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Category: family

September 15, 2019

Why I Chose Amazon Photos to Archive my Family Photos in the Cloud

Good photo organization means having a plan that allows you to quickly and easily access your most important photos from anywhere. Here’s why I chose Amazon to help me out…

I’ve talked about how important it is to maintain your most important pictures in cloud-based photo albums that you can access from anywhere, including your smartphone. These are the photos that reflect back on your life’s big moments… not necessarily the best few pics from your recent family vacation.
(Your smartphone’s local photo app and your index finger can handle that.)

If you sit down for a few minutes and think about which groups of pictures you’ll always want available at a moment’s notice, you’ll probably come up a short list of categories.

I decided to create this group of cloud photo albums that I can also share with my wife:

  • Our son’s first day of school each year and his annual school portraits
  • Our boy’s birthdays
  • A sampling from our best vacation photos
  • My mom’s photo archive
  • My dad’s photo archive
  • My photo archive of me growing up
  • Our wedding
  • Other weddings
  • Group shots at big family events

These nine photo albums will hopefully cover most moments when I’m talking with family or friends, and I want to magically access a photo from my life to support the conversation using my iPhone.

But there’s one important technical detail you’ve also got to have in place to ensure your cloud photo albums grow properly over time. And I must admit, I forgot about this piece until I realized it wasn’t there…

Retaining the Constant of Time
Your photos in each cloud folder still need to be sortable by date. That will allow you to keep the chronology of a photo group in order when you add other pictures to the album that are out of sequence.

This may seem like a minor detail, but believe me, it isn’t. The natural order of any group of archival pics is the constant of time. Without that, you’ll eventually end up with what appears to be a random group of photos.

Sure if you start this project when you’re five years old and keep going in perfect order until you’re ninety nine, you’ll be fine. But I’m still sorting through my family photos from many years back.
(I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how much time it takes to keep up with all of your life’s incoming pics.)

Some photos inevitably get integrated into long-term storage faster than others. And the last thing you want to worry about is having to process them in the order in which you took them.

iCloud Photo Streams aren’t the Answer
I thought I was all set using Apple’s tools when I began creating shared iCloud photo albums through Photos to handle this archival need. But then I realized these sharable photo albums were essentially just sharable photo streams. The photos simply positioned themselves in the order in which I uploaded them.

I quickly decided that this wasn’t going to work as I build out these albums over time.
(For the record, Apple does provide a solution if you decide to sync your entire Photos library to iCloud. But that would immediately eat up my 5GB of free iCloud storage.)

So, I set out to explore other cloud photo-album solutions with the ability sort the photos by date…

Photo Archiving for Free
There are lots of choices out there, and some have certain limits or costs. So, I decided to first see if I could get the job done without adding a new monthly fee to my digital life.

And in fact, I could!

Three top choices quickly immediately emerged…

Google Photos

  • Free and unlimited storage as long as you’re willing to let Google compress your photos to a max size of 16MB. (Unless you’re processing huge RAW photos, that shouldn’t be a problem…)

Flickr

  • Free, but only up to 1,000 photos.
  • This limit is a little tight for any long-term plan, although if you’re really talking about the most impactful pictures to represent an entire life, who’s really going to want to look at more than 1,000 pics?

Amazon Photos

  • Free and unlimited storage. Period.
  • The big catch is you’ve got to be an Amazon Prime member.
  • And I suppose that means you’re intending to be an Amazon Prime member… for the rest of your life. (Well, you could migrate your photos somewhere else when a better option comes along.)
  • Amazon offers a solid app for smartphone use.

Primed to Use Prime
I gave Amazon Photos a try a few weeks back, mostly because I already live in the Prime ecosystem. Also, the ‘limitless,’ and ‘no-compression’ structure was appealing.

And though, I am, in fact, paying for Amazon Photos, it’s money I’m already spending on Amazon Prime. And that’s, of course, just another way to make Amazon Prime more than just ‘free shipping.’

I found it really easy and quick to create my cloud albums and upload my photos to them, and the Amazon Photos app works great on my iPhone.

So far… I’m really happy with Amazon Photos.

I’m sure the other options would get the job done as well. The critical element is simply putting a cloud-based solution in place where you can best archive and easily sort through your photos that tell your ongoing life’s story.

Leave the Stream Behind
Ensuring your pictures show up in the right order is essential to the plan. And using the linear nature of time as your organizing principal needs to remain in place.

Cloud-based photo streams simply don’t provide that basic level of functionality.

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September 8, 2019

How to Turn Your Smartphone into a Time Machine

If you’re getting bored snapping the same picture over and over again through the years, then you might be in for a pleasant surprise…

I expect you’ll agree that life serves up a fair number of repeatable sequences that are simply driven by the calendar, such as birthdays, holidays and certain vacations. And these moments often orbit family events at the same locations.

If you purposefully remember to snap similarly framed photos at these occasions every year… then, think about the mind-bending results.

Now, you’re capturing the passage of time with your smartphone, and you’ve effortlessly stepped into the role of photo historian. And in fact, you’ve created a time machine of sorts.
(How great is that?!)

Granted, this type of project is not for those with short attention spans. You’ve got to put years into it. Even decades.

It’s not difficult to do. You’ve just got to remember a few shots and keep repeating them.

