In case you hadn’t noticed, the cost of photo storage has gone up like a SpaceX rocket this year. But unlike SpaceX boosters it’s not going to land again for some time.

The frenzy over data center construction to feed AI has created a shortage of both traditional hard disk drives (HDD) and solid state drives (SSD) as tech companies scoop up all the storage media they can find. Over the last six months, that has pushed the price of NAND Flash contracts - the storage chips in SSD’s - up by 50% to 75%, which in turn raises the cost of finished drives 2-3 times what they cost last year.

Even the cheaper HDD’s have become more expensive. Last year I bought portable 4TB drives for as low as $99 and usually around $129. As of this writing, those same drives go for over $200.

What does that mean for everyday photographers like us who just want to enjoy our photos and keep them safe?

Digital photos and storage go hand in hand. And like an EV driver needs to know where to find the next charging station, we all need to know where we can save our photos.

In the world of photo management you can never have too much storage, but what kind and where it is makes a difference.

What has changed is that we need to be more strategic about it than we used to be. We can no longer just react to a storage deficit by dashing out and buying another drive. Both because of cost and just plain availability, that option isn’t as handy anymore. By planning ahead is the only way to buy more storage that’s right for your needs at a price you can justify.

But before you start scouring Labor Day sales and discount offers, take an inventory of what you’ve already got.

Most of us have drawers, shelves, and boxes full of old drives and discarded tech. Go there first.

Retired computers may have removable hard drives that can be repurposed. Pre-2013 MacBooks have drives that are particularly easy to access. Old PC and abandoned network drives can be removed and reformatted. I’m not saying to go full scavenger, but just start by getting together what you have, appreciate that it’s gone up in storage value, and that it might be worth using again.

You can buy a casing/enclosure for drives on Amazon for $10-$20 that will turn that raw drive into a nice external USB drive.

External drives may be where you’ve stashed 7 years of Photos Libraries backups. Or copied off the files from a retired PC/Mac and haven’t gotten around to culling what’s out-of-date. Now might be a good time to audit those or hire a photo manager to do it and pare it down to the true keepers to free up usable space.

Even flash/thumb/jump drives - whatever you call them - are worth a look. These are the tiny drives for transporting documents, photos/videos - “deliverables” - between devices. They used to be so cheap that they showed up as conference swag, key ring accessories, and as complementary vehicles for digital job delivery. Everyone had one in their pocket or purse.

For convenience, they were usually oversized for the task. You bought a 3-pack of 64GB flash drives because they were cheap and then put 20GB of files on them. If you gather up all the loose flash drives you have lying around, you’ll likely find there is a fair amount of storage space available. At least enough to serve as emergency storage if your iPhone or MacBook Air hits the space wall. Just consolidate all the media to a hard drive and reformat (see sidebar) the flash drives for storage use.

Same thing with camera and video SD cards. They used to be cheap enough that photographers would use the cards as photo backup and buy new cards as needed. If you still shoot to them, you can reclaim that storage just as with flash drives, and you might find some important old pictures in the process.

Next, take a look at your online storage. I have iCloud, Dropbox, pCloud, and Google Drive space I can use. You may have OneDrive, BackBlaze, Amazon and others. It’s easy for online storage to turn into a digital junk drawer and that space counts as part of your storage inventory, one way or another. It may be time to clean it up. But be sure you account for it in your planning. So far, storage online hasn’t followed the same cost trajectory as physical storage, so if budget is the main driver, cloud services can be very handy and cost effective compared to hard drives. Especially when sharing across family members, as with Apple Family Sharing.

Finally, look at your primary setup - iPhone, iCloud, Mac, Time Machine or other backup. For photos we want to see 3 copies of original sized photos across your ecosystem. Usually that resolves as having Optimized photos (downsized) on your iPhone, and Original photos on iCloud, Mac, and Time Machine backup. If your Mac can’t hold your whole Original-sized Photo Library then you need a second hard drive to do that in conjunction with your Mac. Time Machine will back up both of those at once. And you want to leave 20% free space for smooth system operations.

All of this is to avoid you needing an emergency storage solution when you have few options. This is the time to think strategically about what you’d do if you got that “out of space” alert.

Maybe you have plenty of available storage as is.

Maybe you can recover enough space in your ecosystem to have a buffer.

Or maybe you can see that you’ll need to buy more in the next few months and you can monitor the marketplace for a good deal on just the right size storage upgrade.

These are those times.

What’s your space situation? Share details in comments.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Here we are. The month of August laid out like a picnic blanket on the calendar; inviting us to partake of the remaining summer pleasures while we can.

Somewhere in there is likely a wedding, engagement party, or milestone event. The gathering is genuine but summer is the sweetener. Seeing old friends and meeting new ones. All centered around someone(s) who pull it all together.

Chances are - at weddings, for sure - that a professional photographer is part of the mix. Hired to cover the event and make sure the guest(s) of honor are captured full and well. Not only is it a timeless keepsake of a memorable moment, but a good event photographer can elevate the experience with clever angles and creative images. Event photography is all about the execution of both anticipation and reaction.

But we are all photographers too, these days, and likely won’t be attending without our iPhones at hand. Eager to catch the moments ourselves. Because, why not?

Have you ever seen the photo of wedding vows being taken behind a sea of upraised iPhones?

That’s why not.

Events are performance art, and when there are professional photographers on site, you are one of the performers. Be in character, whatever that is for you, when you are in the frame. And then the hosts, after the blur of the moment, sitting and watching the pictures later, can delight in their guests’ presence and participation in the day.

But here’s the thing. You can contribute (and I know you want to) in some very special ways that the pro photogs cannot. You are on the inside.

Here are the rules of guest photo etiquette.

• Never intrude on a group shot. This is the Pro’s bread and butter. Even I f every other shot is out of focus or overexposed, they have to nail the group shots. And if one of the group is distracted by you and looking off to one side, the shot is lost. If the Pro is smart they will ask the group to pause after they’re done so their friends can get a shot too, but that’s their call.

• Get the ‘insider’ shots. What the Pro can’t get are the personal shots. Friends hanging out. Close ups. Details. Candid shots of the hosts. Kids being outrageous. A Pro may get lucky, but they are going to take thousands of photos at a wedding; at least a thousand at an event. The selects they give the hosts will be a fraction of that. You have a big advantage for truly personal shots that they will never get. They can’t be everywhere. That’s your gift.

• Video snippets. It can be a personal message to the hosts. Interviewing friends. Random moments. Panning across a room or lawn to show the scale. Dancing. Video adds a whole different dimension to the experience and even a professional videographer won’t get the up close personality that you can with an iPhone.

• Technical wizardry. If you are handy with your iPhone, it will offer options the Pro’s can’t or won’t touch. Time-lapse of the receiving line, slo-mo dancing moments, recording a toast, and more.

• Fashionably late. Depending on the event, the Pros will either present photos fairly soon after the event or will take weeks. Try to get a read on that (ask them how you’ll be able to see the photos they take and when), then share your photos/videos with the hosts on a different timeline. That spreads out the experience for the hosts, and adds visibility to your pictures.

Then you’ll be voted the best guest photographer.

Party on.

YOUR SUMMER INTERN

Pam and I are both photographers, so we’re lucky to have lots of pictures of ourselves over the years on trips, hanging out, and doing summer stuff as a family.

But I see many families where there’s just one person who’s the family photographer. And they don’t show up much in the photo collections because they took them all.

If that’s you, now’s the time to get a summer intern.

I think summer brings out the best in us and is a wonderful time for family photos of everyone. Not in every picture, of course, but everyone - including the “family photographer” - should get equal time. Then, years from now, when you look back on this summer you’ll see a complete story with everyone in the picture.

To do that you’ll need a summer intern.

It can be your partner or a close friend. If you vacation with other families, do a little trade - you photograph them and they photograph you. Sailing. Hiking. Games. Days at the beach.

And the kids. Get everyone involved. It’s amazing what they can come up with if you make a game of it.

And at summer’s end you can create a slideshow of everyone’s pictures.

And you’ll be in the picture.

