lightroom for memory keepers

me and memory keeping go way back.  in fact, long before i knew anything about photography or scrapbooking or lightroom, i was keeping memories.

pictures have always been at the heart of my memory keeping…especially once i got married.   and my camera of choice was the trusty olympus 35mm point and shoot camera that my parents gave tripp and me for a wedding gift.  it went everywhere with us, and taking pictures of our life together became second nature.

back then, (you should know that i’m sort of half smiling and half grimacing as i type this, thinking of the early 90’s as ‘back then’) my ‘photography workflow’ consisted of snapping a roll of film and then dropping it off at the grocery store.  a day or two later, i would stop by the store, hand the clerk the stub i ripped off the developing pouch, and the watch as they flipped through the giant tubs of alphabetically-sorted photo packets.  once i had the photos in my hot, little hands, i would rush out to my car where i would sit in the front seat of my car and flip through my photos.

oh how i thought my heart my burst seeing my baby’s smile being reflected back to me in those photos.  and the joy of reliving our first family vacation together.  and a million other memories, big and small.  there in my hands…my memories made tangible.

as for memory keeping, back then (ahem) i would sort through my packet of photos and pick out my favorites.  i would usually write on the back some little snippet about where we were and what we were doing.  finally, i would slide the photos into the 4×6 plastic sleeves of my photo albums and place the film negatives (along with any of the photos i didn’t use) into a box.  and depending on where we lived at the time, those boxes could have resided at the top of my closet, under my bed, or (as is presently the case) in the cupboards in the basement.

as time went on and my memory keeping evolved into a full-blow scrapbooking obsession, my photographic workflow didn’t really change much at all until about ten years ago when digital cameras started gaining in popularity.  i loved that i was no longer limited to the number of exposures on a roll of film, and as the digital technology got better and better, i started taking more and more pictures. fast forward to 2010 and my first DLSR camera, and i think the rest is pretty much history.

but there was catch.  all of the freedom that came with digital photography….it created a whole new set of headaches.  no longer was i having to keep track of boxes of photos, but now i also had to keep track of the hundreds (thousands!) of image files residing on my computer’s hard drive.

these past several years, i have employed several different methods for keeping up with my digital image files – from a couple of folders to a complicated hierarchy of directories.  but no system offered me a complete solution to the problems of 1) finding a particular photo in my dizzying labyrinth of folders and 2) getting my photos off of my computer.  that is until i started using adobe’s lightroom software.

if you’ve been following along my photography journey for very long, you’ll know that i initially got started using lightroom for its creative editing tools.  but once i discovered all of the organization features that lightroom has to offer, i was finally able to get my digital files under control.  and as a memory keeper, it has made my entire photographic workflow faster and more efficient.

that’s why i am super excited to share with you my new class at big picture classes – Lightroom for Memory Keepers.

i am really proud of this class and the course material…it was truly a labor of love.  it combines all of the organizational features in lightroom that i love with my passion for memory keeping and real, live photos.  and my hope for this class is that it will arm you with the tools to create a photographic/memory keeping workflow that works for you.

finally, i would like to express my sincerest gratitude to all of you who read my blog.  every kind word and every encouraging comment has given me the courage and confidence to continue to pursue my creative goals…i am, and will always be, so profoundly grateful.

love, kelly