Episode 103: How Photo Organization Nurtures Your Well-Being with Lida Bunting

Episode Description:

In Episode 103 of Wellness in Every Season, I sit down with the talented Lida Bunting of Znimka Creations to uncover how photo organization can play a powerful role in nurturing well-being. Lida takes us on her journey from working in construction to finding her passion in photo management, where she helps families connect, preserve memories, and build meaningful legacies. Together, we explore the emotional impact of photos, how they can jog memories for aging loved ones, and the ways photo organization supports emotional, psychological, and social wellness.

Packed with practical tips and heartfelt stories, this episode will inspire you to tackle your photo clutter and transform it into something beautiful and meaningful. Whether it’s organizing digital photos or creating a special memory book, Lida’s insights will motivate you to start preserving your memories today.

You can follow Lida Bunting by subscribing to her monthly mailer, where she shares trends, articles, and updates. You can also read her blog and connect with her on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn:

•Facebook

•YouTube

•LinkedIn

One last thing to cover the show legally. I am a certified life coach giving general advice. So think of this more like a self-help book. This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not a licensed therapist. So this podcast shouldn't be taken as a replacement for professional guidance from my doctor therapist. Or any other qualified expert? If you want personal one-on-one coaching for my certified coach. Go to my website, wellness and every season.com. 

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Transcript

Episode 103 How Photo Organization Nurtures Your Well-Being with Lida Bunting

Introduction and Guest Welcome

Autumn Carter: Episode 103 

 Welcome to Wellness in every season, the podcast where we explore the rich tapestry of wellness in all its forms. I'm your host. Autumn Carter is certified life. Coach turned wellness coach as well as a certified parenting coach, dedicated to empowering others to rediscover their identity and their current season of life. My goal is to help you thrive both as an individual and as a parent. 

Autumn Carter: Today I have with me Lita Bunting and she is with Znimka Creations and It's such a fun word. We'll dive into it and the reason why in just a minute, but I am so excited to have you on. We had a conversation last week before we are officially recording and she is somebody who if you have many friends like this who have photos everywhere and you don't know what to do with them.

Or even better, what we talked about was if you have aging family members who are forgetting things, who need that memory jog, she is the person to talk to. And if you just want to have a really great conversation, I really enjoyed my conversation with her. She's there for that too. Let's go ahead and dive in.

We are going to relate what she does to wellness. And she will hit on several of these areas because photos help connect us to other people and it is amazing. And she is going to give us some tips that we can use for ourselves and we will lead you to, if you are ready to work with her, how to do that.

Let's dive in. 

Lita's Journey from Construction to Photo Management

Autumn Carter: You said that you originally worked in construction. I'm curious about this evolution and then tell me where you want to go from there. 

Lida Bunting: Right. Yeah, I know it's not every day that you go from like an engineering degree into photo management but so after the birth of my second daughter, I was still working in the construction field and as many people probably realize, it's male dominated.

I just lost my enthusiasm for the work all day, work all night, come home exhausted, and I just needed something a little bit more. I was working part time at that time, so I thought I had balance. But it just wasn't feeding my soul. So I left construction. I didn't go straight into photo management.

I actually worked for a nonprofit for a few years, which was heavenly. It was all women empowering girls. So it really, fueled my soul. And then after a few years there, I decided to launch my own business. We went 

Autumn Carter: from all men to all women. 

Lida Bunting: Wow. Yes. And it was a breath of fresh air.

It really was. We were all like similarly aged and similar times of our life. I loved my experience there. 

Autumn Carter: So supported in motherhood. That sounds amazing. It was absolutely. And it sounds like from us talking last week, this is absolutely a passion for you, which is even more exciting to talk about because.

It can be really hard to find what your passion is and how much it changes as you have children. It's just astounding to me to realize for myself and then to help other people walk through. So you're on the other side of this, you're living your passion. Tell us a little bit about that and then we'll go into like your actual business.