You’ve Probably Already Started
I’ve found it’s better to go with posed shots that are easier to replicate over the course of time. But certain action shots can also be predictable (like blowing out birthday candles). And then it’s always great to connect them together across the years.

To this last point, you might already be collecting certain repeated photo moments. You’ve just got to find them… and then let the magic unveil itself!
(They don’t always have to be taken in the exact same space.)

For example, here’s a July 4th fireworks sequence covering the past few years that I quickly put together…

Pretty cool, right?

It’s All about the Journey
The truth is… this type of archival photo documentation never really ends. Assuming you’re printing these photos on quality photo paper, or you’ve figured out a way to ensure your JPEG files survive the passage of time, you should eventually hand off your project to ‘the next generation.’

At some point, we all think about our legacy. That you can hand off those series of images that succinctly represent the journey through life.

What a concept.

And it’s never too late to start.

It’s time to start building your ‘Guardian of Forever.’

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August 25, 2019

4 Revelations from my Family Vacation to Niagara Falls

If you’re doing a little research about vacationing to Niagara Falls, I’ve got a few tips to share that should improve your experience…

My family and I have just returned from a great vacation to Niagara Falls. Yes, we stayed on the Canadian side, as it was clearly nicer. That said, we did spend one day on the U.S. side, and it was well worth it… The state park surrounding the American Falls is absolutely beautiful, and the “Cave of the Winds” experience where you walk right up to the base of a section of the Bridal Veil Falls was my favorite from the whole trip.

Warning: you will get soaked if you attempt to walk into the section of the wooden walkway called the “Hurricane Deck”… so dress accordingly. (It’s a big clue when they give everyone souvenir sandals and a plastic rain poncho to wear.)

If you’re planning your own trip, here are four other learnings from my experience…

#1
Canadian Money
The way I understand it, the going wisdom when you use your American credit card is to try to pay in U.S. dollars as opposed Canadian dollars. That’s supposed to end up costing you less in conversion fees. But I found that most of the mobile credit card terminals I came across slapped a 5% tax on top of my purchase if I selected the U.S. dollars option. So I ended up just charging in Canadian dollars.

#2
Tourism Tax
Speaking of taxes, did you know that businesses in Niagara Falls, Ontario have the choice to add an optional “Tourism Tax” to your purchase? And I don’t mean optional as in some businesses do it and others don’t (which is true).

I mean… you as the consumer have the option to pay it… or not. That’s right, you don’t have to pay the Tourism Tax. You just have to politely say you’d like to decline paying it. And then they take it off your bill.
(We got this tip from a waitress at a restaurant. Thank you!)

It’s actually an optional tourism fee that’s generally 3% of your bill, although it can be much more, and it looks like just another tax.

It’s not a tax. So, buyer beware.

#3
Taking Photos with All that Water
You might expect I took a ‘few’ pictures along the way. And let me tell you, it wasn’t difficult to take a magnificent photo by just pointing my camera in the right direction. That said, it was sometimes hard to capture exactly what I wanted.

Why?

In three words… all that water.

If you’re going to ride on the Maid of the Mist or the Canadian Hornblower boat, it’s about all that water… up close and spraying in your face and onto your camera.

Most of our best Niagara Falls moments were connected to the visceral experience of the power of Niagara Falls and the spray from all that water.

If you want to capture those moments with a photo, you’re going to need a waterproof camera. Using a newer iPhone? No problem. They’re waterproof.

But let me tell you, the touch screen doesn’t work so well when it’s dripping wet. And you really need to keep water droplets off the lens. Otherwise, your photos will look like your phone was covered in Vaseline. But quickly wiping off a tiny smartphone lens is hard to do when your fingers are all wet.

The only option I had was to find the driest piece of clothing I was wearing and then rub off the lens on the precious cotton fibers.

#4
The Limitations of your Smartphone
Ultimately, I think you should prepare for the need to take more action photos vs. scenic pictures. It’s easy to take a shot of Niagara Falls. It’s much harder to get the shot of your family experiencing Niagara Falls.

That said, I also had my GoPro with me, and that was a great choice. I don’t know about you, but as ‘bulletproof’ and waterproof as smartphones have become, they can still break if you drop them (even with a protective case).

And the risk of being so up-and-close to Niagara Falls is there’s no net… for either you or your smartphone. I wonder how many smartphones have been dropped by careless tourists and taken the infamous plunge.

I’ve happily used my GoPro with the expectation that one day, it could get swept away in one of our family adventures. As sad a moment as that will be, I’ll take solace that it wasn’t my iPhone.

Don’t Give Up
This all leads to my conclusion that to capture your experience as opposed to a few simple family selfies with Niagara Falls in the background… you’ll need to take lots of shots. Many will fall short… and if you’re lucky, you’ll capture a few gems.

That’s what I did, and I wasn’t entirely disappointed…



Keep it Real
It was ironic that all of the tourist activities include an almost mandatory green screen “say-cheese!” photo opportunity while you wait on line. And when you’re done, they’ve magically got your family digitally keyed into a beautiful shot of Niagara Falls… that you can buy.

While you might consider this option and not have to worry about risking your own gear to get a similar shot, you need to know that it’s not at all the same!

Smiling in front of a green wall does not at all approximate your truly disheveled, drenched and delighted look when experiencing the real moment.

Hold on tight to your camera, bring a dry cloth for the lens and go capture your moment!

Enjoy your adventure to Niagara Falls!

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