Get the Old Family Photos In Order

Posted on December 6, 2014 by pixologie

You just gotta take action!

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.

Posted on December 1, 2014 by pixologie

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

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.

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.

Four Things You Should Do With Your Antique Photos

Posted on November 11, 2014 by pixologie

What’s the oldest photo or album you have?

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.

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

Gather all of them into one place for safe storage
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.
Scan your photos with a flatbed scanner, and the backs of the photos if there is identifying names and dates.
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

We Survived Shark Tank Casting Call Today! : )

Posted on July 21, 2014 by pixologie

What a day we had at Pixologie! A Shark Tank kind of day complete with our 60 second pitch, plenty of photos ops and lots of fun at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Thanks to US Cellular, Shark Tank had the open casting call in Milwaukee today. We’ve had so many people tell us we should submit our business to be on the show – that it seemed like a no-brainer to get in line at 5:30 am this morning to join the line of other would be “bait” for the sharks!

The sunrise at the Milwaukee Art Museum!

At 5:30 am, there was a nice line going around the railing on the South side of the building. We figured we had around 60 people in front of us . . . and the line stretched out down the steps of the museum and just south to Michigan Street. The first people in line had arrived at 2:30 pm the day before and slept overnight! We thought about that – but we are NOT that fanatical about the front row! : )

At 6:00, when we were fresh and ready!

We enjoyed visiting with the other people waiting in line and we definitely made some new friends. In a way, this casting call was like a big networking event. We also had fun watching all the media, Shark Tank staff and US Cellular staff with video cameras interviewing people. We saw fun clothing, a cabinet maker, an awesome type of thermostat, an annual birthday book journal, kitty litter picker-upper, makeup and much, much more.

He created a make-up line!

Finally, Scott Salyers came up to announce the handing out of bracelets. While we waited for ours – he was gracious enough to have his photo taken with us!

With Scott Salyers – funny, funny guy! Made us laugh a lot during our time at the casting call!

And then . . . our Shark Tank bracelet arrived and looks so good below along with our Rustic Cuff bracelet which states “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail!” We are blessed every day knowing that our work will help others learn how photo organization and management can bring memories out of chaos and back into life to be celebrated and shared!

Woohoo! #53 in line!

Around 9:15 we were invited inside and loved, loved the air conditioning! Everyone was encouraged to find a seat where Scott then gave tips, instructions and funny smart aleck remarks. Put everyone at ease! (Like they wouldn’t be timing us with timers; that we didn’t have to be perfect – but be ourselves and do be sure to ask for a specific amount of money. )

The pitches went very fast. Around 10:12 they called the first numbers and by 11:05, I think they were calling us up! In the room where we gave our pitch, they had five tables set up for a quick turnaround. We got set up quickly!

Our pitch went exactly as we planned and practiced. . .

Gave a great, relevant statistic (Yahoo! reports that 1 trillion photos will be taken this year and that is in addition to the 3.5 trillion already taken since the 1800s)
Had a fun visual (ours was a clear container of lots of photos, slides, old albums, VHS tapes all mixed together) – the casting gal said it looked like her mother’s house!
Introduced ourselves and our company
A couple of lines about what we do (Photos out of chaos and into life to be celebrated & shared, etc. etc)
A line about why we are unique (hands-on help, studio location & trademark licensing)
Our ask – you’ll find out what ours was if we are ever on the show! : )

The gal said we did great – and she smiled at us! We don’t think we could have done it any better!

We’ll find out how we did in the next week. If we get a phone call, we’ll get a second interview. No phone call? Well, we had a WONDERFUL time!

Back out into the gathering area, we were so happy that we hadn’t been devoured and spit back out by the casting crew! Then we met Barclay Pollak, from US Cellular’s sister company, TDS to mingle and interview some of us entrants. We had fun telling him about Pixologie – and he asked us how we knew he had lots of VHS tapes at home. (Because everyone over 20 either has VHS tapes or they have their parents!)

Barclay, Ann and another really nice guy – they owe us a video in a month or two! : )

After that we headed over to the US Cellular Semi-Truck Trailer/Entertainment Center and thanked the staff there for helping bring Shark Tank to Milwaukee!

We came, we pitched, we survived!

POSTSCRIPT – To write this blog, I used the photos from two cell phones, a camera card, the camera’s memory, Twitter & Facebook. It was hard! No wonder we need photo organizers! : )

Website: pixologieinc.com

Business Development: pixologiebusinessdevelopment.com

Fantastic Vacation Photos? Don’t bet on your phone or Facebook being the place to store those memories!

