Tips for taking better arm’s length photos with your cell phone

Spontaneity is a hallmark of summer. Especially in Chicagoland. We are out, about, moving fast and soaking up the sun while we can. The season has only 91 days or, if you’re counting from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day, you get 101 days this year. In any case, time is short, and a lot is happening.

Spontaneous photo opportunities abound, and wouldn’t you know it? I don’t have my camera.

But I have my cell phone, and the iPhone 4′s 5 megapixel camera takes fab pictures (the iPhone 4S is even better at 8 megapixel).

Last week, I ran across (not literally) this photo opp as he crossed my street:

It’s not every day one sees a moss-covered monster like this. And certainly not any days in the winter time. He was moving fast. For a turtle. And I wouldn’t have caught him if I didn’t have my cell phone with me.

One of my favorite photos from last summer is this one, taken spontaneously with my cell phone at a Twins game at Target Field:

I love my 17-year-old stepson’s expression of resignation (there’s a current of happiness running through there somewhere) and my husband’s sneaky appearance in the background. I liked it so much, I used it in my Christmas card.

Those arm’s length shots with your cell phone are sometimes the best shots. Here are a few tips for making the most of yours:

• Clean your camera lens periodically. With as much as you handle your cell phone, who knows what’s clouding the field.
• Step out. Natural lighting is most flattering, preferably with the sun in front of you or obscured.
• Switch it up. Some cell phones allow users to turn the lens to front so you can see exactly what you’re framing. The symbol on an iPhone looks like this:
• Look into the lens, not the display (especially if you switched the lens to the front of your phone).
• Lift up. The most flattering angle is from slightly higher than eye level. No double chins.
• Hold your breath for less chance of wiggle and blur.
• Smile. Come on now, summer is fun!

Let the picture taking begin!

Put your stamp on it

Once you digitize your images (either by taking pictures with a digital camera or scanning printed photos), the world is full of fun ways to use your photos.

Including postage stamps!

Stamps.com is an approved vendor for the U.S. Postal Service. The stamps you create can be used like real postage stamps to send mail.

Consider this project for wedding invitations, graduation announcements, party invitations and gifts for avid letter writers (yes, some people still write handwritten letters). The stamps ship in about a week.

This vintage image became a great gift for a mom on Mother’s Day (excuse the quality — this is a screen grab):

Of course, you can use full-color images, too.

Think inside the box

Unlike Pandora’s Box, this one is a box you’ll want to have around.

It’s called a Memory Keeper, and I’ve written about them before but they’re so handy and beautiful, it’s worth addressing again because they’re on sale this month at www.papercoterie.com. Through June 4, they’re only $20 when you enter the code HAPPY1STBIRTHDAY.

It’s a durable linen-lined box made of recycled fiber board personalized with your own photo or photos. It lives up to its “durable”description; I’ve been lugging mine to all my library talks, and it still looks great.

My box sports my own seasonal photos and words. Paper Coterie’s extremely easy-to-use interface helps you upload your digital images. Mine is the Tiny Stripes design, and I titled it “Monica’s Love Vault.” You can even label the spine, so you can store it upright and quickly locate it. Greeting cards and nice notes fill mine, so I open it up and sift through its contents anytime I need a lift.

It’s two-inches deep, so it holds a lot of mementos and three-dimensional memorabilia, like artwork, key chains, coins, ribbons and medals, clothing or fabric, garters, dried flowers, maybe even baby shoes.

I love this box because it’s so easy to fill — no double-sided tape, no labeling or tabs, no special pages required. More great ideas:

• All those Christmas photos of other families you don’t know what to do with? Decorate your Memory Keeper with festive holiday photos and keep those holiday greetings inside. Put it out on your coffee table every year as part of your Christmas decorations.
• Include all your first-day-of-school photos, report cards, achievement certificates and other important school papers inside a Memory Keeper decorated with one of your child’s annual school pictures.
• I encouraged a woman looking for a way to store her husband’s Vietnam War photos to create a Memory Keeper for him. She could leave the box out as part of her living room decor, and he could open it up and look at his pictures whenever he wanted to reminisce.
• Overwhelmed with your child’s sports photos? Tuck them inside a Memory Keeper, and guests will be able to catch up with your kid’s wins and losses when they stop by.

One caveat: You might not want to use this box for one-of-kind photos you want to keep around for 50 years. The very act of touching your photos is bad for them because we transfer skin oil and other gunk from our fingers to the photos every time we handle them. But for photos and memorabilia you want to enjoy in the here and now, a Memory Keeper is a great option.

Clickago helps tell your stories

Clickago has added Storywerks to its name and mission.