THE CAMERA IN YOUR APPLE WATCH

Did you know that you can take a photo with your Apple Watch? One of the apps is a remote camera trigger. Just prop your iPhone against that venti iced Americano and launch the Camera. Find the Camera app on your watch. You can see yourself on the watch to position yourself, then tap the Camera app on your Apple Watch to start the countdown for a selfie.

You can control everything from your Apple Watch.

• Set the length of the countdown timer

• Choose front or rear camera

• Flash on or off

• Live Photo on or off

If you are using the selfie camera everyone will see the countdown on the display.

Thanks for reading.

There’s a certain irony that now, on the cusp of digital awareness, Apple has dredged up a navigation tool for your Photos Library that goes back over 2 millennia.

The Table of Contents.

To be sure, Apple has put their own spin on it, but anyone who’s cracked open a high school history textbook, Volkswagen repair manual, or Silver Palette Cook Book will recognize the form and function just as it was conceived by Roman scholars.

You want to see XXX? Here is where to find it.

Even back then, readers wanted to avoid endless scrolling.

For real.

It may seem like a step back in photo management, what with object recognition and search improving at the speed of light, but for many of us, getting into the right neighborhood is fine. We don’t mind browsing the last block or so. And Collections does that.

For many years, an organized digital photo collection was dependent on us. We had to create a folder structure with albums to hold the pictures. For any effective photo management we needed to craft the navigation ourselves. That took time to create and more time to maintain. And - more irony - those of us who most needed the organization were often worst at creating it.

Collections is like a living Table of Contents. And this is where the Apple magic comes in. Instead of a static reference, like Desserts in a cookbook, Collections is always on the lookout for topical changes - additions and deletions - of what it’s going to share with you. It’s always current. As you take and import new photos they get included in the appropriate groupings.

So Collections is just there to narrow your search. To get you to the right chapter.

Some quick hits are:

• People & Pets

• Trips

• Recent Days

• Recently Viewed

• Recently Shared

• Map (locations)

You can also choose by Media Types if that’s how you think of them.

• Selfies

• Portraits

• Video

• Panorama

• Screenshots

• And so on.

• You can even include Collections you created like favorite Albums and Memories.

The point is that by using the Collections tab as a Table of Contents, you can quickly get to the photos you want in a jiffy.

And the sweetener is that you can even customize the Collections Table of Contents with the Pinned Collection. Putting your Favorite content categories just a tap or two away.

Have you Pinned your favorite Collections in Apple Photos? What are you top 3 collections and how has that changed your photos experience?

Every year about this time, I wake up and feel slightly uneasy.

Unbalanced, really.

Since Memorial Day I’ve burrowed into the comfortable pillow of summer calm. Long days. Shorts and sandals. Outdoor cafes.

I like it. I’ve found the rhythm.

But suddenly, it’s half past July. Midsummer. And I can’t deny that Labor Day - the beginning of September - is out there somewhere. Just waiting.

This is the time to get serious about summer photos.

My ancestors dried fish and filled root cellars for the winter.

I lay in a stockpile of pictures for the dark months ahead.

‘Cause let’s face it. We all live for summer. It makes us smile.

So for the five weeks left to fill with summer photos, here are some thoughts to guide your picture taking that will warm up your winter.

WHAT’S THE STORY?

Every summer has a story arc. Maybe some subplots thrown in. But our lives are stories and the lens of summer magnifies all that.

Vacations. Get-togethers. A son or daughter’s last months at home. Farewell to a familiar place and the discovery of a new one. Stories are all of that. Three days or all three months.

The thing is, as crystal clear as all that seems today, it won’t in 5 years or 10. What seems like clutter today may become an indistinct memory in time, wanting for the detail that you can capture and save today.

THE FIRST DRAFT

Your unedited photo library is the first draft. Now is a great time to skim through it and build a nice narrative. Do you need six photos of a group or would a closeup candid portrait of each person be more meaningful? Have you mixed in some short video that captures the sound of a voice or the way someone skipped stones in the pond?

If there are any holes in your story, you probably have time to fix them.

Kids grow. Pets come and go. Next year’s summer will be different. Guaranteed. So tighten up and flesh out your summer photos draft while you can.

PLAN AHEAD

What’s the point?

Well, digital photography and the products you can create are infinite and there’s nothing to say they can’t overlap. Photos from a two-week vacation can turn into:

• A photo book about the vacation

• A chapter in the “Summer of 24” family photo book

• A video compilation of moments and interviews for sharing on social

• Part of a larger narrative of a child’s first year or a graduate’s last year at home

• A magazine of the sailing party or a beach barbecue to share

• A gift book for someone who lent their house or hosted your visit

• A digital slide show to share of an event or experience

• A holiday card collection

• The list goes on . . .

I learned the hard way that a little planning would have gone a long way at the Billy Joel 150th and final concert at Madison Square Garden. I could have videoed a song or two with Spacial Video - the format for the Vision Pro headset - but just hadn’t thought about it. I would have loved to see that concert 20 years from now in immersive Spacial Video.

Ah, well.

But that’s the point.

Professional photographers go into an experience, event, or trip with something of a plan so that they come away with all the material they need to make a complete, engaging story of it all. It can be a very short story with one or two images, or a full narrative that fills a photo book.

You can plan a little too.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

It’s hard to appreciate until you’ve lived it, but looking back over several decades to a summer that may not have seemed that special in the moment, is priceless. Don’t discount anything as unworthy of a photo if it catches your eye. Or your imagination.

There are stories all around you. And they appreciate with time. And memorable photos don’t have to be a milestone moment, they can just reflect the way we were.

I hope that everyone’s summer experience is stellar and worthy of a project that you will enjoy and share for decades to come.

Five weeks and counting.

Photos occupy an extraordinary place in our cultural landscape, and by extension in our personal ones. Whether our photo collections number 50 images or half a million, we count on them to resurface fond memories of people and events, and to document our life path.

Indeed, our photos map to all 5 layers of Maslow’s human pyramid and rank among the top possessions that people say they would grab when running from a burning house.

Yet too many people flirt with emotional disaster every day by practicing photography without a durable safety net.

Photo security in 2026 is a paradox. Digital photography files have the advantage of being easily duplicated and distributed. We can do more with them - and do - than we every did with double prints. But the downside of that convenience is even easier loss. This is because of our desire for ease of use and accessibility combined with a limited understanding of the associated risks.

Easy in. Easy out.

But taking a few simple steps will plug any holes in your photo safety net and preserve every memory for a lifetime of enjoyment.

Apple Photos is the gold standard for easy photo security, bar none. It comes with the platform and does all the heavy lifting without you doing anything except check off a box or two and buy an extra hard drive.

Here’s what that gets you.

Protection against device failure or loss

Your portable devices - iPhone, iPad, MacBooks of all kinds - are moving targets for all kinds of misadventure.

We take them everywhere and they are at risk for loss, theft, and damage of all kinds whenever you leave your home.

Even at home or work.

Spilled coffee.

Floods. Fire.

Old tech worn out.

The Apple System lets you replace that missing device with a new one and restore it to the same state it was in when fate stepped in and snatched it.

Protection against pilot error

“I thought they were on iCloud.”

“I needed to free up space.”

“My daughter’s selfies were cluttering up the Library.”

“I only want to see my new photos.”

But if they didn’t believe the warning about those photos being deleted from iCloud and from all their devices . . .

And they didn’t realize their mistake within the 30 day grace period . . .

They could still recover those deleted pictures from Time Machine.

Protection against forgetfulness

So many passwords. Every one different.

Easy to get confused.

Forget.

Enter the wrong one so many times you get locked out of your precious Photos Library

That’s what the Passwords App is for.

Keeping a record that’s up to date.

Automatic logins. And Passkeys.

Plus Touch ID on the Mac and Face ID on the iPhone and iPad

And if all else fails, there’s Recovery Key.

Plus you can designate a friend or family member as a Recovery Contact, just in case.

Protection against the inevitable

Thousands of family photos. Gone.

Can’t get to them because no one knows the Apple Account login.

