December 23, 2024

Saturdays with Shauna: Photography! Week 4

November 10, 2012 by

Welcome to the final installment on Photography, and also my last “Saturday with Shauna” here on the Singles blog!  In the past three weeks we’ve covered why you should intentionally take more photos of your family and friends, tips on taking better photos, and making albums and wall photos from your digital images.  This week we will discuss archiving because let’s face it, computers crash.  You want to keep your images safe so when disaster strikes, you won’t lose your precious memories.

So after you’ve taken some photos, you download the photos from your camera or memory card to your computer, right?  That’s what most of us do, I believe.  That’s a great start!  You now have the images saved to your computer, but what next?  What if your computer crashes?  Here’s what I recommend:

Get yourself an external hard drive!  They connect to any computer via USB and you can get a lot of space for very little money.  For example, here’s a Seagate external hard drive on amazon.com that hold three terabytes for only $119.99.  Do you know how many photos you could store in three terabytes of space?  A LOT.  Totally worth spending a hundred bucks or so on.

So after you get yourself one of these, as soon as you download your photos to your computer you then want to copy your photos over to the external hard drive.  At this point, your photos are still on your camera, on your computer, and on your external hard drive.  Three places, but we’re still not safe.  You have to delete the photos from your camera/memory card at some point in order to take more photos, so you really only have them saved in two places.  But both your computer and your external hard drive could crash, so what else should we do?  Burn them onto a CD.

Your computer should have a CD drive that is capable of burning discs but if not, you can find USB CD drives fairly cheap.  You’ll want to keep blank CD’s on hand so that you can quickly burn a CD of your new photos.  Label it and file it away somewhere, preferably in a fire-proof safe.  Or if you already have a security deposit box at your bank, your CD’s would be a great addition to that.  If you have neither, you can pick up a small fire-proof safe at your local Wal-Mart or Target for around $30.  It’s worth the investment because not only can you store your photo CD’s in it, but you can also store important documents like birth certificates, marriage certificates, titles, deeds, etc.

At this point, we have our photos on our computer, an external hard drive, and a CD.  I’m assuming by now you’ve deleted them from your camera/memory card so you can take more photos 🙂  In my opinion, this is still not enough.  What if you lose your CD or it gets scratched or broken?  The last thing I’d recommend is storing your photos in a cloud drive online.

Why store your photos online?  Because if your computer crashes, your external hard drive is damaged or lost, and your CD is scratched and can’t be read, you will still have your photos online.  Most online storage websites back up your data also, so chances are pretty good that your photos will always be there when you need them.  Some websites charge a fee, so you may need to shop around to find one in your price range.  Here are some examples:

Flickr – you will need to pay for a Pro account in order to save uncompressed photos.

Photobucket – free unlimited photo storage (with file size limits).

Mozy – paid online data backup, not only for photos, but for all your files.

These are just a few, I’m sure if you do a Google search you can find more to choose from.  There are lots of pros to having cloud storage, but a major con is that websites can be hacked and your photos could be viewed or even stolen.  So even though I recommend it in addition to your computer, external hard drive, and CD storage, you will have to decide for yourself if the risks and costs are worth it to you.

So there you have it.  I hope you have found this series helpful in your photographic journey!  Please be sure to share some of your photos with us on the Facebook community group page and also leave a comment below!

<3 Shauna

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You can find Shauna blogging about her other hobbies such as knitting, crochet, and cooking on her personal website, www.workhomeplay.net.  She also blogs on GCH: What’s on Your Plate? on Tuesdays.

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Saturdays with Shauna: Photography! Part 1

October 20, 2012 by

PHOTOGRAPHY

 

This week I thought I’d start a mini-series and share something with you that is near and dear to my heart.  Some of you may know that I used to run a part-time portrait photography business a few years ago and I still love to take pictures even though I’ve closed the business.  Photography is something I feel we take for granted now that we have digital cameras and the ability to take as many pictures as we want… some of you may remember the days of film when we had 24 or 36 shots to a roll and we were much more discerning in what we deemed photo worthy.  Then we had to wait anywhere from an hour to a week to see the prints!  These days, we come back from vacation with 2,000 digital photos to sort through and many of them never even see print.  It’s such a shame that treasures like this end up living on our computer or camera cards instead of in frames on our walls so they can be enjoyed.

In my opinion, photography is the greatest invention of mankind; it is truly a gift from God that we are able to preserve our memories and the faces of our loved ones for future generations.  I would like to share some of my thoughts and tips with you in the next few weeks on getting great shots that you and your family will treasure in the years to come and also how to get those images into frames and albums so they can be appreciated.  I also want to show you how to archive and manage your digital media so you don’t lose your images in the event of a hard drive crash.

Me with my parents a LONG time ago 🙂

 Week 1 – Getting the Shots!

First of all, you have to actually take pictures!  Some of us get busy and forget and we let months or years go by without really taking any photos, except maybe at functions like graduations and weddings.  Especially if you have little ones, pets, and elderly people in your lives, you really need to make an intentional effort to take photos of them often.  Little ones don’t stay little for long and sadly, pets and elderly relatives aren’t getting any younger.  I don’t mean to be Debbie Downer, but having lost all of my grandparents by the time I was 19, my dad when I was 21, then my mom when I was 27, along with my father-in-law in 2006 and our beloved toy poodle, Ginger, last year, I find myself wishing all the time that I had taken more photos of all of them.

Here are some ways you can be intentional (there’s that word again!) about taking photos of your loved ones for posterity:

Look at every day as a photo opportunity!  You don’t have to wait for a family get together or a holiday, just take photos!  In your backyard, in the living room, at the park, whatever.  Especially if you have young children – they change and grow up fast so you really need to make it a point to take photos of them often.  Use your camera or your smart phone if you have to, but just make sure to get the shots.

My son, Gunnar, having dinner one night at home <3

Create your own “family photo days”.  Schedule a day and take your family to a scenic venue for some family photos.  Do it once a month or once a year, it doesn’t matter – just do it.

My sister-in-law (at the time), me, and my brother… love that 70’s film look! lol

Use the holiday season and family get togethers to take photos.  Maybe you don’t see Aunt Judy but once a year at the family reunion.  Make sure to take a photo of her!  Maybe with the birth of a new baby there’s now five generations alive in the family – get them together for a group shot.  Maybe Great Grandma is celebrating her 97th birthday – get a picture of her blowing out her candles.  Or Uncle Joe flew in from Timbuktu for Christmas this year.  You get the picture (pun intended 😉 )

Get in the shot!  Maybe you’re like me and you abhor photos of yourself.  You avoid the camera at all costs and make jokes about breaking the camera lens when someone forces you to pose for them.  Quit it!  Your kids and their kids and so on and so forth, will treasure photos of you one day.  Get out from behind the camera once in awhile and get in the shot.  Use a tripod and your camera’s self-timer or give the camera to someone else.  Your loved ones won’t care about how bad you think you look in the picture, they will cherish photos of you regardless of what you looked like.

Our toy poodle, Ginger, who passed away in February 2012

Don’t forget Fido!  Our pets are like family too and they have a much shorter life span than we do.  Sometimes we neglect taking their photo because they’re always around.  But unfortunately, your beloved pet won’t be around forever.  Be sure to take plenty of photos, even if it’s just a picture of the dog lying on the couch.  One day you’ll be glad you did.

Next week, I’ll have some basic tips for you on taking better pictures!  In the meantime, your homework assignment is to take some photos this weekend!  Be sure to share some of them on our Facebook Fellowship page and comment below and tell us about your experience! 🙂

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