Clickago = Click + Chicago

Storywerks = Story + works with a quirk

I’m a storyteller at heart, and my new venture adds storytelling to my photo organizing skills. My career has spanned from daily newspaper reporter and headline writer to an executive in a worldwide scrapbooking company and communications director with a food company dedicated to bringing families around the dinner table to share their stories. My role with the Association of Personal Photo Organizers has evolved from territory manager to certified photo organizer member and membership rep.

At Clickago Storywerks, we can help you organize and enjoy a lifetime of photos and tell your stories in meaningful, beautiful ways:

• Sort Printed Photos: I’ll coach you through the process or simply take the whole mess off your hands and return your photos to you in photo-safe boxes, sorted and labeled.
• Photo Book Creation: I’ll take 30-150 printed photos, scan them and create a beautiful photo book. I create scrapbooks, too.
• Slide Shows: I’ll create a slide show of your still images in a video set to music. I’ll even connect your computer to your big-screen TV so you can “go to the movies” right in your livingroom.
• Gifts: I create personalized postage stamps, memory boxes, calendars and other photo gifts, usually shipped right to your door or to your gift recipient.
• Personal History: I can help you tell the story of a single event or an entire lifetime for use in a book, photo album or blog.
• Website or Blog Copy: I provide fresh, interesting copy to attract search-engine traffic for a website or a personal or business blog.

I also sort and backup digital images, provide one-on-one instruction on software and speak to groups.

Meanwhile, I’m working on publishing my memoir. You’ll be hearing more about that in the coming months.

If you’re a subscriber to this blog, rest assured you’ll continue to receive great ideas for enjoying your family photos. And as always, we love comments!

What should I do with all my negatives?

Back when people used film to takes pictures, prints came back from the processor with negatives.

These negatives are a backup to your printed photos and can be saved in case of damage to the original prints.

The most important to do with negatives: Store them separate from your prints. If something tragic were to happen to those prints (think: house fire or water pipe break), the negatives could be used to recreate the print if they are stored somewhere else.

If you’re sorting through a mountain of family photos and come across a bunch of negatives, set them aside. The plastic sleeves in which some negatives come from the processor are likely photo-safe plastic (i.e., polyethylene) so it’s fine to keep them in those sleeves or — if the negatives are loose — the original photo envelope. Negatives don’t have to be sorted and edited as meticulously as a print collection unless or until it becomes necessary, as in the case of one of the aforementioned tragedies.

Store your negatives in the same way you would store your prints. Use photo-safe materials, and keep them in a cool, dry place (i.e., not the basement or attic) or better yet, the house of a good friend or relative.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water (or the wedding bouquet with the trash)

In “The ABCs of Photo Organization” I teach people to throw away (yes, throw away) some of their photos. Some photos just aren’t worth keeping, especially duplicates, unflattering photos, blurry photos and most scenery shots.

But some poorly composed photos are worth keeping because they tell a story.

Like this one:

I recently ran across this image of my parents’ wedding in 1964. They’ll be celebrating their 48th wedding anniversary next month, so you can imagine there’s a lot of story in this picture.

It’s blurry, yes, but I love it because of its ethereal appearance, just a like a fairy tale. My mother’s big hoop skirt captures the feel of a Cinderella dress, and my handsome father looks tall and thin like a Prince Charming ought to. And fairy tales always end with “And they lived happily ever after.” This photo — seemingly flawed — illustrates my parents’ fairy tale relationship. So it’s a keeper.

When you run across a photo like this in your own collection, ask yourself, “Is there a story here?” If there is, the photo is worth keeping. And telling the story.

‘B’ wise: Tips on preserving your photos from the nation’s libraries

It’s not only individuals who are struggling to preserve their photos and other important memorabilia and artifacts — it’s libraries, too.

This week is Preservation Week, observed by libraries across the nation and created to highlight the resources available to help us preserve our personal and shared collections.

If you think you have problems, ponder this statistic from The Campaign for America’s Libraries: More than 4.8 billion (that’s billion with a “b”) artifacts are held in public trust by more than 30,000 archives, historical societies, libraries, museums, scientific research collections and archaeological repositories in the United States.

And you thought your backlog of a couple thousand baby, pet and vacation photos was overwhelming.

Two helpful tips for preservation

Rooting around on website for The Campaign for America’s Libraries, I found these great tips for preserving your photos and other things (click here for the complete list). High on the list: ”Store safely in stable conditions” and “make a copy.” Both of these tips speak directly to the “B” in “The ABCs of Photo Organizing”: Box and backup.

• Box: When it comes to boxes for storing your photos, look for acid-free material or photo-safe plastic containers. Avoid recycled materials, light, air pollution and dust, moisture and high temperatures. The most important factor for storing photos is the environment and climate in which they will be stored; find a cool, dry place in your home, such as an upstairs closet.
• Backup: And as far as backups, they’re important for both printed and digital images. Suitable backups for printed photos include duplicate photos, negatives and scans of the photos (stored separately from  your originals!). Backup your digital images on thumb drives, external hard drives and cloud storage, but most importantly: Print! A print of a digital image is a backup.