A lifetime of memories lovingly cared for.

Designating a Legacy Contact would keep those memories safe and pass them on to the people you love.

Create your own Photos Protection Plan.

Today.

Our photos are the one thing in our lives that are guaranteed to appreciate in value over time. But photos are so easy to make now that it’s easy to overlook that fact and become careless with their wellbeing. It’s never too soon to start treating them like a long term investment in your memory bank.

So here’s your action plan:

1. Buy enough device storage to hold your entire photo collection and then some. On iPhones, that means 3-4 years on average of photos and videos on top of where you start. Shoot for 2X your current storage need whenever you upgrade.

2. Use iCloud for continuous backup and distribution. It’s cheap insurance against loosing photos and other data. Really. Plus, you need it for the sharing features and to save you from manually copying photos to every other Apple device you own.

3. Use Time Machine to create an error proof archive backup. Once your photos get to your Mac, Time Machine handles the rest. Hopefully you never have to need it, but if you do it’s better than gold.

4. Create a Recovery Key and/or designate a Recovery Contact. This is a 5 minute task that will save you from getting locked out of your Apple Account. And it’s free. Just log into your account online or through your device settings. You Recovery Contact doesn’t get access to your Apple Account, they just get sent a code that YOU can use to get into your Apple Account.

5. Register a Legacy Contact. It’s not uncommon for people to lose a family member, not know all their logins, and be locked out of their loved one’s Apple Account, along with the family photos. If they’d set that up and had iCloud, they could still get access.

It’s easy to do.

If you are uncertain about where you stand, reach out for an SOP (Save Our Photos) Audit. You fill out some details and I’ll give you the action steps, if you need them, to build your own safety net. Free to the first 20 requests.

Just request an SOP Audit in the comments.

Practice safe Photos.

SHARING IS CARING

Messages is without a doubt the handiest way to share a photo or video in the Apple Photos ecosystem. Three taps and you’re done. That sunset appears in your friend’s Messages feed.

A good practice when you receive a Messages attachment is to decide right then if it’s a keeper, and if so add it to your Library with the Save icon next to it. Evergreen (keeper) photos are easier to find in your Photos Library and get indexed by People & Pets, Location, and other features. Otherwise they can get lost in your Messages feeds and just take up unnecessary storage space.

A handy way to know if you have unsaved photos and videos still in Messages is by using Shared With You.

You access Shared With You in the Messages settings. Turn it on for Photos. Then those photos that are still sitting in your Messages feed will show with a tiny Messages bubble in the lower left corner of shared photos in the Library view.

You can also go to the filters at the top of the Library view and choose the Shared With You filter to limit your view to the pictures in your Messages feed that haven’t been saved into your Library. Once you do they will stop showing in the Shared With You filter, but will be tagged with who shared them. And they show up in Recently Saved.

Once you’ve saved the photos you want to keep you can delete them from Messages and save storage space.

WE’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER SCREEN

The foundation of good photo management and quashing picture overwhelm is regularly decluttering your photo collection. Back in the days of film photography, photo management was an additive process; you examined tiny images on a contact sheet to pick which photos were worthy of printing. Today, digital photography organizing turns that around. We start with a collection of finished pictures and have to weed out the rejects.

A common challenge, though, is that trying to judge an image at ‘original’ size doesn’t always deliver the best result. Even with practice, many of the negatives I chose to print were just not that good as 8x10 prints. And although the iPhone displays have stunning quality, decluttering in Library View isn’t much better. When you are making decisions on what to keep or delete in a collection that will live for decades, it’s worth seeing those photos as large as possible.

The logical choice is on your Mac. Either in Apple Photos or on iCloud.com (particularly handy for PC users). An alternative is AirPlay from your iPhone to your smart TV or opening up the Photos App on Apple TV if you have it.

Seeing your pictures large not only reveals all the amazing detail but will highlight images that take on new meaning at size. Ones you might have just skimmed by on your iPhone.

Now of course there are clutter photos that don’t need the benefit scale to delete or move out of Photos, but when passing judgement on the real memories, treat yourself to a big screen experience.

WHAT’S IN A KEYWORD?

Once upon a time, Keywords were king. When most digital photo collections lived free range in desktop folders, Keyword tagging was an easy way to add context and searchibility to images beyond the native file structure and naming.

Keywording is still a powerful tool for corporate and institutional databases, as well as genealogy for family collections, but over the years photo management software has changed the equation for everyday users by building in features that replace much of what Keywords offer. The reality is that the viewing software has become as much a part of the photo experience as the images themselves, and most of it is automatic, eliminating the need to manually enter anything.

But interestingly enough, Apple is introducing Keywords on the iPhone in the coming iOS 27 version of Photos. Even on the threshold of A.I?

What does that mean for everyday photographers like us?

Two things, I think.

First, Keywords offer an alternative to Albums. We are now over 2 decades into the iPhoto/Photos experiment and I’ve seen Libraries with Albums numbering in the hundreds. To the point that the Albums create more clutter than the photos. There ought to be curated collections that deserve to exist for occasional reference, but don’t need to be user facing all the time like Albums. On-demand Albums, if you will.

Second, Apple Photos is not your father’s image database anymore. It’s no longer the ‘intuitive’ experience it once was, as the iOS 18.5 upgrade proved. In many ways Photos has become as capable and full featured as other photo management software, and if you don’t have the sharp eyesight of a Millennial you can miss whole tabs of media.

What I’m seeing is a reverse migration of enthusiasts from Adobe and others who want a simpler photo experience but have found features like Keywording and Star Ratings (also coming to Photos) useful.

Keywords functionality is still in beta form, so we don’t know what the final version will look like, but it hopefully will include some type of hierarchy and batch addition on mobile. That would make all the Aperture survivors and Lightroom migrants feel at home.

Regardless, It will be interesting to see how the intersection of Siri AI and a more robust Photos feature set reshape the user experience. I haven’t spent any time with my Keywords in years. Yet I have 237 of them in my Mac’s Keyword Manager. (Command + K on your Mac). All but a handful of those are obsolete because of object recognition, facial ID, Trips, maps, and captions.

But I think it opens up new opportunities; those things that are universal across my timeline and difficult to search on in other ways. I see auto enthusiasts, birders, collectors of all kinds, small businesspeople, artists, educators, and more. Like a visual list of some specific content. Because it all starts on the iPhone and being able to quickly tag a photo from a standard queue of keywords would be handy.

Are you a fan of Keywords? How would you use them? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading.

When you say “photo organizing” it sounds big and tedious. Like a whole Saturday afternoon when you could be hiking, hanging with friends, or reading a good book.

Not that it’s without its perks, but photo organizing is still largely in the task column of activities. Something to be checked off and admired, like a tidy living room.

But one way to finesse the process and add some fun is to fit it into your morning routine. In 10-15 minutes a day, you can clean up new photos, curate old ones, and even straighten up your Albums Collection. Resurfacing your memories over morning coffee beats doom scrolling social media any day.

Here’s how it goes.

First, check out yesterday’s pictures. Whatever you shot. Seeing them with a fresh eye makes it easier to be objective and tend to the photos that need to be cropped, adjusted, captioned, or sent to trash.

The extra takes that add clutter.

Reminder shots that should go to Notes.

Images that need a caption or keyword.

A video to be shared.

If the day was notable, you can even make a Journal entry about it.

And that may be it.

Or perhaps you didn’t take any pictures the day before.

In that case, you can spend a couple minutes on the backlog.

One easy way is to do a search on the day’s date. If you search on July 8, you’ll see all the photos in your library taken throughout the years on July 8.

Check them against the same rules as the dailies.

What’s extra? What’s good? What needs some context?

And here’s a tip; scroll down to the bottom of the group and review them in reverse order. Search results always sort with the newest photos at the top of the screen, so starting at the bottom lets you review them in the order they were taken.

Search always sorts with the oldest photos at the bottom.

Along the way, you might want to make a curated Album. But that would probably require another cup of coffee at a later time. So just add a photo from the group to a new Album. When you have time, you can open the placeholder Album and work on it. Pulling up the Info palette and choosing “Show in Library” will take you to where the image lives in your Library along with its siblings.

