As grandparents, or grand anything (in my case, it’s aunt), we know the precious moments we capture with pictures may never come again. Every shy half smile we catch of our young ones — or even their perfect faces covered in pasta sauce — makes us feel truly connected, no matter where we live.
As heady as those connected moments are, we also know that as soon as we take those photos, they’re likely going to neverland in the backs of our phones. We also share our photos on social media almost immediately, so there’s no savoring them. I’m guilty of ignoring my phone pics. I never take them off my phone, but now I want to start. After all, those minutes you’ll never see again are just that — moments that came and went.
With today’s apps, though, you can do more than that, and it doesn’t matter whether you’ve got an iPhone, a Jitterbug or an Android. Storing pictures is like joining the army — it’s easy to get in and hard to get out. Still, with a little digging and some extra time, you’ll find there are myriad ways to manage your photos.
First of all, the most important thing you can do is back up the photos on your computer or smartphone. That way, you’ll always be able to enjoy them. Luckily, there’s a painless way to do this, and that’s to set up automatic backups by going to settings and clicking on the phone carriers' cloud services backup. In the long term, you’ll be glad you did. People who don’t will tell you they wish they had.
After you’ve backed up your precious pics, it matters what device you’ve used to take your pictures. Some people use actual cameras such as the Canon, Nikon and Sony. Canons are a little easier to deal with because you most likely store your photos on disks. But, if you use your Android smartphone or iPhone camera as your only camera, it’s so easy to snap a photo and forget it.
Recently, my sister-in-law sent me the cutest picture of me with her puppy. I never even realized I was in any photos with her dog. Now I’m obsessed with a photo I never even knew about — and there could be thousands more like it. (I should also mention that I rarely take a good picture.)
Some people look at their photos all the time. If you’re one of them, I’ve compiled a guide to things you can do to save your pictures until you want to take them out and look at them again.
“Collecting photos over time is like a digital diary,” says camera phone enthusiast Brooke Pospychala. “I love that I can look at a photograph and be transported to that moment in time that I may have forgotten about otherwise."