Posted on July 16, 2014 by pixologie

Capturing City Center at Dusk in Las Vegas

Viva Las Vegas! I just finished an amazing trip out to Nevada’s hottest spot (literally!) where the day offers beautiful scenic day trips and the nightlife is loud, eye-popping and colorful. Truly a great girls trip to celebrate one turning 40, we took nearly 500 photos!

Some of our best moments . . .

Checking out the Fremont Street Experience
Trekking around Charleston Mountain
Conquering the Strip
Traveling through the Valley of Fire
Sweating it out at Hoover Dam

As a professional photo organizer, I loved all the opportunities to take pictures of these spots with my traditional digital camera. My girlfriends, by comparison, spent some of their photographic time composing selfies with their smartphones.

Such an interesting contrast of how we wanted to capture our vacation. And I learned a lot about how my friends manage their photos. Here’s what I found fascinating as I know many other people have similar habits:

Smartphones are their photo home. One of my friends actually pulled up a photo on her phone from her last Vegas trip which was several years ago.
Facebook is another home of their photos. My other friend was hoping I could upload my photos so they posted on her timeline. As hard as I tried to get my album up so that it would be on her timeline, I couldn’t figure it out. In order to make it work, she took screen shots of my Facebook album to make her own album to post.
Each of them have an iPhone with a PhotoStream to make the sharing process much easier – but they (as many do) found it confusing to access and navigate.

I know that we are bombarded with photo apps and social media opportunities to share our fun memories. And in the short term, this is great. We loved for our friends and family to track what we experienced on our trip.

For the long term, I wouldn’t want to bet on smartphones and social media to be the place where I go to find my photos and enjoy the memories.

Here’s my few suggestions on how to manage your photos once so that the sharing, celebrating and remembering is accomplished all at once!

Take your wonderful photos (all of them – both on smartphone and camera) Delete the ones you don’t want.
Download the photos to your computer – save in a consistent place (Mac – iPhoto; PC – Windows Explorer)
Review again and delete unneeded photos
Then share to your social media, order prints, etc. and enjoy.

I would love to help you with your photo questions. Feel free to email me at mollieb@pixologieinc.com and let’s get your memories in a better place!

In the meantime, enjoy this final selfie of the three of us – it’s my favorite from the whole trip!

Say No To Bad Selfies! : )

Posted on March 20, 2014 by pixologie

Here’s a beautiful selfie of Co-Founder Ann Matuszak’s daughter – who happens to also love photos! (However, this gem of a selfie was found among many, many other goofy selfies!)

We love, love photos at Pixologie!

So, my friend, Paula at Just Add Kids, was telling me about how her kids use her smartphone to take many “selfies.” When she mentioned that, I groaned. (Okay, we don’t love all photos.) Her biggest problem (besides her kids just using the phone) was something like, “Well, how can I delete them?” Admittedly, some of her kids’ “selfies” were adorable, but most of the selfies, in my humble opinion, just needed to be trashed.

I am going to make a categorical statement in my life, “Say No To Selfies.” (hashtag is #saynotobadselfies). After talking with Paula and her assistant, Theresa, we came to the following conclusions:

Selfies clutter our phones.
Selfies, while fun in the moment,tend to desensitize children and teenagers and really seem, at a deeper level, a form of self-disrespect. Consider the headline in a recent New York Times article, “With Some Selfies, the Uglier the Better.” See the link below as it provides an interesting perspective on selfies. I’m not sure how I feel about it all.
They can take away the innocence of a teenager – first, it’s a goofy face; next – a provocative look; then – a daring cleavage shot; and in too many instances – a bikini selfie and worse

Having said all of that, there are some “selfies” that are amazingly awesome. So, after further reflection, I can’t say no to them all, just the bad ones. Selfies can catch a moment in a special, ethereal, way – such as at a wedding – or at the Academy Awards like Ellen did with the most tweeted ever photo!

UPCOMING CLASS

Related to the selfie dilemma, Pixologie and Just Add Kids is offering this class to anyone with too many photos on their phone.

Get Your Photos Off Your Phone!

Pixologie Studio at The Gathering in Oak Creek

8825 South Howell Avenue, Suite 102

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/fashion/selfies-the-uglier-the-better-technology.html?_r=0

Check Out: Just Add Kids – http://www.justaddkidsonline.net

Your Photos Are Calling You . . .

Posted on February 9, 2014 by pixologie

. . . And they want to remind you of so many things!

