Great photos are born in the camera

By now you know that Stay Focused is part the arnielee website. We’re here because we love taking pictures. You’ll find articles based on our 50+ years of experience in photography. We’re happy to share our know-how with you so in hopes that you’ll discover new ways to enjoy your picture taking even more. We recently opened our Gallery Store for those interested in browsing our collection of fine art photographs.

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I’m a frequent visitor to Yellowstone National Park with its abundance of unique thermal features – geysers, mud pots, steam vents, hot springs.

Yellowstone also is home to amazing wildlife.

While I took many more pictures, below are some of the ones that I liked best from my last visit this year. There isn’t much text here, just the visuals.

Yellowstone as with most of our national parks is one of those places where you can find scenes and wildlife to photograph and experience everywhere you go. Hoping that you get to have the experience of visiting a national park.

Written by: Arnie Lee
 
 

One of our grandsons is enamored with cars.

When we visited him in Reno last month he told us his one of his favorite pastimes was looking at all of the cars at the local museum. So off we went to downtown Reno.

The National Automobile Museum is one of the top auto museums in the USA where more than two hundred vintage autos are on display. Many of these were from the extensive collection of William Harrah, the founder of Harrah’s Casino.

We spent an afternoon walking through the museums’s four spacious halls arranged by era – 1890-1910, 1910-1930, 1930-1950 and 1950 to present.

You couldn’t help but be impressed by the immaculate restoration of so many of the vehicles. I snapped many pictures of automobiles that afternoon. But the ones that I liked the most were the shiny, cool hood ornaments that adorned the vehicles.

Below are some of my favorites.

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You can learn more about the National Automobile Museum here.

Written by: Arnie Lee
 
 

Have you Backed Up Your Photos?

Many of the photographs that you take are non-replaceable. Whether they are snapshots of family, birthday, anniversary, reunion or other events, most likely they are important possessions that you do not want to lose.

In the days before digital photography, many of us stuffed negatives, slides and snapshots in the proverbial shoebox for safekeeping. But with the advent of digital cameras photography became easier and less expensive resulting in a steep increase of the number of pictures and videos that we took. And of the number has literally exploded with the addition of our always handy cellphone camera.

The question is – are we taking the steps to backup and/or organize all of our photos and videos? Nowadays there are a myriad ways to store images. The one you choose is based on the amount of effort you have to expend to backup and organize your stash and the cost for storing them.

Here’s a few of the ways that I backup and organize my photos and videos. From here on in when I refer to images this is to be both photographs and videos.

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Cellphones fall into either the Apple iOS category or the Android category. And since your cellphone doubles as cameras, it’s a good idea to backup the images regularly.

While I’m insistent on safeguarding the images on my cellphone, I’m also interested in doing so as easily and inexpensively as possible. So I’ve chosen several ways to do this that are simple and automated.

My cell is an iPhone so I don’t have a lot of experience with Android models. Android owners can use both the Google and Amazon services for backup up their images.

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Apple Photos app

My iPhone can automatically upload all of my photos to the Apple cloud for safekeeping.

1. Go to the Settings menu:
2. Beneath your name choose Apple ID, iCloud+, Media & Purchases.
3. Choose iCloud
4. Choose Photos
5. Next to Sync this iPhone turn the button on

Apple iCloud users are entitled to 5GB of storage with their account. This amount of storage is enough for about 2500 photos of average size. For larger photo collections, you can purchase 50GB additional storage for $.99 (99 cents) a month. I have 8,000 photos and 1,300 videos in my current collection. If you have a huge collection you can purchase 2TB of storage for $9.99 a month.

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Google Photos app

I also have Google Photos app installed on my iPhone. Google Photos copies the photos on my iPhone to my Google Library in the cloud. I purchased 100 GB of storage which cost $1.99 per month. Currently I have more than 30,000 images but using only 36 GB of the allocated storage. There are other options to purchase additional storage on the Google cloud. For Android users the Google Photos app has an option to backup the photos on your cell phone to your Google Library in the cloud.

Google Photos has features to edit, add descriptions and comments, identify faces, organize images into albums and share images.

Google Photos users are entitled to 15GB of storage with their account. This amount of storage is enough for about 7500 photos of average size. For larger photo collections, you can purchase 100GB additional storage for $1.99 a month.

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Amazon Photos app

The Amazon Photos app is also installed on my iPhone. Amazon Prime members receive unlimited free storage for photos and 5 GB for videos. You can use either their iOS (iPhone/iPad) or Android app to automatically backup your images. Non-Prime members can purchase 100 GB of storage on the Amazon cloud for $19.99 per year ($1.66/month). Currently, I have about 9,000 photos and 2000 videos stored on the Amazon’s cloud using 82 GB of storage.

Amazon Photos has features to edit, apply filters, add text and organize images into albums or groups and share images.

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As you can see, I have safeguarded my cellphone photos in three different places. Maybe it’s “overkill” to have three different backups but the process is automatic. Since I have more images than the allotted free space for the various services I don’t mind the few dollars a month since it saves me the worry that I might otherwise loose an important event.

It’s easy and either free or inexpensive so please don’t forget to protect your photos and videos.

Written by: Arnie Lee
 
 

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