Lida Bunting: Yeah, absolutely. 

The Emotional Impact of Photos

Lida Bunting: So even from the time when I was a kid and I grew up in the 80s and we took pictures using film so it was very intentional to take pictures and go and get them developed. And even before I knew how important photos were. I would run and get them developed and open them in the car like my mom would have to drive me to the Scrudlin's.

Scrudlin's was the name of the photo shop, in my town and we would sit there in the car before we even drive away and just look through the pictures because you never know what picture you took because it was on film. It's not like the screen would show it. And I would come home and I'd put them in those sticky albums and I wouldn't put them in the ones with the little slots because I needed to place them on the pages.

I needed to be like the creative director. So you fast forward 30 years and I'm working at this non profit and It was the end of the year, and I always did end of the year photo books for my family. So it was like a year in review, and it would just capture everything that we had done in that previous year.

Of course, I would leave it to the last minute to do it. So it's, middle of December, and it's late at night, and my kids were really little, and I was still working at the non profit. It was like 1130 at night and I'm tired and I had this aha moment. I'm like, God, I really, I love doing this.

I loved picking the photos and putting them on the pages, all digitally now. Like I wasn't printing the photos. And I thought, gosh, every family deserves to have their photos in photo books on their coffee tables on their shelves. We're so tied to our phones and our iPads and our computers. Nobody ever sits down and looks at books.

And I thought, gosh, if I could do this for others, what joy could I bring to them? Because when we sit down and pick up something tangible and flip through the pages, there's emotions that get evoked. There's happiness because you remember a celebration and then there's sadness. Someone who's in that book who has passed away or A friendship that may have dissolved.

So looking through those books evolves emotions. I thought, gosh, if I could do this for others, that would be an amazing business. So I approached my husband, after the holidays, and I said, Hey. I want to quit my job, but I have this great idea for our business and he's an engineer and he just started grilling me with questions like how are you going to do this?

And how are you going to charge them? And where are we going to do this? My head was ready to explode. But he was right. There were a lot of business types of things that I hadn't thought through. But at the end of the day, I launched and it's been nine years of me doing this.

Autumn Carter: So I was thinking I would bring out the photo album every once in a while at my grandmother's house and she would sit down and go through it with me and there was an uncle who passed away when I was like two or something like that.

There's a picture of him holding me and I'm in diapers like an infant. And her telling stories about him and just seeing all the emotions There was a wide range of emotions that she would have on her face and her body. And I remember even once in a while playing her. I don't know that I was there.

I remember finding the tape and playing from, the funeral was on the tape as well as her retirement party. And just seeing her relive that it was really fun. And her explaining that to me, because then I was old enough to remember at least that. Not the actual event if I even was there.

I wasn't there for the funeral because it was on the other side of the country But for the retirement party, I assume I was there. I don't know. It was in the same city but it was really fun to see those things and then when my other set of grandparents that grandmother had dementia That I mentioned to you earlier, and then my paternal grandfather passed away from Alzheimer's, and it was really important to have pictures for both of them.

When you and I were talking about it, just how much it jogged their memories and things like this. 

Using Photos for Memory and Therapy

Autumn Carter: And I think this is something super important to talk about with aging family members. Is this way of jogging memories and how it can bring people back to you and can you speak of this a little bit more?

I'm sure you have clients that you do this for. 

Lida Bunting: Yes. I haven't had any clients that are suffering from Alzheimer's Directly, but there is actually what's called reminiscence therapy where people who are in memory care units their caretakers are working with them through photos and family members will bring A handful of photos.

You can't overwhelm because when you're suffering through Alzheimer's, you will look at one, two, maybe five photos and that'll be all because too many will overwhelm. But what the photo managers would do, we would put them onto a book and it would be like a card stocky book so that they could flip the pages because it's too many.

