What I learned at Photo Camp: Photo Industry Trends Part Two
Part Two: Taking photos rocks! But where are they now?
No surprise, the statistics are staggering on how many pictures are taken each day, with most of those photos being taken with the most popular camera in history…the phone camera. At the Association of Personal Photo Organizers conference I recently attended, I was lucky enough to be at a social gathering (ok, it was a party...a really fun party hosted by my friends at Pixologie) with Nick Kelsh. If you don’t know who Nick Kelsh is, google him or check out his website www.howtophotographyourlife.com. He is an internationally recognized photographer who loves to educate everyday people on how to take great pictures. At this party, he showed me the pictures on his iPhone 6…and they were amazing. Granted, he is a professional, but phone cameras don’t have a lot of bells and whistles, even for world class photographers. He made these pictures spectacular by following his very simple lessons…get close and find good light. If you are like me and need it painted for you very simply, he's your guy!
So we've taken some great pics on our phone camera, oh ya...and on our big cameras...and on our iPads...then there are the ones on our family's devices...AAAHHH! The biggest challenge with photo organization today is the changing technology. How many of you have photos stuck on old hard drives or old phones? It makes my head spin looking at the number of options for organizing your photos that are on the market, and I’m supposed to know this stuff! This is a billion dollar industry and everyone wants a piece of it. My colleagues and I all agree, the best thing you can do for your photos, regardless of the program you select, is to get ALL of them in one place, make sure they are backed up (recommendation is 3 backups: print, hard drive, cloud), then maintain it. The best system in the world? The one that you actually use. 7 million photos are lost everyday because of crashed hard drives, changing technology and natural disasters.
With that said, I do have my favorite photo organization systems. I still love Historian (for PCs) but I’m very curious and am going to check out a new company called Mylio. It works on both Macs and PCs AND automatically pulls your photos from your other devices including your tablets and phones. For all you Mac users, have you checked out the new photos app? iPhoto is history. I'd love to hear what you think.
A final note...
With all this technical talk, we were reminded often at this conference why we do this work. As photo organizers, we have witnessed extraordinary things with our clients and their relationships by helping them rediscover their memories and share their stories. Photos are emotional and personal and can do wonderful things in people's lives from building self-confidence in kids, to helping a grandparent share their legacy, to helping repair a relationship, to making someone's day. Your photos and memories matter.
I couldn't be more excited about the future of Capture Your Photos. Thanks for reading!
Holly