February 12, 2016

Take a picture, it'll last longer. ( hopefully)

Thanks to the invention of the  iPhone combined with having 3 children we have an abundance of digital pictures. In fact, just this time last year I shared my love of pictures-particularly displaying them and putting them in books....in fact, it seems like it is a theme to the beginning of my year-how to get a handle on all the pictures!!!

Sure, I print them out and I put them in awesome photo books-but what to do with them after that!?! I mean, you can't delete them. Heaven's no!!! If there is one thing I can be accused of being, it is a hoarder of pictures. ( In fact, ask my husband, it is the ONLY thing I can be accused of hoarding. hahaha!). The problem lies in the fact that there is just not unlimited hard drive memory space in the world to fill up with all my pictures! I also have this OCD need to have ALL my pictures in ONE PLACE....last year I started having trouble with iPhoto ( it crashed continually) and so I started transferring all my pictures into folders on my computer that I would then use Photo Mechanic to look at them and sort through them. It was a task, and I'm not going to lie there are STILL pictures over in iPhoto yet to be transferred. It stresses me out. It keeps me up at night.

AND THEN...I realized I was fast running out of space on my computer ( thanks adorable children for making me take so many pictures of you!)...and that is when I discovered my new photo organizational savior: The Amazon Cloud.

Now, I have stated many many times before that Amazon Prime is worth EVER. PENNY. of its yearly cost. Mostly because of the free two day shipping-which pays for itself in one week during the Christmas season. And then this happy perk of having almost instantaneous shipping plus subscribing to their monthly savings means boxes of much cheaper diapers and wipes arriving at my door every month just like magic...Then having Amazon Instant video that can entertain my kids with hours of Daniel Tiger PLUS the fact that they now allow you to DOWNLOAD video content on to my devices-meaning we can now TRAVEL with the joys of Amazon Instant....well, I'm already sold.
 But THEN I discovered Amazon Music which allows you access to ALL the music in the Prime Library to once again stream OR download...meaning Abigail can jam to all the praise music her heart can desire. Oh. And Adele and old school Coldplay...seriously the library options are pretty amazing.
 SoOOOOOooo, when I discovered the Cloud it was icing on the already giant cake that Amazon was providing me. Sure, Amazon now knows EVERYTHING about me....what I order, what I watch, what I listen to...so it only made sense that they now have pictures to go along with it. ( kidding. sort of.)*

So, first off, go sign up for Amazon Prime IMMEDIATELY

And then start uploading your pictures into the UNLIMITED photo storage...the joy is, once I'm finished uploading all the pictures on my computer, I've been able to download the app onto my phone and it AUTOMATICALLY downloads my current photo library so that I immediately have it backed up. NO LOST PHOTOS EVER AGAIN! Hooray!
The double( or triple) bonus is I can now look at baby pictures of all three of my kids from the comfort of any of my devices at any time, as well as share entire albums of pictures with family for them to print and do what they want with....Another Hooray! (  all my babies look the same, P.S. my children are like clones. no lie.)

Ok, so there you have it: My new way of taking care of all my pictures. This is a very dear and near issue for me because I'm currently in possession of a giant external hard drive that I have NO WAY of getting into because the technology is so ancient ( read: 15 years old). It stores ALL my pictures and videos from my years at University in New Zealand, plus all of my-no doubt genius-papers that I wrote in my English Lit. classes.....sigh. I still hold onto it in the hopes that one day I will be able to some how get into this hard drive...I have hope. But seriously, it makes me so sad! And I don't want this problem to ever happen again! So friends take it from me- print your pictures, make photo books...and seriously put them in a cloud of some sort!

*Sure, your pictures really aren't private in a cloud. They could be hacked. But, honestly, we all live in such an online world now that we have to know that nothing is really private anyway...so lets live above-board and hope for the best-that's my blasé thought...please do not use my comment section to tell me otherwise. I'm happy in my bubble, thanks.)


Alright, so now that I've shared my Amazon secret with you, I need your help: during my picture moving project...I've been thinking a lot about all the little mini videos I've taken over the last 5 years: first steps, first words, silly dances, birthday songs and morning giggles....does anyone know of an awesome service that would take all these little files and make them into a cohesive DVD or Blu-Ray for me?! I know i could do it myself...but come on, who's got the time!?! Has anyone done this?! Thoughts and suggestions appreciated!



2 comments:

Aunt Sheron said...

Abigail, for favorite pictures, we put them on a memory stick and then plug that into a digital frame which sits in the living room. I'm old-fashioned and don't really trust "clouds" so we download our pictures onto the computer and from there to dvds or memory stixs. Really precious ones we duplicate storage and give Lorena a copy.

Renee from A Baker's Dozen said...

Please, please tell me you have prints of those photos on that ancient hard drive! You simply cannot beat having actual prints or photo books.