Organizing Photos of Twins

My project this weekend, and possibly for the rest of my natural life, is to get my well over 15,000 pictures of my kids organized.  Step one was getting them all in one place, which happened over the course of a week a few months ago.  Next was importing them into Lightroom 5.  It's been a few hours and that's still going on.  I've decided to start the daunting and near impossible task of tagging the pictures that have loaded so far.  An hour and a half in, I'm on 614.  Um, yeah...

It's not like I didn't start out with a system I thought would work.  I fired up iPhoto on my MacBook back in the day (like 2008), saw the tagging options, and went with it.  Little did I realize that a little laptop was in no way going to be able to contain the sheer amount of photos I was going to take in the next 4 years.  "Bogged down system" doesn't even begin to describe my situation in early 2012.

So now the network drive is holding the colossus, with digital and physical backups scattered across various platforms.  I looked through some of the Lightroom 5 video tutorials and decided to give it a free 30 day try.  Within the software, you are presented with a number of ways to rate, flag, tag, and color code your pictures.  What I am primarily interested in was the tagging.

In the case of identical twins, I may be the only person on the planet that can tell them apart in pictures.  It helps that I took them, certainly, but it's also a matter of staring at their faces every single day.  Sometimes you can cheat and use visual clues (different shoes, certain clothes, etc.), and honestly, sometimes I even have to just guess.  The bottom line is, though, if I get hit by a turnip truck tomorrow, I'd like family to be able to know who is who later on.

Facebook has the best tagging, with a giant square smack dab over their faces.  Anyone can come along and figure that out.  All of the other software I've used keeps the tags as essentially text slapped in some data file somewhere.  This presents a problem for me.  Tagging a picture with both "Alex" and "Zach" tells me they are in there somewhere, but not which is which.  So, the best I could come up with is a 4 tag system that looks like this:

LZach, Alex
LAlex, Zach

(c) Lollipopz Photography

The "L" at the beginning stands for "Left", telling me who is on the left side as I am looking at the picture.  So the tags for the above picture would be "LZach" and "Alex", since Zach is wearing the striped shirt.  My rule of thumb is whoever has a body part closest to the left side of the picture wins the "L".  It can get tricky when they are wrestling on the bed, but I'm ok with a small margin of error.  Plus I never just take one photo of anything.  Check the 10 before and after it and I'm sure you can figure it out.

 

I choose to put the "L" first so if I'm typing in the tags, two keystrokes will get me the auto fill for what I want.  If you put it at the end, you're going to have to do more work.

 

This also gives me the potential benefit of being able to find pictures of just one or the other, assuming Lightroom will let me exclude tags.  So if I want ones of just Zach by himself, I'd search for pictures with "Zach" but without "LAlex".  We will see if this is possible.

Top 10 (+1) Things for RV'ing with Kids

We just got back from a 10 day, 1.2k mile RV trip with two 4yr olds and a 1yr old. We drove that 25ft beast through the mountains, tried out a couple of campgrounds, and used it as our primary residence while visiting my parents.  During the trip it became obvious what was important, and what we should have left at home.

Top 11 Things That Were Useful

(Referencing the picture at the top)

1. Headphones for the Kids - On the way up to Ohio, it was amazing how loud the RV was. When I saw them putting the iWhatevers on max volume and holding the speakers to their ears, I knew we had a problem. I ordered these (http://amzn.com/B009396UGM) from Amazon for the trip back and they were awesome! I looked for ones with noise reducers to decrease the chance of hearing damage.

2. Disposable Gloves - If you plan on using anything that would drain into the holding tanks, these are a good idea. You might not have an easy way to wash your hands and dealing with the sewer drain hose is the first and last thing you'll be doing at a campsite. 

3. Quiet Candy - Safe-T-Pops were a big hit and even the 1yr old could handle one himself. When the mongrel horde started chanting "Out! Out!" these appeased them for quite a while. They also helped pop ears in the mountains. Candy necklaces and bubble gum crayons worked, too, for the older ones. Anything that takes a long time to eat fits the bill. 

4. Travel Crib - I don't think a full size pack 'n play would fit on the floor space of a 25ft RV. Plus this thing was way easier to put up and take down everyday. 

We used it on the floor so the table area was available to hold car seats (if we were driving that day) or to quickly transition into breakfast. 

5. Bottled Water - I'm not really taking about the individual ones, but the gallon sizes. While the rental RV comes with a potable water holding tank and a hose hookup, there's no real way to be sure they are sanitary. The giant "DO NOT DRINK THE WATER" sign by the sink was also persuasive. We brought 3 gal with us and used those to fill the coffee maker and our water bottles. The gallon bottles were refilled with clean tap water at my parent's house a few times, too.

6. Hand Vacuum - Honestly, in order of importance, this should be number one. I had no idea how dirty the floor of the RV would get just cruising down the road while the kids ate snacks. I was totally grossed out by day two and borrowed my Dad's hand held vacuum about 30sec after we pulled into their driveway. A stick version would work ok, as would a broom, but a hand held one can also easily clean out crumb filled car seats. 

7. Garbage Bags with Tie Loops - We used the kitchen size and stuck part of the loop over the vertically positioned arm rest of the front seat. This kept the bag both upright and within easy reach to throw things away while buckled in. 

8. Bed Rails - We decided to put Alex and Zach in the bed above the driver's cab. It was the largest bed and if Mason woke up in the middle of the night, I didn't want to descend Mt. Everest to get to him. It's like a solid 5ft drop to the floor, so we used a bed rail tucked under the mattress.  It gave the boys just enough room to shimmy up the side to get in/out by themselves. 

9. Waterproof Shoes - Even if you aren't going to the beach, these will come in handy. The weather is right outside the door of the RV, and you don't want to wear soggy tennis shoes for a week. 

10. King Size Sheet - I asked multiple people multiple times for the bed sizes. (You could rent a linen package for $100. Uh, no thanks.) Everyone told me "They're all queen." The bed over the cab is definitely not a queen. A king size or even a CA king might be your best bet.

11. Coffee Maker - Obviously, if you don't drink coffee, please don't bring one. There isn't a magic use for it or anything! It was just another cost savings for us. If the generator was already running to power the air while we drove, we had power for the k-cup machine*. So rather than trying to find a place to get Jim a decent cup, we made our own.

*The picture shows a regular coffee maker. I wouldn't recommend brewing a pot while in transit!