Taking a photo a day is a great way of recording big and little moments of life, from family activities to the weather. I’ve taken a photo a day for the last two years and learnt it is important to have a Project 365 organisation system to keep on top of all the pictures you take. The tasks I’ve found hardest are collating the pictures I’ve taken on different devices and selecting just one picture for each day. I describe my process below and you can watch me work through the process in a YouTube video linked at the bottom of the post.
Collating pictures

Each week I usually have pictures on my phone and camera, but I could also have them on our SLR or my daughter’s camera depending on which was to hand when I took a picture. It is important to collate these pictures in one place so I know I’ve looked at all my pictures for that week before selecting my favourite. My process is:
- create a sub folder within your Project 365 folder structure for the week; I have my Project 365 folder on a memory stick so I can review the pictures on my tablet as well as my computer
- transfer photographs from all memory cards and devices and save them in your usual folder structure; ours is organised by year and has a subfolder for each child and event
- search these folders for photos taken during the relevant week; instead of going into each subfolder, I go to the folder for this year and use the search functionality to find photographs modified during the week
- copy these pictures to the relevant subfolder in your Project 365 folder; it is important to copy them so you retain them within your main folders
All your photographs for that week are now collated in the same place ready for review.
Selecting pictures
Digital cameras are great as we are able to take several pictures of the same event to make sure we get a good one, but it does mean it is harder to select just one photo for each day as there is so much more choice. Sometimes it is easy to select pictures because you’ve only taken one, but for days at a party or on holiday you may have taken tens or hundreds, and I admit some weeks I create scrap layouts with eight pictures; but never any more. My process is:
- rename pictures so the filename shows the date the picture was taken; I change mine in bulk using Bulk Rename and rename them in the format YMD with a sequential number added on the end
- create a sub folder called “Not use”
- review photographs and move any you don’t want to use in to the “Not use” folder, keeping an eye on the dates in the file names to make sure you retain at least one picture for each day
- review your final pictures and decide if you like the balance of pictures and if not look for alternatives in your “Not use” folders; I like to have a mix of people and non people for each week
- present your pictures using your chosen method
My aim with my Project 365 scrapbook layouts is to have a summary of the year so I want to be able to look at a page and be reminded of the things we’ve been up to, so when I’m choosing my pictures I select the ones that tell the best story of the day instead of the best photograph.
What is your Project 365 organisation system? What works and doesn’t work for you? What are your tips for completing Project 365?

It’s really interesting how differently others organise their photos.
I copy all of mine from the device onto my laptop ‘phone’ folder. Get rid of dodgy photos, edit from there, then copy into relevant folders…N (split by year and week), days out/hols, family, friends, farm, landscape, blogging, photography etc. Then from there I decide on a photo per day and copy them into my 365 2015 folder, and rename.
I do think I need to go through and reorganise my photos of N into events though by year, and I need to pull out my living arrows photos, so I can do a video of all of them – when I get round to it.
I agree it is fascinating Emma and I look out for new ideas to improve our system. I started developing a method to sort my photographs back in 2009. It has changed a fair bit since then and I’ll write a post about it at some point. Our systems sounds similar in parts, although I’m not good at removing the dodgy pictures. I tend to copy them over and plan to edit them later…
It was certainly easier to organise photographs before I was using them on the blog and videos, where I may need to store them in two places. Something that is on my task list is to get better at using photoshop organiser so I can tag and rate pictures.
Thank you for this post. There are some really useful tips. Bulk Rename may change my life!
Thank you for your comment Claire. I agree about Bulk Rename it is a great software although a little daunting at first as there are so many options, but that means you can rename your files in any format you’d like.