Truly, in our stacks of printed photos and countless stashes of digital photos, special things are happening:

The road trip to Florida back in 1962, hanging out at the beach!
A daughter’s six birthday where she got her ears pierced for the first time (YES, that’s a milestone!)
The seventh annual family reunion where cousin Mike spent $30 on a white elephant auction for an old raggedy ann doll (Okay, we need to know that story!!!)
A 1918 photo of your great grandfather sitting on his vintage (well, it wasn’t vintage back then) Harley Davidson
The annual trip to California with the kids to visit grandparents (Wow, look at how the kids grew in between trips!)
Family members who have passed away – are smiling and enjoying life

We hear so often from our clients and people we talk with about how they want to work on organizing their photos, get them printed and in albums to enjoy. The common denominator is. . . “I just don’t have the time.”

The truth is this . . . there will never be enough time to spend time with photos and memories. . . unless we DECIDE to DEDICATE the time. By dedicating, we mean “I will work on my photos and nothing will interrupt me, not the kids, not the phone, not the laundry.”

That is where Pixologie comes in . . . with weekend retreats where all you will have is DEDICATED time to put your photos in order, make albums and preserve memories! No matter what format you use to do this, Pixologie will be there throughout the weekend helping, cheering and working with you on these projects!

Retreat to Phantom Ranch, Mukwonago, WI – Friday, March 14, 2014, 4 pm through Sunday, March 16, 2014, 11 am

Pixologie is pleased to invite all gals who need some downtime away from the family to get their photo and video projects done in a beautiful location. While there is no cooking, no cleaning, no children clamoring for attention, this is a RUSTIC getaway with accommodations in cabins complete with bunkbeds and newly renovated bathrooms.

Join us for the weekend where you can work on your projects all night; enjoy beautiful outdoor walks, go for a horseback ride, get a massage, share and get ideas from other women working on their projects and much, much more. This is a great getaway for working on organization, scanning, digital books, scrapbooks and more.

$150 includes lodging, five home cooked meals and Pixologie’s co-founders, Mollie and Ann to help you on your projects when needed. We have a fun bunch of gals who have joined us for the last five years and we promise a great time! Click here to register.

Brrr. . . It’s Cold Outside, Let Memories Warm You Up!

Posted on January 4, 2014 by pixologie

This is a photo I took a couple of days ago – it was 7 degrees out and my seven year old, Alex, wanted to go sledding and tubing really bad. However, he took one ride down too many. As he left the hill, he placed the inner tube on the pile and began walking away, but then looked back for me.

I gave him my hot chocolate and took this photo. He said to me in a shaking, shivering voice, “I am not real stable,” and he hobbled inside. His feet were very, very cold – but it was his expression here that made my heart melt. Alex is a rough and tumble, talking back, trouble making boy normally – but in this moment, he was my baby again!

Without this photo, I absolutely know I would not remember this moment years from now. Can you think of moments you have gotten a snapshot of – that warms your heart? While the weather stays extremely chilly out these next few days – pull out your photo albums and enjoy smiling and laughing at some of your best moments, and maybe even some of the not so good ones!

If you need help figuring out a place to start with getting some of your more recent photos in an album, let us know at Pixologie. We have a great “Pixguide to Getting Organized” flyer to share with you. Email us at contact@pixologieinc.com.

And stay warm!

Welcome to Pixologie’s Blog!

Posted on September 30, 2013 by pixologie

Albums like this are so much fun to look at. Where are your photos now?

Your stories matter . . . and nothing tells a story like a photo from your life! At Pixologie, we aim to help you get started wherever you are at with organizing your photos, whether shuffled in boxes in a closet, lost on your computer or spread around the internet through various social media sites.

Pixologie offers photo solutions including organization, conversion of media and creation of photo related gifts. We can show you, do it with you or do it for you – whichever works the best for your photo dilemmas!

We currently are operating in Southeastern Wisconsin but plan to reach out to cities around the country where people need help with their photos. Does any of this sound familiar?

– 75% of US households own a digital camera
– 86% of all digital images never leave the camera
– 30.4 billion images are saved a year, only 16 billion are printed
– 750 million photos were upload to Facebook on New Year’s Day 2011
– Photos are vulnerable to hard drive crashes and technical obsolescence
– Time is destroying home movies and video tapes such as VHS and Super 81

Are you worried about where your memories are saved and preserved for future generations. Email us today at contact@pixologieinc.com and we will help you get started!

If you know of an entrepreneur who’d want to join us on this journey of helping stories be told, let us know!

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Tag Archives: Photo organization