In my last post from this series [click here to read it] we talked about the fact that all our photos are EVERYWHERE. Not just on our phones, laptops, iPads, but also inside various texts, text groups, even in screenshots! We found all those little spots and emailed them to ourselves [or got them onto our main computer in other ways]. We created a few simple folders on our hard drives to house those photos.
If you didn’t already, it’s time to get the thousands of photos that you actually took with your phone OFF your phone and with the other photos. Since I’m a Mac and iPhone user, this is how I transferred the 1025 photographs off my camera roll. I simply took my phone charger, plugged it in the back of my computer, and transferred them over. If you’re also an iPhone user, once you do that, you’ll be asked if you can trust the receiving device [sorry, I forget the exact words, but that’s it in a nutshell]. Say yes. It will ask you where you want to place your photos, so find a place near your other photos and the rest is done for you.
Since I’m a user of Lightroom, a paid service many professional photographer use, I put all my photos inside my “Pictures” section in a place where Lightroom grabs them [when I direct it to import]. When I did my last transfer from my phone, I simply put them into a folder that says, “June 2017 iPhone Images.” But you can simply find a spot on the hard drive of your computer.
This is a pretty simple but important step! Next month we’ll find a way to organize all these photos. I’m thinking of showing you a good, better, best way to do it, since some of you will invest lots of time to organize and others might just want a simple solution.
In the meantime, once I finish the transfer off my phone and onto my computer, I like to go into that folder on my computer and actually SEE them there. I also take a few moments to quickly delete the stupid shots I took, like a funny sign I saw, or the price tag of something at Target. [Isn’t it funny how many things we take pictures of for just something we need for a second?] ANYWAY, don’t take too much time on this part, as we will tackle it officially in our next lesson.
I also go back to my phone and actually delete most of the images. Unless you refer back to them for some reason you can and should save room on your phone and delete as many as you can. Of my 1025 that I downloaded this month, I went back into my phone camera roll and deleted about 850 of them. Why keep them in both places?
Finally, and this is the important part. Back up your images! If you haven’t purchased an external hard drive, do it now, before you delete your photos off your phone. The new hard drive can be plugged in, and simply copy the folders holding your pics onto the external hard drive [copy, don’t move]. Once they are backed up you can safely delete them from your phone.