You can also create Working Albums as you go to hold random photos that need dates, event details, locations, or names. Whatever will help create meaningful context.

What about scanned photos and converted video?

Legacy images are the ringers. The outliers in the process. But that’s okay. The important thing is to get them into your Library where the People & Pets face detection can see them and create identities to tag. Old photos will start to surface in Featured and Memories to spark curiosity and thoughts. You can share with family and friends for their help, too.

On top of that, our Photos Library will continue to grow throughout our life, whether through our own photography or shared additions. By some estimates, the average iPhone user takes 3000 photos a year. More than many people from my parents’ generation took in a lifetime. Image creation has become part of our lifestyle, the second language of the times, and incorporating some simple steps to review and refresh those pictures makes all the sense in the world.

Adding that morning check-in to your daily routine will create a Library of photos that you will be proud of and turn the process from task to treasure.

And it’s a lovely way to start the day.

If you want to try the morning routine and need a reminder about what to do, download Your Morning Photo Routine reference sheet and keep it at your desk. I will reach out over the next 3 weeks to help you keep on track.

SEND ME THE TIP SHEET

IPHONE PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS

Asking a photographer what camera created that picture is like asking a chef what skillet created that dish. Photography, being a technical medium, has long suffered from a focus (pun intended) on the equipment we use to create our images. And right out of the gate, iPhones were deemed second-class citizens in the pantheon of photographic tool sets.

‘Real’ photographers didn’t use iPhones.

Until they did.

Today, it’s hard to find a photographer of any sort who doesn’t respect what the iPhone can produce and how handy it is as a primary or backup camera. Stunning images from iPhones abound in the hands of National Geographic photographers, NASA astronauts, and amateurs. We see them every day.

Which refocuses attention on the photographer’s creative talent, where it should be. And validates the notion that anyone with an iPhone has a pathway to remarkable photography.

IPPAWARDS was launched the same year as the iPhone, in 2007, to recognize the potential of the iPhone as a first class creative tool for photographers. Where some contests excluded iPhone images, IPPAWARDS rejected everything else. Photos must be created on an iPhone or iPad and not altered in Photoshop or other 3rd party software.

This week, the IPPAWARDS for 2026 was just released, and the results are stunning. They make the case that good photography is about seeing the world around us, and not limited to $10k camera kits. Developing a creative eye is no different than developing an ear for music. Or a talent for cooking, painting, or writing.

That is the inspiration that created Bluewater Imaging and this newsletter. There are so many facets to iPhone photography, but pure creativity and the ability to share our vision of the world around us is at the heart of it.

I encourage everyone to view this year’s gallery at IPPAWARDS and be inspired too.

SEE IPPAWARDS 2026

PHOTO SHARING ACROSS PLATFORMS

Shared Albums has long been a popular way to share photos and videos among family and friends. In Apple Photos you just choose the images, save them as a Shared Album, and invite the people to view them.

It’s an easy way to create what’s essentially an online gallery of photos from a trip, event, or a running collection of day-to-day pictures. The invitees accept the invitation, and your Shared Album appears in the Albums Collection of their own Apple Photos Library.

Nifty.

The feature works great for all-Apple participants who just want simple picture sharing in an organized way. No hunting through mail attachments or Messages threads, and it doesn’t take up precious storage space.

But Shared Albums has limitations on image size and cross platform sharing that have frustrated people who wanted to actually share original sized images and have an easy interactive experience.

Welcome to OS 27.

Among the new features coming to Apple Photos in the Fall, Shared Albums gets a major bump in functionality that should create a hero out of anyone who wants to share their images with the people they love.

As a photo manager, the two most challenging sharing requests are ways to share original quality images with metadata, and how to share with people on Android and Windows devices.

Apple Photos in OS 27 will do both. It’s a game changer.

Downloading and uploading to the Shared Album will be easier than before and adds the ability to make comments with emojis. Shared Albums can also be set to expire in 30 days.

Keep in mind that we are still early in the beta testing stage, so what features and limitations finally release is uncertain, but the fact that Apple has invested this much effort in a feature that’s relatively unchanged since it’s release in 2015 is more than encouraging.

I can’t wait.

ICLOUD STORAGE TRIAGE

There is one big change in the Shared Albums future that bears noting.

For years, Shared Albums has been excused from storage calculations because the images were downsized and took up relatively little space on Apple’s servers. Because OS 27 changes that and posts a Shared Album of Original sized images, your Shared Albums will now count against your iCloud Storage allotment.

When you make a Shared Album, iCloud Photo Library exports your chosen images to a Shared Albums gallery that is essentially a stand alone website. As of this writing it is uncertain how that transition will play out, but this is a good time to review your Shared Albums usage and your available iCloud storage space to consider impact.

Photos actually don’t take up as much storage as people think, but videos do. Also, like me, you may have bumped up your iCloud storage to the next largest tier which is a lot more than you need.

So, in my case, I have 44 Shared Albums, some of which are years old and haven’t seen activity since before I knew that N95 masks even existed. Those can go. And if I want them back, I can make them again.

But it’s also a reminder that many of those Shared Albums just aren’t relevant anymore. Some may have photos that my friends added and I’ll want to download them, but everything else I should have in my Library anyway.

This seems like a good time to do some housecleaning.

Stay tuned to 5 Minute Photos and I’ll let you know what I find out as Shared Albums and the impact on your iCloud Drive evolves.

Thanks for reading.

Updated from July 1, 2024

I’m a sucker for fireworks. It’s the slam-dunk easiest way to capture a photo that everyone will “ooh” and “ahhhh” over when you share it with friends.

At least the first dozen. Fireworks. Not friends.

Fireworks have a short half-life.

But everyone can relate to the festivity and they are easy to capture with your trusty iPhone.

The thing is that fireworks happen very quickly and are somewhat unpredictable, so what’s the best technique?

I’ve found that the Live Photo setting is perfect for most fireworks displays. If you aren’t a fan, this will change your mind.

The magic is that the Live Photo setting captures 1.5 seconds before and after you tap the shutter button. So you can either go into Edit and pick a better frame than the one you got, or you can loop the image and create an animated GIF on your Mac.

CAPTURING

First, launch the camera app and make sure that Live Photo is selected.

Then, be sure to hold your iPhone steady. Figure out where the most fireworks happen and frame that area of the sky. Wait for the fireworks to come into the frame rather than follow them as they rocket upward.

Also, if you press and hold on your screen for the first couple of bursts, the Camera App will lock on the Exposure and Focus for that brightness and distance. Along with holding your camera steady, you’ll get better exposed, sharper images.

Another thing is that fireworks shows are not just about the fireworks. There are often light-up accessories, campfires, and the silhouettes of the people watching. Take the time to step back and capture the whole scene.

Finally, be ruthless about editing down the event to the very best images. You can go into the Edit mode and look for the best frames and for a few images that would make a nice video loop. If you have kids, playing with the image edits can be a whole event in itself.

Give fireworks a shot. It’s a lot of fun.

VIEWING

Live Photo pictures let you create 3 different effects:

1. Loop - This shares as a 3 second loop of the photo capture. It’s my personal favorite for fireworks in general because it shows a snippet of what I actually saw at the event.

2. Bounce - This is the bounce back or “boomerang” effect that became popular on Instagram. I’m not fond of it for fireworks, but that’s just me. If you like boomerangs, you’ll love bounce.

3. Long Exposure - This effect combines the frames from all 3 seconds to make a blurred still photo of the display. With the right firework this can be beautiful.

What’s great is that because Apple Photos is non-destructive, you can try all 3 effects to find the one you like best with each fireworks display. And if you later decide to change it, you can.

EDITING

Best of all, Live Photo lets you pick the frame you missed. In Edit mode you can select a moment before you reacted and make that your Key Photo.

Be sure to turn off Live Photo after your fireworks event, but remember that it’s a terrific creative tool whenever you are taking pictures of fast moving subjects and find that your shutter finger isn’t quite fast enough to get “the moment.”

