Using SOAP for Digital Photo Management

This evening, I gave a presentation to the Genealogical Society of Maury County about managing digital photos.

We had a great crowd and there were many questions that came up from the group. I covered 4 principles in my talk:

• • Saving photos
  • Organizing photos (including how & why to add metadata)
  • Accessing your photos
  • Preserving your photos

Using the first letter of each element spells SOAP. We use soap when we clean right? I thought it would be interesting to use the acronym SOAP for thinking about important principles to consider when cleaning up your digital photo strategy! As genealogists, we tend to think about our OLD photos, but we also have photos from our more recent lives that need to be managed to as they, one day, will become historical photos.
Here is a bit more detail about what I covered.

• Saving photos – I covered the need to set up a digital photo hub, principles for choosing what file types to work with (TIFF vs. JPG for example), considerations for how to name your files, how using year first date format for the beginning of your file names aids in photo management, and setting up a back-up plan that adheres to the 3-2-1 rule.
• Organizing photos – we went over ways to organize your files and I shared how I set mine up to model an archives-type framework; discussed what metadata is and how important it is to use metadata that is compliant with industry standards. I especially cautioned against the use of any metadata labeling approach that is not compliant with accepted industry standards. For example, using the Windows operating system is not the way to go for adding metadata because it is not fully compliant with existing metadata standards – it would be shame to do all the work of adding metadata to your photos and then have it lost (that can easily happen when you don’t use an approach that adheres to standards). I presented a free software program that helps you easily add standards-compliant metadata (Adobe Bridge),
• Accessing photos – we talked about preferences for accessing your photos? Is having them on your desktop/laptop good enough?  Do you want access to them via apps on your phone? Do you want your family members to have access? We talked about things to consider and approaches that can help achieve your access goals.
• Preserving photos – I confessed that I’d not really had a good preservation plan for my photos until recently. Sure, I upload my historical photos to FamilySearch Family Tree Memories as I trust FamilySearch will be around for many more years and it is a free way to make those heritage photos easily accessible. However, I just was not happy with any approach I’d considered for my entire photo collection overall; that is until I recently discovered Forever.com.

I covered a lot in 45 minutes huh? Overall, a great evening! Many thanks to the society for the opportunity to share something I love doing and helping bring digital photo order to others. If you’re trying to wrangle your digital photo collection, reach out! I’m happy to share some tips & further details on strategy.

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