Louise in our '66 Corvair Corsa, somewhere in the northeast Georgia mountains.
People who read this blog are familiar with my ongoing rant about backing up the files of your cell phone photographs.
Reader Marcus Peddle, who lives and teaches in South Korea, wrote in a comment: "I once asked a student if her parents had taken many pictures of her when she was young. 'Yes," she said, 'but my father broke his phone and all the pictures were lost.' What a disaster."
Marcus blogs at https://imperfect-composition.blogspot.com/
Because I prefer to use a camera that feels like a camera and has the features of something created expressly for photography, I don't take many pictures with my cell phone. But when I make a photo with my cell phone that's important to me, I back it up on my computer and back-up hard drives.
I also back up the photos from my cameras, of course, and I do not reuse my SD cards. They are so cheap now that when I fill one up, I replace it with a new one and store the old card.
When Louise and I went on a memorable weekend trip to the northeast Georgia mountains back in 1971, cell phones were almost beyond imagination -- like something from a Dick Tracy comic strip.
But I did have a camera with me (as always) and took a few pictures. I wish I had taken more. This is the only survivor I've found, and it's important to me. The photo was originally square, so I probably made it with a Rolleicord Vb twin-lens reflex and cropped the image down to a rectangle because that's easier to post on Facebook. The
picture doesn't have anything to do with today's topic, but since this
is a photography blog, I feel an obligation to show you a photo. :o)
(The Corsa, by the way, was a really fun-to-drive car on mountain roads. A true poor man's Porsche)
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Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.
I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.
Dave I feel your pain and frustration at times….. I wanted a camera that was user friendly…. Pick it up shoot and make it easy…. Cathy got me one for Christmas last year…. You need a degree in computer science to use it { to me anyway} I once had a Nikon 35 MM ….. great camera needless to say it went to Europe and never came back….. just miss the simplicity
ReplyDeleteThanks for listening
Roy
DeleteRoy, it's always good to hear from you. How are things in Chickamauga? We wish we had stayed in the area.
The complexity of digital cameras is one of the things that makes cell phones so popular -- all you have to know is which direction to point it and what button to push!
I periodically open iCloud on my computer and download all of my phone shots into my filing system on my computer. It (and a bunch of other things) is automatically backed up to an external drive. I plan to add online backup this year, if I can figure out a way that isn't terrible (as the commercial solutions all are). I do reuse my SD cards though. My computer hard drive is the main source for me, and with a backup (and soon two, one offsite) I feel safe enough.
ReplyDeleteJim, you are very experienced and don't need anyone to tell you what to do. But countless casual cell phone photographers are going to see their visual memories vanish into the ether. That's why i issue a periodic rant, as I know you understand.
DeleteI deeply appreciate you and your blog. You have been very helpful to me.
For some reason Google won't let me comment on my account, so I'm signing my name.
Dave Jenkins
That's a fine-looking car. Thank you for mentioning my website. I save all my phone photos to my computer and back up all my pictures to an external hard drive. I sometimes feel like I spend more time organising and backing up photos than I do making photos.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed that Corvair. Unfortunately, I loaned it to a friend who drove it too hard and threw a rod.
Delete