GET THE FIREWORKS TIP SHEET

Every few days I see a social media post, YouTube video, or ad that proclaims “iCloud is not a backup” and attempts to deliver some “insider” wisdom in exchange for an email address.

Now, they aren’t entirely wrong, but they aren’t entirely right either, and that grey area may be enough to send the message “well then why bother” rather than the “tell me more” that the author intended. As a result, an estimated one third of iPhone owners aren’t using iCloud to back up their photos and may not have any backup system in place at all.

That’s a lot of iPhones and a lot of pictures.

There are 3 reasons why your digital photos are at risk, and you should understand the dynamics of each one to build a secure, worry-free photo collection.

They are:

• Lost or damaged devices

• User error

• Data corruption

LOSS AND DAMAGE

Of the 3, lost or damaged devices is the Big Dog for photo risks. Particularly for iPhones. They go everywhere with us and are exposed every day to drops, dunks, theft, neglect, and just plain failure. There are 3 iPhones in service worldwide for every Mac, so that’s a lot of data with only one easy way to create a backup - iCloud. Yes, there are other ways, but they are generally manual or more expensive than iCloud, so what are the chances someone did that?

And it’s not just iPhones. I’ve seen the remains of iPads left on a car roof until it hit the pavement at 65 miles per hour. And iMacs that suffered a lightning strike, fire damage, or floods. Digital photos that have no backup copy anywhere are living on the tightrope without a net.

Yet every one of those devices could be recreated with new hardware in a couple hours from an iCloud restore.

Don’t tell me that syncing photos to iCloud is not a backup.

USER ERROR

This is the lynchpin in the backup argument because it’s personal.

None of us wants to believe we did something wrong. I get it. But technology of any kind requires some understanding of the procedures and limitations that come with it.

Saying that “iCloud is not a backup” is sending a simple message about a complex problem. And it’s not complete. Full transparency would be “iCloud is not a backup against accidental deletions.”

And that would be true.

But then it gets messy because there are few photo systems available to average users that can prevent it either, except Time Machine attached to a Mac. Synced through iCloud Photos Library.

Guarding against accidental deletions can only be handled by an incremental backup solution that stores regular updates and allows you to go back in time to recover those “lost” images. Setting that up requires some extra effort that can overwhelm an already overwhelmed user.

And it still requires a properly synced iCloud Photos backup.

Here’s the thing. Deletions are a deliberate task, not accidental. Usually driven by a misunderstanding of how the photo system works and a desire to free up space or reduce clutter. Fair enough.

It’s actually like your iPhone, ATM, and local bank branch where a withdrawal at any one of them affects your bank balance everywhere.

Syncing your devices through iCloud is a gift, not a liability. It shouldn’t be treated as such. Gone are the days when we had to manually duplicate Albums on our phone, the desktop computer, and the laptop. Or figure out which device has those honeymoon photos. The Apple Photos ecosystem syncs everything everywhere - not just the photos themselves, but the whole experience we’ve built around them.

So the very best solution against “accidental” deletions is simply education. Understand that modern photo management is based on a single collection database. It’s common to see 30k, 40k, 50k images, and we will likely double or triple that number in our lifetime. Unless you are a full time professional photographer, there’s no way to manage that manually in desktop folders. And you wouldn’t want to anyway.

So you need to treat this memory bank you love with respect. Whatever you add, or delete, happens everywhere. On all devices, including iCloud. And when you do choose to delete photos anyway, the system warns you . Just like the “Do Not Enter” sign at the end of a one way street.

DATA CORRUPTION

For the first two risks, backup solutions are pretty simple.

Use iCloud.

Don’t delete anything you’ll miss.

But bad files - corruption - can sneak up on you without warning and may not be discovered for years. In fact, archived files on older media - DVD’s, hard drives, flash drives, tape - are often the source of corrupt files.

Data corruption happens when those numbers get scrambled and make the file unreadable or full of artifacts. This can happen because of a power surge, bad sectors on a drive, deteriorated media, improper drive formatting, or bit rot, where the data itself just deteriorates over time.

The result is opening a folder full of images and seeing nothing inside. Or having a jagged green line show up across your picture. Maybe a photo won’t copy or export or sync.

Which makes data corruption the most difficult type of failure to backup against.

For synced backups like iCloud, a previously good photo may become corrupted somehow and still sync across the network, replacing the previously good image with the damaged one. But you don’t know that until the next time you actually open that image.

This is where that incremental backup comes in again. It can be Time Machine, or an online service like BackBlaze. And making a separate backup of everything to a separate drive every month or two is just additional insurance. Think of it as your archive.

This may all seem like a lot, but it isn’t. Successful, safe, enjoyable photo management comes down to four guiding principles.

1. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE - Modern photo libraries are built on the principle of a single complete collection of images that can be accessed from multiple devices. What you do on one device happens on all devices.

2. NEVER DELETE SOMETHING YOU WILL MISS - If you want to remove photos or videos to save space or declutter, move them to their own folder first, on iCloud Drive or an external hard drive, where you can verify that they’re safe. THEN delete them from your main Library.

3. USE AN ARCHIVE BACKUP - In addition to the natural backups that a modern synced photo collection creates, create periodic archives of your Original-sized photo collection. Time Machine works great, but adding another manual backup to a separate hard drive every month or two is even better.

4. ADEQUATE STORAGE SPACE - It’s no secret that much of the unintended photos deletion was the result of too little storage on iPhones and MacBook Airs/Pros. But it goes beyond just trying to squeeze too much stuff into too little space. Mobile and Mac devices need “unused” space to operate properly. Fortunately, iPhones now ship with a minimum of 256GB. A far cry from the days of 64GB. Without available room to borrow for temporary memory and processing everything can stall and crash, with the potential for file corruption. Always buy more storage than you think you’ll ever need. Plenty of iCloud storage helps too.

None of this is complicated, or difficult to fix. Your TV remote is worse. Really.

The big takeaway here is that every type of backup is effective for a specific type of risk. It’s not a one-size-fits all solution. Now that the iPhone has made lifelong photographers of us all, you owe it to yourself to understand how it all works, and to work it into your lifestyle.

You’ve got this.

CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO PHOTONESS

When I was a freelance photographer and had amassed an honorable number of lenses and camera bodies, cleaning lenses was a daily ritual. Before every photo shoot I would carefully blow off any dust from the front and back lens surfaces, followed by a soft cloth. Being a sailing photographer, I often had to deal with sand and salt spray.

Then when my wife, a family portrait photographer, went digital, I added sensor cleaning to the task. Getting into the guts of her DSLR’s to remove dust that was attracted to the image circuits.

All this attention to camera hygiene gets overlooked in iPhone photography conversations, but if you want to capture the very best images you need clean lenses. And if your iPhone spends time in your pocket or bag like mine does, mixing it up with dust and fuzz, then it’s guaranteed to need regular cleaning. Merely grabbing your iPhone will likely add a fingerprint or two on the camera lens.

You wouldn’t have the best reading experience with smudged eyeglasses. Taking photos through a dirty lens is the same thing.

Fortunately, iPhone lenses are small and the glass is tough, so the cleaning task is just a matter of seconds.

What you need is a microfiber lens cleaning cloth. You can get one online or at camera and eyeglass stores. Look for a small one that has a sleeve or pouch to keep it clean. A piece of dirt or sand can scratch the lens. As can most fabrics and paper products over time. Just gently wipe the lenses with the microfiber cloth when they get dirty or smudged, and you’re good to go.

Depending on your iPhone case, you might also have to remove it to get at the whole lens surface.

If you use your iPhone outdoors a lot or live in a dusty environment, you might also get a lens pen with a soft brush to safely clear away grit that could get caught in the microfiber and cause scratches.

Make lens cleaning a regular routine and you’ll be rewarded with clear spotless images in your Photos Library.

BYE BYE INTEL MACS

When Apple introduced their own M1 silicon chip in 2020, it was more than an alternative to using the Intel tech that dominates the PC world, it offered dramatic improvements in performance and energy savings. All Macs since then have run on the M-series chips, now in its 5th generation.