If the pages are too thin, they can't flip the pages. But you've got like a thicker cardstock and you have one photo on each side of the page. And you just let them look at the photo. And you just wait. And They will remember, they might not remember what they had for breakfast, but that photo of them on their dad's lap, sitting in his car when they were four years old, they will remember that and then they'll just start telling stories and one memory will trigger another 

I've heard about so many, truly emotional, ways that people have just outreached and reconnected with their loved ones. Because when we see our aging grandparents, my grandmother passed away from Alzheimer's and dementia. And when you see her make a connection, And she comes back to life because there's a little bit of emptiness in them when they're just sitting there and they're just confused.

And you're sitting there and you're, saying Baba's grandma in Ukrainian. She's not there. But then when she looks at something like a photo and she can remember, and then, The sparkle shows up in her eyes and then she smiles and she just wants to talk about it. And it's really cool.

Autumn Carter: I made the mistake now knowing now talking to you of I did photo frames, but they really needed like TV size photo frames. And when you and I were talking, you were talking about how important it is that they have the book, that they can flip the pages when they're ready to, and that it's. Just tangible.

Yeah, so I really loved when you and I were talking earlier that you mentioned that and Just seeing that you could help a wide range of people with their photos. I know One family, I don't know if they have it anymore, but they had a big plastic tote full of A film that they haven't developed yet.

Oh, wow. And this was back when there weren't many photo places anymore. I can't imagine where they would even take care of that today. 

Lida Bunting: There are few and far between, 

Autumn Carter: I'm sure it's somewhere you have to ship it to at this point. You're not driving down the street. 

Or now we have it all in the cloud. 

Organizing and Preserving Photo Memories

Autumn Carter: Now, in today's time, it sounds like you help out a variety of people with a variety of issues. You were telling me that most of your clients are ones who it's a couple weeks before and they're supposed to have their senior, or their seniors. Tell us what the average one is.

And then tell us when We should be seeing you because it sounds like we should be seeing you all along 

Lida Bunting: Don't call me in november for a christmas deadline or don't call me in april for a graduation deadline. The thing is the Organizing of our photos and getting our let's call it the photo estate.

So all of your photos, whether they're the printed photos that you have in albums that are tucked away in a closet on a shelf in a bin. Those photos, they're not growing anymore. We're not really taking more photos so that collection you can slowly pick away at it. Get the photo scan, get them integrated into your digital collection.

And then our digital photos, we're taking pictures daily, whether it's of something significant, like a new baby being born or a wedding, we're taking pictures of our food. We're taking pictures of the shoes we want to buy at Target. So just being very intentional about what we're taking pictures of.

And once that picture has served its purpose, getting rid of it. Plan ahead. If you know that you've got a graduating senior this May, Start thinking about what you want to do with the photos now or in January and pick a way at it.

Some people don't know where their graduates kindergarten pictures are. So let's find those. And there are ways that you can do it. So let's see, they're 18 years old. So 18 years ago, we were already digital. So those photos aren't going to be in a bin unless people were printing their photos, which a lot of people did.

They would take it with a Digital camera and then send it to Walgreens or CVS or Walmart and get it printed and then they put them into a bin so it's just a matter of collecting everything and choosing the best ones We don't need to keep all 15 photos that we have on our devices Our photo legacy really should only be like maybe 100 photos of my life, your life.

The significant moments are really what needs to be kept and just being, intentional and using the functions on our devices. We can harp a photo very easily. We can delete a photo very easily, so getting into the habit when you're in the grocery line, favoriting the ones that you took over Thanksgiving or on a vacation, and deleting the extras.

It's just really simple stuff, but for me, it's like spring cleaning like when you feel so accomplished. When you open your windows and you scrub the floors, you're like, oh my god, this feels so good. That's how I feel about going through my photos and getting rid of the junk. 

Autumn Carter: I like to do it when I'm actually sick.

