LOM as attitude adjuster.

I love my photo organizational system that I have set up based on the process Stacy Julian teaches in Library of Memories at Big Picture Scrapbooking. LOM, as SJ’s students call it, can be a life changing experience, especially for those caught in the trap of thinking that scrapbooking MUST be chronological. Luckily for me, I never thought scrapbooking had to be told in a time based manner. I approached it as an opportunity for story telling, but finding the pictures I wanted to use was time consuming. Enter SJ’s very well thought out and road-tested organizational system. I had read about it in Photo Freedom, and caught glimpses of how it was used in The Big Picture (two of Stacy Julian’s books), as well as in articles and the overall philosophy behind Simple Scrapbooks magazine. This was the key I needed to get more stories told more efficiently.

So, my process as it stands right now goes something like this:
Take pictures. Lots of pictures. Upload to my computer. (I mostly use a digi camera, and occasionally a disposable that I have a cd made of when I develop it.) I use photoshop elements (3.0!) to tag my most scrappable photos with a quarterly tag (ie first quarter for jan-mar, etc.), then I upload those highlights to Shutterfly. When Shutterfly has a free shipping event, I have my highlights printed, and then place them in three ring photo binders that I got at Target. I got 12, and that covers just about all the photos I have. Most people could stop right there, and be set for their scrapbooking life, but then, most of their stories would be event or time-based, as opposed to this wonderful connections idea that SJ talks about.

To get to this connections place, photos have to be taken out of their chronological order and allowed to mingle with photos from other times and places. To do this, I have category drawers (photo boxes actually) separated into themes. For example, one box is for pictures all about us, my immediate family. This is separated into further categories like Ethan personality, Ethan highlights (where I stash a picture or two from significant events during the year), all together, for pictures of all of us, or brothers, for pictures of just my two boys together. How does this work? Well let me give you an example:

My husband had just left for a trip, and I was on kid duty for a long and busy weekend. They had been particularly squirrelly and I had been particularly grumpy, so bedtime was a huge relief. To try to get myself out of the bad mood, I decided to try to scrapbook, and started going through my category drawers. Behind the brothers tab in my all about us category drawer I found these two photos of the boys about two years apart that perfectly described their personalities, their relationship, and just why that evening had been so hard to deal with. A scrapbook page was born.

reasons 2

Now what’s interesting about this is that I recorded a current moment in time, with pictures from three and five years ago. These pictures have nothing to do with what actually happened that day, but everything to do with how that day felt. I would have never been able to find these pictures, let alone put them together on this page, with this subject matter, without LOM.

This is why I love Library of Memories.

Bonus? A big laugh, and a resultant attitude adjustment.

***edited***

Stacy Julian’s offering a new version of her Library of Memories class, and it starts tomorrow! Run, don’t walk, to take this class!

300 x 250

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9 thoughts on “LOM as attitude adjuster.

  1. Alice Boll

    That’s so awesome that Stacy Julian linked to your post in her blog!! Congrats Heather, and great post! I love that you were never tied to chronological scrapbooking… I wish I hadn’t struggled down that path!

    Reply
  2. Heather Post author

    Alice, I’m so glad I never got into chronological scrapbooking! I see that hang up a lot of scrapbookers. So glad you’ve escaped that trap!

    Reply
  3. Pingback: I’ve got those “first-day” jitters!

  4. Olivia

    I love this post and I love Stacy Julian! I bought her e-book and have read it four times. I think I’m having a “disconnect” between the digital images and the printed ones… but your mention of your workflow helps. I thought I needed to print every single image (THOUSANDS!) but it sounds like I need to go through and be more particular.

    I guess I need to also take her class and now it’s closed:( I’ll have to catch it next time for sure!

    Reply
  5. Olivia

    Thank you so much for your help:)

    I am just about ready to organize my photos in iphoto and I know that I need the 4 folders: Places We Go, People We Love, All About Us, and Things We Do. But I am wondering, specifically, what “tags” (iphoto keywords, right?) I should use beyond that?

    Obviously individual family names… any other tags/keywords you have found useful in your experience? I’m afraid to start tagging until I know I have the right tags LOL!

    Reply
  6. Heather Post author

    Olivia, since I don’t do a lot of digital scrapbooking, I don’t do a lot of digital organizing. In iphoto, I put together smart albums for each quarter, and flag the ones from each quarter that I want to print, and then upload those to Shutterfly for printing. I do all my other organizing with those printed photos.
    About the only other organizing I do in iphoto is to make use of the faces function. Have you tried that? That’s a lot of fun 🙂
    I have some friends who teach digi classes. I’ll see if any of them have suggestions for photo organizing classes that you can take.

    Reply
  7. Olivia

    Thank you! That information helps:)

    I went back through her book Photo Freedom and that gave me some categories to ponder… I’m trying to discern what to make albums out of and what to label with “keywords.” You must have a newer version of iphoto because I don’t think my iphoto 6 has FACES, but it sounds awesome!

    I think I’ll take the Cathy Zelke class (from Big Picture Classes) in early April and see if that helps. I appreciate ALL of your tips- thank you!!

    Reply

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