Part of Apple’s magic is that by managing the whole package - hardware and software - they can fine tune the software features to work with their chips in ways that PC makers can’t when using various chips and the Windows operating system. Because Apple can control its own upgrade schedule, the hardware and software refreshes complement each other.

Each year, with Apple’s release of a new operating system, older Macs are dropped from the support list because their hardware won’t run the new OS effectively. This year, with macOS Golden Gate, that cutoff removes all Intel-based Macs.

So what does that mean if you have an Intel Mac?

Basically, it means you can’t upgrade to the new OS on your Mac. Not the end of the world for most users, but worth knowing. It means that macOS Tahoe, the current release (or whatever is the newest macOS your Mac supports) is the last macOS upgrade you’ll be able to install and run.

The good news is that Macs have an amazingly long useful life for most tasks. I have a 2013 MacBook Pro running macOS Big Sur and it’s still a reliable player for photo editing, emails, web browsing, and file management. There are other Macs that topped out at Ventura. They all have their assigned tasks in my studio.

It’s easy to take a swipe at companies like Apple and blame expired tech on “planned obsolescence,” but the flip side is our expectations push technology ever forward. We can’t retrofit film cameras to match the newest digital models. Older cars don’t have blind spot warnings. I remember my dad strapping a turn signal box to the steering column on our old Studebaker sedan. I had to demonstrate hand signals at my driving test. Older computers are the venerable vintage cars of today’s digital lifestyle.

The most meaningful consideration now is that we’ve entered the era of artificial intelligence, and it’s a big part of macOS 27 Golden Gate, along with the M5 chip. When the software releases in September you’ll hear a lot of buzz about this new feature and that. Apple officially supports the current OS and the two prior ones for security updates and some features, so that would include Tahoe and Sequoia. But just how that works for Intel based hardware running them, it’s hard to predict.

The takeaway here is that if you have an Intel Mac and are eager to include AI into your lifestyle, this is the time to think about upgrading to an M5 Mac. This latest chip has been improved in ways that address the specific needs of AI processing and optimize it for on-device performance. Apple’s intent is to deliver a highly personal AI experience that reduces or eliminates the need to call on remote servers and maintains privacy.

INSTANT PHOTO CROPPING

Photography is a window on your world. Every picture you take is an exercise in deciding what to show and what to discard. Your point of view.

In the moment, it’s easy to focus on the subject and ignore the edges where table corners, exit signs, random people, distracting objects, and clutter lives. Mostly, that’s fine because it adds context to the shot. But often it’s not, and you have to do something about it.

Before you reach for the Clean-up Tool and delete the offending object, consider just cropping it out of the frame. Since the dawn of photography cropping has been a staple of the creator’s toolbox.

When you view a photo on your iPhone, just use a two-finger spread to zoom in on your picture and move it around. You’ll find a framing that crops out the unwanted object or unnecessary background. Then just tap the Crop button that appears in the upper right corner of your display.

The beauty of Photos is that nothing is permanent about your edit. You can always revert to the original image. I’ve even cropped for a specific presentation and then reverted back for my ongoing Library view.

The Crop shortcut is a quick way change the look and feel of a picture by eliminating distractions and altering the relationship of your subject to everything around it.

I’m a photo guy. But photos often benefit from some context, especially those tidbits that add another layer of meaning to the picture.

Captions are great for this and Photos makes it easy to do in the moment. On your iPhone you can swipe up on a photo and dictate a caption in a flash.

But the caption is attached to single photos, so it doesn’t encompass a series of pictures or help you flesh out a longer narrative. You don’t need a memoir, but thoughts, notes, names, that sort of thing.

Journal entries.

Last week we went to Cape Cod, visiting friends and touching nature. A loose schedule. Random events. Snippets of delightful experiences that you want to remember.

So when I get home, what does that look like?

Hopefully, my Apple Photos Trips Collection will see the week away and create a Cape Cod 2026 Trip of all the photos I took. From that, I might make a curated Album of the best shots. But maybe not. There wasn’t much of a narrative. Just touch points each day of interesting moments.

Perfect, I thought, to test fly the Journal App.

Even though I write daily, I’ve never warmed to journaling as a regular exercise. But as a photographer, I often want my pictures to benefit from a little explanation or insight. If something interests me enough to take a photo or video, it’s usually worth a comment or two as well.

The Journal App is perfect for that.

Apple introduced the Journal App three years ago for the iPhone. I was intrigued. But I’m not keen about tapping out a long description on my iPhone keyboard. Same with dictation. Unlike Pam who dictates everything.

Journal seemed like the right idea in the wrong place.

But last Fall, with the OS 26 releases, Journal got an upgrade to full device support; iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Which changed the game for me. Bigger screen, keyboard entry, photos and map integration. The whole package.

Even better, it all syncs through iCloud, like everything else, so I can create an entry placeholder on my iPhone, in the moment, and pick that up later on my iPad or Mac to edit or add more detail. I might even dictate a short note on the iPhone that I know I can clean up later on my Mac.

Journal benefits from the same thinking that makes the whole Apple ecosystem so attractive; everything works together. When you launch Journal and tap the plus to create a new entry, you’re offered a host of options to include with the typical title and text you would expect.

You can tap into your Photos Library, take a new photo or video, add your location, or make an audio recording. You can even choose to include your state of mind from the Health app. It’s all a bit like the Notes App but more fluid and visual. You can sort your entries by the time you added them or by the moment they happened.

Where Journal departs from Notes is that it can also prompt you if you are a dedicated journaling fan and want ideas for an entry. If you turn on Recommendations in the Journal settings, you can pull up suggestions based on your activities, photos, and Memories in the Photos App. It can even toss in a reflective prompt.

When I got into photography, I had visions of becoming a photojournalist. Telling stories with words and pictures. The Journal App does that. It ties in so nicely with the Photos Library that it could be integrated into the Collections tab. But, of course, not every journal entry needs pictures, so the standalone app makes sense.

To make that point, Journal limits you to 12 photos/videos per entry. It forces you to be selective. To adhere to the spirit of journaling by creating brief, meaningful entries that encapsulate an experience or observation.

It’s very cool.

And the app lets you create multiple Journals. You might have one for trips, friendships, activities, or musings. They can really be anything where you want to record more detail about an experience or the inspirational thoughts that they suggest, including visuals.

Another thing is that you get to enjoy your photo experiences without getting lost in the Photos Library. Journals can be a sort of Cliffs Notes version that you curate and annotate. A distilled version to enjoy and share.

One caveat. Journal entries don’t have an easy export or print option. You are creating an app-based document. For now, anyway. But it seems like the sort of thing that Apple ought to offer one day.

Summer seems the perfect time to add some detail, context, and reflection to your Photos Library by adding the Journal App to your memory toolkit. Give it a try.

Do you use the Journal App? Please let me know in comments if you have and what Journal themes you’ve made.

The real meat of it is for the developers community with technical forums, insider chats, and nitty gritty details about new capabilities and coding. How app developers can plug their software nicely into this year’s flavor of Apple’s Operating System.

But at the surface level, it’s also been a highly public teaser for new features and capabilities that get the public excited about the actual OS rollout in the Fall. New Watch faces, better Map navigation, improved Photos experience. Like that. A trailer for the next Tom Cruise movie that’s still months away.

This year was different. Aside from a CGI Peter Max themed VW MicroBus, there was little eye candy. No tour through the platforms to extol the virtues of health monitoring in WatchOS or Stage Manager on the Mac.

No. This keynote was less “wow” and more “hmmm . . .”

It was announcing a new playing field, but not the players.

For all its success on other fronts, Apple has been viewed as a bit player in the Artificial Intelligence game for a few years now. Never mind that no one except chipmakers and data centers are making money with AI, Apple’s fumble with “Apple Intelligence” for the last couple years has been a source of embarrassment. So it appears that now, when grandparents are building custom GPT’s, Apple needed to seriously address the elephant in the room.

And it did.

For over an hour, Tim Cook, in his last keynote as CEO, and Craig Federighi, head of Software Engineering, laid out Apple’s strategy to embed a robust AI experience across the entire Apple OS lineup.