Okay. When I'm like, I don't feel well enough to really follow a show, follow exactly what's going on. I'm zoning in and out. That's when I go through and clean up my photos. If I get my husband to do it, that'd be even better. Cause both of ours are on the cloud and I'm like, seriously, I'm cleaning up yours.

Wellness and Personal Routines

Autumn Carter: Let's talk about, so you mentioned in our outline that we filled out together that psychological, emotional, social, and environmental are the wellness topics that you work in. So can you speak to that a little bit? Sure.

Lida Bunting: So I'll start with the psychological. Like we just said about the spring cleaning and feeling like you've accomplished something. That is 100 percent how I feel when I've been able to go through a month of photos and get rid of the junky ones, move the ones that like recipes I've now started.

When I take a picture of screenshot of a recipe, I'll move it into my notes. And now my notes has, a section of recipes, and then I can delete those out of my camera roll. So when I start just doing just a little bit, I feel very accomplished. And I don't need to be, solving the world's problems.

I'm just taking care of what I need to be taken care of and it feels really good. On the emotional side. Oh God. like I can, there's happiness. There's sadness and some days we just need a good cry, and I know which photos I need to go to have that good cry, and it's okay. And when my father passed away nine years ago, my cousin offered to take photos at the services. And I was like, okay I'm not going to hire a photographer, but sure, if you want to take pictures, that's fine.

And he did, and I didn't. know what I was ever going to do with them, but he sent them to my sister and to my mom and me. And I'm in the world of making photo books. And when it came time to make my 2016 book, I had this folder with my dad's services, photos in there. And there's an open casket and there's the casket being carried by the pallbearers.

And there's me with a eulogy and I'm holding my, at the time, five year old and each of these photos evoked an emotion. And I didn't want to throw those out, and I knew that if I didn't put them in that book, I would probably never see them again. So they're in my photo book. They're in my 2016 book, and it's one page.

I think I did it very tastefully, and it just says the final goodbye. And when I look at that book, it's hard Right? I know it's there, so I can either skip the page, or, I don't know. So maybe that's not emotional wellness cause I'm getting teary eyed, but on the flip side, let's talk about something happy.

We go on vacations. We have celebrations. We do fun things and, I was a little bit behind on my year in review books cause cobbler's children have no shoes. So my family books are a little bit behind. And so when I made my 2021 book. A year ago, I was like, Oh, we went strawberry picking during COVID.

No way. I don't remember doing that. And so then there some really fun things that we did. And when the girls got to see that book, they're like, Oh, that was so fun. Oh, we should do that again. So again, it's just, it's fun. So I can go on and on about the emotional wellbeing. And I gotta tell you, sometimes when my family is making me go bonkers, I'll come in here and I'll start working on one of my photo books because I know if I'm looking at my pictures, it's going to bring me joy.

So once I'm caught up, everyone will know that I've had a lot of family things going on because I'm in here. Hold up working on books. But on the social side, It's a way that families come together. It's a way that friends come together. I've been doing these trips with some high school friends.

And the first time we did it was just 3 years ago, COVID, and it was supposed to be our 30th high school reunion, and we weren't going to have a big reunion, but they were like, 13 of us that met, in Colorado. And I'm like, you know what, I'm going to bring some pictures from high school. And so at, I had, it was one of those sticky albums, but it was three ring binder.

So I just pulled certain sheets out and made. My own custom one of the four years with the people who are going to be on the trip. And it was so fun. Like we just passed this book around and talked about stories and talked about the boys we dated and talked about the sports and It was just a way to connect and I, love doing stuff like that.

Another friend of mine, she's just spent the last couple of weeks in the hospital and our friend group pulled together. I made three collage boards of us over pre college, and post college. And we got a digital frame for her so that she can just look through these photos. So again, it was just, we are being social without necessarily being together and, able to share those moments.

