Photo Archiving: Make Marie Kondo Proud

ALAINA BENSCHING—THE SANTA CLARA

Does that selfie spark joy?

I have been passionate about photography since high school. That is when I started taking photography courses. Ever since my collection of photos has grown exponentially. Even those who don’t intend to always manage to collect a large photo library by the time they graduate college. 

Now that we are social distancing I have finally had the time to dive into my photo archive. I can now dig up under-appreciated photographs and relegate others to the recycling bin. Considering my photography collection once used to be over 15,000 photos this was a big task. 

I will be showing you a few images that I rediscovered because of this process in the hopes it motivates you to do the same.

Luckily, sitting in your home with a cup of coffee is the perfect time to purge your photo collection. The digital camera era encourages the perfection of an image and this results in many similar photos. While there is no harm in getting the perfect pic, it results in a lot of spare photos. If only one in every 10 selfies you take is worth keeping and you aren’t deleting the extras this means your photo library is 10 times bigger than it needs to be.

Besides that, these photos are taking up precious storage space, when you go back to find an old photo the clutter makes your library harder to navigate.

Get a little Marie Kondo into your photo library and start trashing the photos that don’t bring you happiness. Part of this is to trash some of the drafts that may bring you happiness but are inhibiting your enjoyment of your photo collection.

If you do delve into this process, you might find some hidden gems as I did.