our studio, for three hours, it’s only $15. Use our slide projector, slide sorter and more to figure which slides you want to save. Then you can use our Wolverine scanner to convert them yourself or have us professionally convert your slides for you!
No matter what you decide, it’s time to get those old slides out of their carousels and back into life to celebrate and share the memories!

website: www.pixologieinc.com

Photo Mess Resolutions? 4 Steps to Start Fixing It Now!

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Got photos in your Near Year’s resolutions this year? This blog is definitely geared for anyone who has piles, boxes, envelopes, old albums and more of photos, slides and negatives that need some work. And, it is geared for anyone who has camera cards, smart phone picture libraries, tablets, computers, social media full of photos that need to be saved. If you have photos in both print and digital chaos, here are three steps to start fixing it now.

STEP ONE – Traditional printed photos, slides & negatives – Start collecting all of your pictures into one place in your home. Having all of your photos, etc. in one area will help you figure out what you are dealing with and making a priority list.

STEP TWO – Digital photos – Create a folder on your computer with a name you’ll remember (My Favorite Pictures, Super Special Pictures Collection or Smith Family Photos). Start saving all of your photos to this one folder including downloading them from emails, social media and more. You can create subfolders for each date, event, etc. We recommend the naming convention of YYYY-MM-DD Description – which will help your folders display in date order properly. For example:

  • 2014-12-10 Christmas Concert
  • 2014-12 December Phone Photos
  • 2014 – Social Media Downloaded Photos

STEP THREE – Be consistent with working on your photos – always put your printed photos you are given or photos that you find with the other photos you have organized. For your digital photos, each week take time to download photos to your Picture Folder, transfer photos from your devices to that folder.

STEP FOUR – Plan the time and a location to work on bringing it all together. Some of our clients at Pixologie have had over 15,000 printed photos, 200,000 digital photos or over 100 years worth of photo mess. An average photo collection of our clients includes 12,000 to 16,000 moments and memories. If you are in a similar situation, you will not get this done in a day at home.

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Get out of the house on a photo retreat for a weekend or come to Pixologie for a workshop and ongoing studio time to get motivation, tips, ongoing cheerleading and inspiration to continue on getting your photos out of chaos and back into life to be celebrated and shared.

Here’s Pixologie’s offering of services, products and workshops to help you get started.

We’d love to you help you with a plan – don’t hesitate to call, email or Facebook us if you have questions on how to get started with your New Year’s photo resolutions!

web: www.pixologieinc.com

email: contact@pixologieinc.com

phone: 414-731-1881

Get the Old Family Photos In Order

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You just gotta take action!

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Eileen and Sue (my mother-in-law and cousin!) came to our Open Studio Time to get a move on a family photo project we’ve all been talking about for nearly five years now. The project is to create a family history photo book on the Bartelt/Kroenig side of our family.

It was great to see them at work beginning the sorting process of the old photos and lots of smiles and laughs as they dug into the bin full of photos. We set the gals up at a table with some paper to make sorting easier.

Taking action on photos is MUCH easier when you don’t do it at home – where you’ll be interrupted by the phone, other household items, family and more. Check out the video below to see what happens when you can finally look at those photos you’ve been overwhelmed with!

Our Open Studio Time is $15 for three hours and includes the use of our flatbed scanner and Flip Pal scanner and much more. Plus we are there to give you tips and ideas on how to tackle your photo chaos! Ask us about our Photo Chaos Tamer Card!

http://www.pixologieinc.com

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I can’t do it. I just can’t.

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Confessions from professional photographer, artist and our business consultant, Rosie

I Can't Do It!

NOTE: Photo taken by someone who is NOT a professional photographer!

Original at: http://www.rosiehartmann.com

Photo organization, I can’t do it.  It is really funny actually. Most artists do not like the business side of working within the different avenues of the art world. They find it horrifying. They can look at their pictures and get them tagged, filed and findable. With the software today like Picasa, where you can easily use the face finder function and tag people it has gotten so much easier.

Me? I would rather work on the business side then organize and tag pictures. You may as well just apply the most de-motivated poster to me. It’s ironic that the business I do the most consulting for is a photo organization business.

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It is also humorous that I choose the water drop oldie but goodie picture for yesterday. One week I shot over 1,500 pictures a day in search of the perfect method to get water drop pictures.  I was obsessed. Yet, I could not even spend 3 hours on organizing all of those shots yesterday.

I can’t organize this mess. I have over 115,000 shots in my library.  That number is where I stopped counting. I have filled almost a terabyte of space with pictures. So in the spirit of giving up, I am going to go paint my kitchen cabinets black now.  If I am lucky, while I am doing that my sister will come over and take control of my photo mess.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Pixologie to the rescue, hang tight, don’t despair – Rosie! We’ve got your back – and anyone else who needs help with their photo chaos!

Call us at 414-731-1881

Email at contact@pixologieinc.com

Check out our website: http://www.pixologieinc.com.

Let the Holidays Begin, Tell Some Stories!

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Wow, it is the week of Thanksgiving, here we go!

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The photo up above is funny and wouldn’t we love to know the story behind that turkey! Not your typical November photo.

Goodness, of all the photos we have helped people sort, it seems like the most consistent piles of photos we find – are those taken during the holidays. Year after year, we can see children and their parents grow older – at Thanksgiving with the turkey;during December with Santa photos, at Christmas opening gifts and during New Year’s celebrations!

We have something special to think about related to stories, family and blessings.

Last week, we heard about a man who was blind and who would tell his family when they traveled to take lots of pictures. When asked why this was so important to him, he replied, “I may not be able to see the photos, but when you all look at the photos and talk about what you did – I love hearing the stories you tell about what happened on your trip.”

Photos do matter, they tell stories that we might not otherwise remember.

During the holidays is the best time to haul out some old photos and albums or family videos and reminisce about things that have been long forgotten!

Four Things You Should Do With Your Antique Photos

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What’s the oldest photo or album you have?

Antique Photo Album

One of our clients gave us a truly historic antique book filled with heritage portraits to scan. He knew that all of the photos were of his mother’s family . . . and he knew the names of a couple of the people in the book.

Just look at how beautiful and fragile this album is.  We gingerly opened it and used our Flip Pal scanner to gently scan the photos. The album was made to slide the portraits into slots and we couldn’t remove them due to the risk of tearing the pages.

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Here’s four things you should do with your antique photos as soon as you can!

  1. Gather all of them into one place for safe storage
  2. Sit down with your family’s historian or oldest living relative and start identifying who is in the old photos. Use a post it on the back of the photo temporarily. Enjoy the reminiscing.
  3. Scan your photos with a flatbed scanner, and the backs of the photos if there is identifying names and dates.
  4. Tag the photos digitally with the name of the relative or use other photo organizing software to document the story behind the portrait.

Save the photos, portraits and save the stories!

My mom had a photo of her Uncle Barnny – and he was quite the character. I still have the photos and the stories of how he set their house on fire with his moonshine operation in the basement. Maybe I’ll write about that in another blog!

Let us know if you need any help with preserving the old family portraits, albums and photos – we’d be glad to teach you how, do it with you or do it for you!

www.pixologieinc.com

414-731-1881