Okay, our digital footprint, is getting we're just expanding and expanding. So when we consolidate our humongous three ring binder photo albums from the 80s and the 90s and we get those digitized and then they get to live on something that's cute like this and it's just a little flash drive and then I can load it onto my apple iCloud or just getting rid of those VHS tapes those DVDs all that big clunky stuff making it smaller and then you don't even have to keep all of it like there are certain photos that I have in my photo albums that I'm not going to keep.

I'm gonna digitize, I'll probably digitize half of them, and then once they're digitized, I'll probably cull it down even more. Making our footprint smaller, and trying to keep it as small as possible. 

Autumn Carter: And there's even the sharing it with the person where, I took this photo of them, but it means nothing to me, I'm not even in it.

Send it off to the right person so they can enjoy that memory and pass it on to whoever else is in there with them. I've done that several times and I have several that I went through. My parents gave me all of their stuff. That they saved for me, which was, I kept about an eighth of it. And the albums, the sticky doesn't stick anymore.

The pictures are falling out. And not everything is labeled. 

Lida Bunting: Because some of them are so stuck on that you can't peel them off without ripping the photo. But a trick for that is you get floss. unwaxed floss and you shimmy it between the sticky paper and the picture and you'll get it off.

Autumn Carter: Or I just took a picture of it. 

Lida Bunting: Okay, that's another way to do it. 

Autumn Carter: And I had to do it several times so I didn't have the light reflection. Yeah. Smart. Smart. Okay. So it sounds like you work with print photos. So is this something where we can just like mail you all our photos and then you fix it? 

Lida Bunting: Yes, however. I'm all about keeping things as safe as Possible. I live in the Chicagoland area, and there are several of us photo managers who live here. 

We are all over the world. When I work with people's printed photos, I will go and either they will drop them off at me, or I will go pick them up. Shipping isn't always the most reliable. Things get lost. And they might not be recoverable. And unfortunately, our print photos aren't replaceable. Like you can't put a monetary value on them, but they are invaluable.

My recommendation on the printed photos that truly can't be replaced to find someone local to at least get them digitized, because if something were to happen to them in transit. That would be awful. And I would rather have your photos be safe than have me take them. There are photo managers all across the country who could Do this service if someone is local to a different city. 

Autumn Carter: Know, more 

Lida Bunting: important, like the digital stuff drives CDs, like that stuff can be copied, and shipped to me, which people ship their computers to me.

Autumn Carter: You ask them to back it up and, took photos are irreplaceable. I like this, where you talk about how these experiences have deepened your belief in the power of preserving a legacy. 

The Importance of Legacy and Storytelling

Autumn Carter: So talk about this a little bit for us. 

Lida Bunting: So back in the day, our grandparents, when they took photos. Would write on the back of the photos. They would write who's in the photo where it was taken Maybe the occasion We don't do that anymore we don't print our photos first of all, but even our digital photos are fortunately our digital photos For the most part, have the location.

If you have location services turned on your phones, it'll tell you who's in it based on facial recognition. But it doesn't give you much context. And if the photo gets, exported out, like if you take a photo in Apple and you've got facial recognition enabled, when you export that photo out of Apple, my face isn't tagged unless I physically tag it in Apple.

So for me. It's taking it and putting those stories, putting that context, putting captions, putting keywords into our photos so the stories can go on so that when I move on and I pass away and my kids inherit my photo clutter, which hopefully won't be photo clutter, because by then it'll be organized.

I'm organizing others right now, but mine will get organized that they know that The who, the what, the where, the when, and the why of the photos that I have at least hearted. And they'll know those stories. They can read the caption. They can say, Oh, this was my mom's first triathlon. Or this was my mom's, first house or first condo that she ever bought.