The message was that the new, improved Apple Intelligence in OS 27 will combine the best of AI tech with the convenience and privacy of Apple’s ecosystem. That while the rest of the world is pitching huge data centers, cloud computing, usage tokens, and one-upping each other with ever more powerful “must-have” AI models, Apple plans to deliver a personal, immersive AI experience right on your Apple devices.

Steve Jobs launched the iPod in 2001 with the promise of “1,000 songs in your pocket.”

Tim and Craig are essentially pitching the same idea for 2026 - “real AI in your pocket”.

Easy access to AI.

At your fingertips.

Without extra accounts.

Without the tedious training and setup.

Siri 2.0

All delivered with a dose of Apple flavored privacy to boot.

To make all this happen, Apple has licensed some code from Google Gemini as the foundation for Apple’s on-device AI, dubbed Apple Intelligence. The implication being that as Gemini evolves, Apple Intelligence will evolve with it.

But any cloud support needed for complex tasks and queries will default to Apple’s own servers that use fully encrypted chats and preserve privacy. No one is training their models with your data.

At the same time, there will be the option to task Claude, ChatGPT, or other AI services if you want, but the intent is clearly to make Apple Intelligence your home team and minimize the need for other services in day-to-day use.

The big gamble here is how well Apple integrates all this into a new improved Siri.

Years of experience have taught us to treat Siri as a simple voice-activated information assistant. It will take a little practice to go from “Is it going to rain today?” To “I’ve got to get out of town and need recommendations for 3 travel destinations for next weekend that have great weather and are less than a 2 hour flight from here. I’d like to sit on the beach and have good food.”

And the unspoken context is that Siri will also know what kind of food means “good” to you.

But this context thing is a biggie. If you’ve messed with any of the AI models, you know how memory plays a pivotal role in meaningful results. You either have to include all your preferences and details in each prompt or need to set up memory loops at the project level to avoid starting over every time.

Apple has the unique advantage that your iPhone is with you all the time. It knows you better than anyone and can leverage that knowledge into being a rich, useful assistant that can do cool stuff.

A pocket sized R2D2 that actually speaks your language.

That is the message, spread out to extend across the whole product line. Even WatchOS will tap into Apple Intelligence. Everything. And you can bet that all 60 million Apple Developers are going to be on board with this in a big way.

So what’s in a name?

I think Golden Gate says it all.

San Francisco was born with entrepreneurial passion. Fueled by the promise of opportunity. The rugged strait welcomed eager people from all over the world, moved by the notion that anything was possible in this amazing new land.

Kind of like the digital gold rush we’re seeing today.

How are. you feeling about Artificial Intelligence? Would you like it if Apple Intelligence became a part of your every day experience on your Apple Device? Please answer in the comments.

YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL

One of the most provocative TED Talks I’ve watched explored the paradox of infidelity. That, as human beings, we are simultaneously drawn to both novelty and security. We’re excited by the prospect of something new and different, but we also crave the comfort and safety of the familiar.

This is the stuff of great movies.

And the stuff of software development.

I see it debated in Facebook forums every day.

Why can’t Apple software do this? versus Why did Apple have to go and change that?

A current topic is the Finder theme in OS 26 dubbed “Liquid Glass” that’s spurred love-it-or-hate-it discussions on social media for months. Well, there’s not a lot of love, but plenty of “what’s the big deal” commentary.

The point, though, is that we’re excited by the prospect of something new even as we’re in love with what we’ve got. Apple, which builds us great devices that serve us fine for years, has learned to keep the love alive by mixing up the software every year - dressing up for the ball in a brand new outfit.

Tomorrow marks the start of Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference - WWDC26 - where we’ll get a peek at what new goodies are in store for us in the next upgrade of Operating Systems that release in the Fall. We’ll find out if Liquid Glass has made the cut. Are Collections here to stay? Will Siri finally become a true friend?

But the reality is it’s all just window dressing for what’s happening in private. Security. Performance. File Management. Creative tools. And, of course, this year it’s AI.

And all things considered, Apple’s done it right for most of us. For my community - the everyday photographers - the experience just gets better and better.

So here’s the thing. As Apple users we’re ultimately just along for the ride. And, by all accounts, it’s been a good one. Change has always been a part of that. Features evolve and improve. Performance scales. Stuff works. If not today, then in 1 or 2 updates down the road.

Patience.

Aren’t many things in life where you get both the novelty and the security in one package without having to make a choice.

50 YEARS OF APPLE

I went to our local library the other night to hear David Pogue speak about his new book, Apple: The First 50 Years. David is an Emmy Award winning, New York Times #1 best selling author who covers technology, and Apple has been a through-line for his entire career.

Coinciding with Apple’s 50th Anniversary, this book couldn’t be more timely or inspiring. At least for those of us who’ve ridden the Apple train since the beginning. And for those who didn’t, it’s all here in 600 sidebar filled, color illustrated, anecdote verified pages. The company with a mission that wouldn’t die, and rose from the ashes to change the world.

Steve Jobs, when once asked about his greatest accomplishments, named Apple, the company, as that. And this book follows that theme. Although Pogue shares details about every product along the way, it is a narrative about Apple itself. This crazy journey that went from train wreck to bullet train over 5 decades. For all his inspiration and confidence, Jobs never launched a successful product until his return to Apple in 1997. That the company survived until then is a business miracle, as those who lived it know.

There have been many books written about Steve Jobs and Apple, but what sets this book apart is David Pogue’s unprecedented access to the people who work there. The company’s secrecy is legendary and Apple granted him rare employee interviews to write this book. David was able to dig deeply to ferret out the truth of the stories that have grown up around the company and uncover behind the curtain projects that never saw the light of day.

If there is someone in your circle who is a big Apple fan I highly recommend this book as a both an engaging history lesson and a delightful Apple reference. It truly covers everything in an engaging and thoughtful way.

Did anyone say “Father’s Day”?

Check out Apple: The First 50 Years at applefirst50.com and David Pogue’s universe at David Pogue.com

For my LA readers, the next stop on David’s book tour is at Barnes & Noble at The Grove on June 22nd. Tell him you heard about it in 5 Minute Photos.

PHOTO ORGANIZING WITH MESSAGES

For me, Messages has become the quick and easy way to send photos and videos that I want to share. Not the best way, mind you - that would be iCloud Links - but for pop-up, no fuss picture sharing, Messages is great. The thing is that it requires some steps on the receiving end to complete the process.

The natural tendency is to treat Messages as a perpetual inbox and leave those shared photos in place. But that has 3 downsides.

1. Storage space. Those photos and videos are unmanaged full size images. Over time those attachments across several active senders can start to burn up storage. I saw one client who had almost 50GB of photos taking up precious iPhone space.

2. User Experience. Your Photos App is designed to organize and display pictures in a user-friendly way. Messages is not. Bouncing back and forth between the 2 apps is tedious and awkward.

3. Search. If you get frustrated swiping through your Photos Library view, searching through Messages is worse. Was it from my son or daughter-in-law? January or March-ish? Maybe it was an Email? If it didn’t happen in a recent time frame it’s essentially lost.

A better move is to simply add incoming photos directly to your Photos Library or enjoy and delete them on the spot. And Photos has 2 handy features for that.

If you catch it at the time of receipt, you can tap the little Save icon next to the picture and it will Import to Photos. This has the additional advantage that when you go to clean up your backlog of Messages attachments, you’ll know that you’ve already saved the keepers to your Photos Libraries.

If you miss that, you can also see the photos shared with you - but not saved - right in the Photos Library view. With the Shared with You alert turned on in Messages, you will see those photos show up in the Library with a Messages bubble in the corner. Or you can use the Library filter to only show you Shared photos.

Once saved to Photos, you’ll want to delete them from your Messages conversations.

It may seem like adding shared photos to your Library is just more clutter, but really works in your favor.

The photos are easier to find, reshare, include in Albums, and they show up in Collections. They can be Optimized to save storage space and they can be more thoughtfully removed if and when they become unwanted.