In honor of Preservation Week, the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services is offering a free webinar on “Preserving Your Personal Digital Photographs” by Bill LeFurgy, Digital Initiatives Manager with the Library of Congress. It’s being presented at 1 p.m. Central time Thursday, April 26. Click here for more information and how to register.

A new dimension for your wall art

One of my favorite photos from last summer is now one of my favorite wall hangings, thanks to Anvy Digital Imaging through the Association of Personal Photo Organizers.

I turned this image from my father’s wildflower garden into a canvas wrap print. I love that I don’t have to worry about matching frames to my woodwork, other frames or the image itself. Plus, the image literally pops with its 1-inch depth and canvas texture adding dimension.

Be aware: You need a high-resolution digital image in order to enlarge it; Anvy does everything else. Anvy creates canvas wrap prints in four sizes as small at 11-by-14-inches up to 24-by-36 inches. You’ll sacrifice the outer edges of the image in order to wrap it, so don’t crop your picture so much that you can’t stand to lose the edges. Without the frame, you’ll save a lot compared to professional framing yet still have a professional look.

Imagine a scenery shot, portrait of your home or garden or an emotionally charged image of a loved one in a display like this. I read in Real Simple magazine recently that a University of Wisconsin-Madison study showed that looking at baby photos activates areas in the brain associated with positive emotions. Turn your baby’s photo into art, and be happy every time you gaze upon it!

Interested in creating a piece of art like this? I can help. Leave a comment and let’s connect.

Photos of the lake — or anywhere else — transport the viewer

Choosing a place for the theme of a digital photo album is an excellent way to organize one’s photos — and it might make a fine coffee table book, too.

My sister lives on a lake in Minnesota, and a good friend of hers recently gave her a beautiful photo album illustrated with years of photos of their families’ exploits on the lake.

The cover is adorned with a magnificent shot of the beautiful body of water and simply the words “The Lake.”

Inside are pages of photos taken during weekends and holidays spent together as families waterskiing, grilling, carousing and fishing. Some of the pages feature headlines and quotes about lake life: “It’s the little moments that make life big.” I imagine the friend made a copy for herself, too, a simply way to preserve her family’s memories while making a meaningful gift.

Location is a good theme for other albums, too:

• “The Cabin” or “The Cottage” or “The Chalet” works for photos taken at a vacation home or timeshare.
• “The Farm” might be appropriate for a family or heritage album of photos taken on the family acreage.
• “The Great Outdoors” titles a book of camping photos or snowmobiling expeditions.
• Pictures taken during a college career or study abroad program could be assembled in a book titled simply with the city name.
• “Our First Home” covers any span of time — long or short — and photos of any number of different events experienced there (holidays, new babies, gardens, remodeling projects).

I met a woman recently who intends to preserve her vacation photos so she can enjoy them when she’s older and can no longer travel — those books will be like travelogues of fantastic journeys.

The better the quality of the photography, the more the album will look like a coffee table book. Preserve some of the photos at a higher resolution so as to display them large and impressively.

A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature.  It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

~ Henry David Thoreau

Don’t miss tonight’s inspiration

Join our lively speakers for an evening of inspiration: Motivation to tackle your loved but neglected photos, enthusiasm for making the most of working from home and insight on starting your own business in an emerging service niche: Photo organizing.

The founder of the Association of Personal Photo Organizers and a Chicago author are appearing tonight in Elk Grove Village.

The president of Appo™  and her own photo organizing business PhotoSimplified, Cathi Nelson addresses her entrepreneurial inspiration with plenty of tips on how to make sense of a mess of family photos. A growing and thriving network of professionals dedicated to telling clients’ stories, Appo provides support and education for entrepreneurs looking to build a photo organizing business and educates the public on the need for photo organizing services. She has been a speaker at annual conferences for the National Association of Professional Organizers, Independent Photo Imagers, National Association of Senior Move Managers and frequently speaks on photo organizing.

Elaine Quinn, the author of “There’s No Place Like Working From Home,” talks about the freedom of working from home, being true to your passion and building a business. An internationally-recognized organizing and time management expert, her book offers tips for making the most of a work-from-home situation. Prior to founding her consulting business, Elaine’s 25 years in sales and management positions with Fortune 100 companies in the pharmaceutical industry developing strong skills in productivity and problem-solving, which she now brings to solopreneurs and other work-from-home professionals. She will be selling and signing books this evening.

Don’t miss it: 7 p.m. tonight, April 12 at Belvedere Events & Banquets, 1170 W. Devon, Elk Grove Village, Ill.

To pre-register and be entered into a drawing for great prizes, click here.