Autumn Carter: At their 

Lida Bunting: Excuse me, 

Autumn Carter: baby 

Lida Bunting: Oh, they did look so much alike. Is this me or is this my sibling? Exactly. So to me, it's not just The photos I'm taking for my enjoyment right now. I'm thinking ahead. I'm thinking to the legacy and 

I've done a lot of legacy books. One of my most recent ones a daughter was gifting it to her mom for her 85th birthday the photos span from the late 1800s to present and each there is like eight chapters of the book, like the early, days to present. And then there was a paragraph written about her.

So anybody who picks up that book. We'll be able to read about their grandma or about their great grandma, and they'll know their own history and they'll know they're the stories that went with it. And I think that a lot of our stories are getting lost. There are people who write legacy stories and it's.

A wonderful thing to get your story written. I do it through photos and captions. Either way, whichever one resonates with you to do it, we should all have some sort of written story about ourselves and about our families, and to keep it for future generations. 

Autumn Carter: If we're not that kind of storyteller where we can really taste the food that's being cooked, and all the colors, and get the texture, and all that stuff.

That's where a photo comes in. That's why a photo is worth a thousand words. 

Lida Bunting: Yeah, for sure. I actually had a tagline. It used to be either on my website or on some of my marketing collateral, but it said, if a picture's worth a thousand words, think of the story a book would tell.

And if you have a book with a hundred photos, that's a lot of words. 

Autumn Carter: Very true. Yeah. And there's so many things where when eventually we pass on, our children will want that connection with us and having that connection of, Oh, this is my mom's first car. This is what made her who she is through photos instead of just the photos that involve your girls with you.

I think says a lot. 

Lida Bunting: Absolutely. They don't see pictures of me from. Before they were around because that's all I have. I mean my college books are downstairs They don't need to see those. But like my childhood pictures, which my mom is in possession right now I do want to get my hands on those and get some of those scanned when my dad passed away, there were a lot of pictures of him And so they got to see those pictures and they're like, oh That's what he looked like.

He played tennis because they only knew him when he was sick Or that's where my nose 

Autumn Carter: came from. 

Lida Bunting: Yeah, exactly. Oh, wow, he looked like that, so it was just really cool for them to be able to see a part of their history that they, even though they thought they knew him, they didn't really know him.

And through pictures, they got to see a glimpse into his life. 

Autumn Carter: That's even the same as us as parents. They don't see us in 40. They see the parts that they need from us. 

Lida Bunting: And they don't know how cool we were before they came around. 

Autumn Carter: Or how cool we still are when they're not around.

I go home and play pickleball not when they're around. Exactly. They're going to be in the way. I'm going to trip over them. They're really little. Can you tell us a little bit, you told us a little bit of your wellness hygiene just with taking photos. Is there anything else that you want to share with us about your wellness routine?

Music 

Lida Bunting: My wellness routine doesn't revolve strictly around photos. 

Autumn Carter: I hope you're a full person. 

Lida Bunting: I love to exercise. I work out seven days a week, in a variety of different ways, whether it's. Running, biking, heavy lifting, yoga, Pilates, each day is something different, I'm at the point in my life that if I don't do some sort of physical movement in the morning before my day starts, I'm probably going to be a crank and people aren't going to want to be around me.

Way back when, I was only running, my daughter, she was really little at the time. I think she was like five and she's 16 now. She's mama, I think you need to go for a run. You're a little crabby. I do it for my mental health. Obviously exercise is good for the physical health too.

I do try to do wellness Wednesdays, which is I try to try, cause this is not something I'm very consistent about, but try to do like at least a 10 minute meditation or journal and things like that. I'm not as good at that as I am with movement. Like I'm a high energy person.

So for me to sit down. I put my AirPods in and I go up to my room and I close the door and I just try to sit there quietly. I am not very good at that, but I'm trying. 

Autumn Carter: I like when it's built into yoga, I do better. Or like I told you when I had my download of a question I want to ask you was during acupuncture.

Cause it's not like I could really move around with all those needles stuck in me. Yeah. So yes I'm, the same way. Or my silence in the morning. I bought a massage pod from a, after a recent car accident. And that's my way of, I'm forced to sit still and have my moment of peace and quiet before the kids wake up.

