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Tag: photo organization

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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November 5, 2017

Why Forwarding Photos May Not Be a Welcome Gift

You should think twice before sharing lots of digital photos with your peeps. Sure, it may be fun for the recipient to take a quick look. But guess what happens after that…?

All of this time, I thought I was doing my family and friends a favor by emailing downloadable Dropbox links of photos I’ve snapped at group settings. I’ve been doing this for years. What’s not to like?

I know that people generally love to participate in digital photo sharing.
It’s immediate.
It’s free.
It’s easy.

It’s also a quick and simple gift.

But you’ve got to admit, it’s something of a sloppy art.

Even so, I figure that folks can be responsible for what they do with the pictures they receive.
Right?

Well, yes.
And… no.

I think the problem is many people today just don’t have the time to do anything with your photos once they take a quick look at them.

That requires organization.
And good organization takes time.
Organization that even I have a hard time maintaining.
In fact, I’m still years in the rear at creating those ‘annual’ family photo albums to proudly live on our book shelves.

Some Assembly Required
I suppose emailing one or two photos shouldn’t really be a problem to handle. Even several… if they’re good pics.
But when you just throw twenty or thirty photos at someone, because you just don’t have time to do anything else, that just shifts the burden of organization onto the recipient.

You might think that you’re still doing them a favor, because once they go through everything, they’ll certainly separate the creative wheat from the chaff.

But you’re essentially sending someone more work to do.
That’s not such a great gift, is it?

Now, this is not a universal declaration. Take me for example…
If family and friends want to send me lots of unfiltered pics… I feel that’s better than not receiving anything at all.
(But I readily admit… I probably don’t represent the norm.)

The bottom line is you should always know your audience before you click on ‘send.’

The Analog Advantage
If you want to give the true gift of photo sharing that doesn’t require anything else to do, then you may have to suck it up and put in a little more effort…

And do you know what that looks like?
(I think you do.)

It’s a physical photo album or a photo book that’s completely done!
(How analog)

Will that take more time than you’re willing to commit?
Well, of course… there’s the rub.

Case in Point…
I’m always appreciative when someone hands me a little photo book celebrating an event or activity.
Sure, I might think… “Huh… I might have done that a little differently.”
But the reality is… I probably would never have gotten around to doing it at all!

And there’s your opportunity…

So recently, when a family friend scoffed at receiving a bunch of photos I emailed over, I didn’t take it personally.
Instead of a “Thank you,” I got a “When am I going to have the time to do anything with these?”
(And I had even gone through the batch to pick out the best ones!)

It was clearly time to create a tangible photo book…
Not to mention that I also received a direct request for one of these as a birthday gift.
(Isn’t clarity a wonderful thing?)

The Inner Truth
And for those of you digital geeks out there who don’t own a printer or know what a piece of paper is anymore (let alone a physical photo album)…
Guess what?
Deep down…
…You know you’re craving the same thing.

Wouldn’t it be nice if someone made you a physical photo album or book?

It’s okay.
Your secret is safe with me.

What’s Old is New Again
It’s not so old school.
People love photo books.

And there are lots of companies out there serving that need… like Shutterfly.
Since I’m doing my photo management in Adobe Lightroom, there’s an integrated process to work with Blurb.

It’s time to stop taking the easy way out by throwing your photos to the digital wind and hoping for the best.
Roll up your sleeves and create a physical photo collection that’s actually complete upon arrival.

Now, I’d better take a bit of my own advice and get to work on the birthday gift… The party is next week!

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