Eleven Clever Tips for Digital Camera Owners

Ooh! I have one more!
My company frequently relies on a few retailers for emergency supplies and b/c these stores hold varying hours throughout the week and sometimes change by season I can never remember what time they open on a given day. Therefore, instead of guessing, I take pictures of their front doors so that I can scroll through my camera/computer photo cache and look at business hours.

We use our cameras, or phones if we're not carrying one of the cameras, to take a picture of our kids whenever we're going to be in a crowded place (think Disneyworld). I NEVER remember what they're wearing and I'd probably forget their eye color under stress (visual memory epic fail for me), so if (heaven forbid) we lose one of them, we have a very up-to-date picture.

When you set out on vacation or a business trip or any event where you will be taking photos, it's a good idea to write down the who, what, when, why, and where and photograph it as the first photo in the series. That helps you remember the details. It makes it more fun if you use something evocative of the event, like a napkin from a restaurant with the name printed on it. Make it into a still life.

It's always good to take pix of signs that explain a photo. When you go to a tourist site, take a photo of the sign out front first. Photograph them now and read them later. When you meet people and photograph them, write their names down and photograph it.

Always take a title photo, a large shot of the place you are going. Then work down to details.

Take pix of maps with your finger on the spot where you are at so you can remember later.

If you buy a ticket to get into an event or site, take a photo of it to remind yourself what it was.

Take enough expository photos of signs and handwritten notes so that a stranger will understand the photos. If you don't look at your own photos for months after you take them, you are as good as a stranger to them.

When you download your photos, access them on the computer and display their properties. Describe the pix in the description fields. Do it as soon as possible after the event.

My photos from college and before all burned up in a house fire. Therefore, it's an excellent idea to periodically burn your photos to a CD or DVD, put it in a plastic case, and label it to preserve them. Make three copies and have family keep two of the copies in different locations. That way you can recover your photos in case of fire or hard drive damage.

In fact, you might just want to make a project of scanning all of your family photos and putting them on a single CD or DVD as an archive. Make a family project out of labelling them all, telling the story of the photos, the who, what, when, where, why of each one. Have your elder relatives get involved by printing out old obscure photos and asking them to explain them.

When you are done, burn all the photos on a CD or set of DVDs. Make dozens of copies and put them each in a plastic video case bought from the local computer store. Give them out as Christmas gifts.

If you want to get really elaborate, you can hire a kid from the local community college Internet program to make a fancy label on Photoshop and then have the CD professionally duplicated. You can get a hundred such CDs or DVDs done for as little as $250.

If you're finally going to clean out the basement or garage once and for all, then use your camera to run defense for you against sentimentality.

I had boxes and boxes of stuff I hadn't even seen in a decade, but as soon as I saw things I suddenly couldn't bear to discard them. lol

So instead, I photographed each item that was emotionally significant, from enough angles and distances that it was "real" in the pics. Then I got rid of the stuff.

I burned all the images onto a CD...which I'll probably not look at for a decade, either. But having those images means, in an emotional sense, I have not thrown out the past.

Very liberating way to deal with an unpleasant task.