And I'm choosing the time on the remote of how long is this massage lasting for. And that's when I have my meditation and prayer. I monkey brain even in the massage chair. I won't lie about that. But I'll be like, Oh, I forgot to do this.

I totally understand. And I think that's the point is that we're a work in progress, right? 

Lida Bunting: I do see the benefit in the stillness and in the quiet. It took me a long time to embrace yoga.

The first time I went to a yoga class, I was like, what the hell? I just stretched for 45 minutes. But now I do it twice a week and I can't skip a day because my body needs it. I'm older, so like I can't just pound the pavement and lift weights. I need the body to recover.

I need to have that quiet, that stillness. There's a lot of things that we need to do, to calm the mind, 

Autumn Carter: And I think it's important that you have the variety. It should not be the same thing every day, no matter your age. It should be that variety, because you are activating different centers of the brain, you're activating different muscles, I think it's very good for all of you to do that.

Lida Bunting: There have been some things that, a couple of the networking groups that I'm a part of, they'll bring in, wellness coaches or wellness people, so we've had a session where halfway through our networking meeting, we'll do a tapping, and so I was like, oh, Didn't plan that in my day, but I was on this call anyway, so might as well.

And it's really refreshing. It definitely has taken me out of my comfort zone, but to have something like that integrated into a meeting that I'm already a part of, a lot of people are just weaving wellness into their day in any sort of timeframe that they can, and I'm sitting in on a meeting on Friday and it's why your business wants you to be doing yoga.

Yeah. And I want to listen in about the benefits and why I'm going to keep doing it. 

Autumn Carter: I know one thing that they'll probably mention is it's You need to have flexibility in your business. Every time somebody has tried to insert why you should do yoga, that's always the next thing they talk about.

Okay. Is there anything that we missed? I'm looking over our I don't know if you have anything that you want to outline really quick, but anything that you feel the need that we need to talk about? 

Lida Bunting: No, I can talk about photos for hours and talk about all the different ways that we could use our photos and what it means.

And one thing that, I want to send people off with is to do a creative project like a photo book or like a slideshow you don't have to have a perfectly organized photo collection like I will take my photos like I two aspects of my personal photo collection. I've got the photos that come in from Apple.

That are mine, and my husbands and my kids. I try to organize keyword put into a folder structure and create a backup. And then there's the books that I try to do once a year. I'm doing more on the books than the organizing. The organizing is not where I get excited.

I'm creating books without having all my photos organized. You can just find your favorites put them into a book get that book printed and have it on a shelf. And my kids, when that package comes in, they tear open that package and they just can't wait to look at it. So that's my joy.

I have clients who say, Oh my gosh, I love this book. My kids love looking at these books. That's where so much joy is. And I think that people get paralyzed. Oh, I can't do a project like that. My photos aren't organized. Oh, I can't get started. It's too hard to get my stuff organized.

Forget getting it organized. Just get the book done. Done is better than 

Autumn Carter: perfect. And you could have it be just a vacation, or just based off of this senior, all of their life. You could have it be a specific niche out of the photos. I love that idea. And you mentioned Apple many times. I'm sure that you're also used to using Android photos and Android products as well, correct?

Lida Bunting: So Google is where the Android photos live. And I have extracted out of Google and worked in the Google system. I have not physically touched an Android phone. So I don't maneuver as easily on an Android, but the photo system, is, similar and I can work in the Google platform too. 

Autumn Carter: I can't remember the last time I touched the Android phone.

Totally understand. I just, I know that you're an Apple lover. 

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Autumn Carter: You mentioned it several times, but I wanted to make sure that if people are coming up with all these excuses as to why they can't work with you, it's not going to be that one. 

Lida Bunting: It shouldn't be that at all. 

