Like many people, I take almost all my photos with my phone these days. The phone goes with me everywhere, which makes it quite convenient.
Of course, the downside of the phone going everywhere is that I always risk losing it. I will admit that I am not as diligent about backing up photos as I should be. This weighs on me sometimes, but in the march of daily life, preserving photos falls in the category of “important but not urgent.” Meaning it falls to the bottom of the list.
Occasionally, though, I try to practice what I preach. So I listed “back up photos” as a priority this week, right alongside speaking in Louisville, practicing for a speech next week, doing the pre-construction meeting with the renovation team, and going to my kids’ parent-teacher conferences. When something is on the official priority list, I schedule it in.
And so, this morning at 9 a.m., I commenced on the one hour I had blocked out for photo work. Note that I didn’t set a goal of completion. I set a goal of one hour. In one hour, I made serious progress on choosing the best ones and saving them somewhere I could work with. But it was only an hour. That seemed doable. If I held myself to completion, I probably wouldn’t have done it, because that would have seemed nebulous and overwhelming.
Anyway, it was a pleasant hour. I was looking at photos from late 2015 and early 2016. My kids were so cute! With the older ones, I don’t think of them as changing that much, but there is a big difference between being newly 4 and being 6.5 (as my daughter is now). In late 2015 and early 2016 my 3-year-old was still a baby. I relived our trips, without the hassles of actually experiencing them (there is a photo of us collecting our baggage after the 5-hour flight home from CA – oh my goodness. Even in a still photo you can see that my daughter was throwing a temper tantrum!)
Now I just need to schedule another hour or two, maybe sometime next week. Bit by bit the project gets done. It’s just about deciding it’s worth doing, and setting a time, but setting a limit on it too. I really hope I don’t lose my phone in the next few days (really! knock on wood and various other superstitious things!), but if I do, I’ll be happy that I preserved at least some of the highlights, even if I didn’t get to all of them.
Photo: The now 3-year-old when he had just turned one.
I used to have the same anxiety about losing those precious photos. If you have a gmail account on your phone, you can link with Google Photos. It automatically backs up everything – photos and videos. Once you go over a certain amount, there is a storage fee, but otherwise it is free! (I takes TONS of pictures and still have lots of space).
I do take tons of pictures, but really need to start taking more videos. I want to be able to watch those everyday moments – like silly conversations with the almost-three-year-old.
Download Google photos or switch to a Pixel phone and they will back up your photos automatically from your phone. With a pixel you also get unlimited storage via Google photo. Backing up photos something I’ve permanently deleted from my to-do list as a result. Google Photo app (available on all types of phones) also creates albums and slideshows automatically for you and are stunningly good. I mostly change just a few photos, slap on a title, and people think I’m superwoman. 😉
Very helpful article. And very timely since working on pictures is on my to-do list for the weekend.
I’m all about macs so I use iCloud. It backs up all my photos and videos automagically and also everything else on my phone and computer. I pay $3 a month for a fairly large chunk of data and it’s worth every penny. If anything happens to my phone or computer, I just have to log in on a new one and download, and it’s all there. Highly recommend this or any of the other similar services (Amazon, google, etc).
LV, allow me to introduce you to google photos. Google photos, meet LV.
$3 a month for iCloud backup if you have an iPhone.. Easy sorting/sharing/favoriting. Printing is a cinch. Total peace of mind. Zero effort.
As another option, if you are an Amazon Prime member you get unlimited photo storage. There’s a (free) Prime Photos app you can put on your phone that will upload all new photos every time you get to wifi (e.g., home). I think there is a video limit; I haven’t really looked into what the limit is or what the cost is to add more video capacity. In theory you can also easily order prints and create photo books from the Prime storage, too, though I haven’t spent time learning what that involves, pricing, etc.
The nice thing about Prime Photos is that the entire family can upload their photos. We did this when we went to Europe last year. If one of us missed a picture we wanted or someone else had a better one, we all have it now.