Autumn Carter: So if you're here and you are interested after trying this out a little bit for yourself, she gave lots of great tips.

I have to try that dental floss one. It's not just for your teeth. Her website. Tell us about your website and tell us about where we can find you on social media. And if you have any goodies for us, last parting words, give it all to us. We're ready. 

Lida Bunting: So my website is nymccreations. com. It's Z.

N. I. M. K. A. And then the word creations dot com. When you go to my site, there will be a little pop up. I think the current, freebie is a holiday gift giving guide. Things that you can do this holiday season using your photos now, depending on when, 

Autumn Carter: it should be in February. 

Lida Bunting: So I think what will happen after the holidays, it's, gosh what, will it be? Probably either, vacation, like ways to take the best vacation photos, or, creative photo book ideas since so much of what I do revolves around photo books. And like we said, we don't want people to have excuses. So there's usually some sort of freebie.

And then when you sign up, then I do a monthly mailer. And in there, I like to pride myself that it's never anything salesy, it's usually tips on, or like fun stories, whether it's about how we use photos with Alzheimer's patients, or where did all of our photos from the early 2000s go, because a lot of people lost digital photos in the early 2000s because we weren't sure What we were supposed to be doing with them.

And so people didn't have. So anyway, there's different articles and then I am actually a privacy advocate, which, because I'm in people's personal accounts. There's some very personal data that I have exposure to, and I want to protect my clients. So there's always something to do with privacy, whether or not it's, ways that you can set your settings on your phone so that you don't get, viruses.

So there's always something about privacy on there. So anyway, that's once a month. And then I am on Facebook. I haven't been active, but right now I'm, trying to be a little bit better about it. And that's Zimka Creations, on Facebook and on Instagram and LinkedIn. It's just my first and last name, Lita Bunting.

Autumn Carter: We will have all of these links in the show notes. So if you're listening and you're trying to hurry up and pause it and write it down, if you're anything like me. It's in the show notes, no worries. And I'm excited to join this mailing list. I hope you join me over there on her website. Thank you so much for being on and thank you for the person who connected us.

This was such a great conversation. I hope that you see that wellness is attached to everything in life and how much there is that we ignore because There is so much social connection that can happen through sharing photos, so we are so bad about taking photos and not sharing them with the people who are in the photos.

Let this be your moment to pause and share that photo that you took recently with the other person, and to remember our aging population who needs to feel that love and that connection again. So she is the perfect person if you are ready to do a photo book. This is coming out in February.

So think about it for the month of love. There are others in your life who can use some love and think about it for birthdays or graduations this is something that can benefit everybody, not just you. So thank you. 

Lida Bunting: Self love.

We giving ourselves the time and the attention we need. I think we overlook ourselves quite a bit too. 

Autumn Carter: I love that. It's something that can brighten our day. Remember maybe our spouse passed away, or our child passed away, or another family member that we're close to, our best friend, or at this point in life a lot of us have been touched by death at least once, so this is our time to remember them or rekindle lost friendships, lost relationships by sharing these photos with other people.

Absolutely. Thank you for being on and I hope you go over to her stuff. Thanks for having me.

 Thanks for tuning into this week's episode.

I am your host Autumn Carter, a certified life coach dedicated to empowering individuals to rediscover their identity, Find balance amidst chaos, strengthen relationships, and pursue their dreams. My goal is to help people thrive in every aspect of their lives. You can work one on one with me or on demand through one of my programs by visiting wellnessineveryseason. com 

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One last thing to cover the show legally. I am a certified life coach and a certified parenting coach giving general advice. I have a bachelor's in applied health.

So think of this more like a self help book. this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes. I am not a licensed therapist, so this podcast shouldn't be taken as a replacement for professional guidance from a doctor or therapist. Because I don't know you personally, I'm not offering you personal advice.

This is very general. If you want personal one on one coaching, go to my website, wellnessineveryseason. com. I will see you in next week's episode. Bye.