Sharing is a two way street and it’s just as important to understand good practices on the receiving end as with how to send.

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When I help people organize their photos there’s often this underlying desire to satisfy someone else. Will the kids care about this? God, my photo library is such a MESS! I’ve got over twenty thousand pictures . . . Thousand!

If your photo collection was a resume, you’d have a master’s degree in travel/parenthood/dining/friendship/dancing/pets/laughing/community/activism/gardening/sports/boating/hiking/sunsets/people/art/comfort/support and maybe a disaster or two along the way. Every picture was a life moment remarkable enough to record.

That’s not nothing.

Own it. Cherish it.

There are no picture police.

But what you do get to do is polish it.

Like any good resume.

There’s never been anything quite like the Photos Library since - well - our brain. It just collects captured moments as we go and tosses them all into this big hopper. To be recalled as desired. It’s a bit like live-streaming a parade. There are some floats and marching bands, and then bare pavement while the next one catches up.

The edited version is always much better.

And “better” is within your grasp. The tools to do that get more useful all the time. If you are struggling with guilt over a cluttered photo library and get frustrated with browsing through your Library view to find “that” shot, just be thankful that the stars are aligning now for nicer, cleaner, more efficient ways of sprucing up your collection.

A lot of that is already in place. Apple created Collections to parse your Library into more manageable pieces. Machine Learning and object recognition have become amazingly good. Meaningful photo aware AI is evolving daily. There’s a lot of opportunity here for efficiencies that didn’t even exist a year ago.

Let’s look at your photos through that resume lens and put together a collection that captures the high points and those special moments you gathered along the way.

Like a job resume, there are experiences you want to include and ones you don’t. Incidental moments that were significant at the time, but have lost their luster through the years. The resume you crafted for a summer job in college is not the same as the one for that management opportunity in your 30’s. There are the certificates, awards, recognitions, and references. Projects, memberships, and activities. And people. The ones who you met on your journey for a bit or forever.

Your photo library is a living document in the same way, and offers an emotional framework that 24 pound 8.5 x 11 bright white inkjet paper does not. But it’s also more comprehensive than a job resume; more of a curriculum vitae - “course of life” - from which your résumés are drawn. The raw material, so to speak. A personal lifetime documentary.

Think about that.

Historically, we had a family photo collection. Driven by the fact that there was typically one camera/camcorder and one family member to took responsibility for recording the family journey. Media was added at random, usually in sync with milestone events and activities. And the narrative was mostly from one perspective.

With Gen Z, that narrative becomes personal. A generation of media experts where images are the atomic particle of conversation and connection. How will that reframe the family photo collection? When a family of four has four different viewpoints of the family journey to contribute?

So we’re talking about YOUR journey as the foundation. Your experiences. Your relationships. Your activities. Start to think about your photos as a contribution to the family narrative if that helps, but not as THE family narrative.

So let’s do that, with these things in mind.

1. There are essentially just 2 tasks in photo organizing: decluttering and curating. Pictures are either distracting or nurturing.

2. There is no magic number. Whatever number of images you have, it’s probably more than you had last week and less than you’ll have next year. Photography is an eternal work in progress. There’s no finish line to cross.

3. A picture doesn’t necessarily need a home. Most photos will fall between the curated and clutter windows, and that’s fine. We no longer need to identify every image because Photos does most of that for us in one way or another.

4. This is your own CV. Whatever contributes to your story is fair game. Doesn’t matter if there are a zillion pictures of the Grand Canyon in the world already. If you were there and you were moved to take the shot, you get to include it to remind you of your own experience. And, by the way, if you are worried about leaving a legacy collection that your family won’t appreciate, think of it as leaving a memoir. Because, it is.

The easiest way to start is to declutter.

Duplicates - Photos now analyzes your photos while you’re sleeping and identifies the duplicates that crept into your Library. It identifies the best quality image, merges the unique data and any Album assignments into it and deletes the extra(s).

Receipts - Anything that looks like a receipt. Unless it’s a reminder of that 1935 Auburn Boattail Speedster you owned, receipts should be moved to your Notes App or saved to a Folder and deleted from Photos.

Handwriting - This is where whiteboard snapshots, handmade wall menus, and clever protest signs live. Again, most are either old news or belong in Notes/Folders somewhere.

Illustrations - If you or your child is a budding artist, these might be legit, but it’s also the realm of old presentations and pie charts, graffiti, and winning plays in Word Chums. Your call.

Documents - Pay attention here. Photos will treat anyone reading a newspaper (remember those) as a document plus all the business cards, driver’s licenses, cancelled checks and wall charts. As with other Utilities Collections, a lot of these photo are truly clutter and should be saved elsewhere on your device. iCloud Folders work nicely for legal and financial documents. Licenses, Registrations, and sensitive data can be saved to Notes and protected with a password.

QR codes - It’s a sign of the times that QR codes have their own Collection. But most of the ones we take become irrelevant or out of date. To check it you need to long press (on phone) or scan it from your Mac and paste into Safari. FYI - my iPhone created a QR Collection of about 20 codes, but on my Mac they appeared in the Documents Collection. Go Figure.

The nice thing about photos that land in Utilities is that they don’t show up in Memory Movies or Featured Photos.

After Utilities the next destination is Media Types. Your mileage may vary but I find that Selfies, Portrait, and Panoramas are the low-hanging fruit here. These are the types of photos that most everyone does, and shoots multiples of “just in case.” If you are a video person, include those too.

It’s time to take a stand and pick one.

Then there are the outliers. Animated, Time-lapse, Slo-mo, and Burst. They are more rare, but they also don’t usually work as intended and just ought to go away if they don’t.

Live Photos are a special case. If you are a Live Photo fan then you probably have a ton of these that didn’t work out. Otherwise you took them by accident. But you’ll need to look at the motion and see if it works for you. If so, that’s great. If not, turn it off or delete it.

Last of the clutter busters are Screenshots and Screen Recordings.

I’ve seen Photos Libraries that are nothing but Screen Shots and Recordings, at which point a separate Photos Library is really the ticket. Screenshots are really just visual reminders, so they belong in a Notes file or something like Evernote. Cluttering up your personal memoir with products and offers doesn’t celebrate your journey in any way.

And if you need those reminders, make it a habit to review your screenshots every week and either commit them to a different spot or delete them altogether. You’ll feel better for it.

More importantly, you’ll have gotten down to the good stuff. Those photos and videos that really tell your story. The travel / parenthood / dining / friendship / dancing / pets / laughing / community / activism / sports / boating / hiking /sunsets /people /art / comfort / support that make you, you.

And you can begin to create a Photo Library resume that truly nurtures your soul.

MIND OVER MEMORY

Memory is a hot topic when you get to a certain age. I’ve read dozens of posts about ways to keep your mind sharp, from cognitive exercises to crossword puzzles, but a recent article in Substack added a new factor to the discussion and reminded me of a regular comment I see in photo forums.

The post argues that a common differentiator of sharp, mentally active people in their 80’s is that they’ve been challenged and adapted to elements of lifestyle. That, more than games and mental exercises, dealing with new things and overcoming uncertainty is what maintains a flexible, active mind.

Conversely, routine and certainty let the brain rely on familiar tasks and comfortable habits that avoid mental exercise; the ‘use it or lose it’ rubric we apply to physical fitness.

Which brought to mind the complaints and social media posts I’ve seen about constant changes in the Apple software. And technology in general. Anxiety over the change of a button placement, or fear that the update will delete something important every time they apply an update or upgrade.

At the same time, I have clients in their 90’s who are excited about each change and look forward to having new features to play with. Better ways to stay connected with their community and their lives.

And the article poses that it’s more than just mind games and exercises; that some level of discomfort in the task - real problem solving - builds stronger neural connections that support brain health.

Yes, the inevitable glitches and confusion that result from well-meaning software changes are a nuisance, but they are just digital speed bumps in the larger scheme of things. And if one practices sound backup strategies, you aren’t at risk of losing anything important.

Which is better than losing your mind.

SHOOTING IN THE RAIN

Growing up as I did in the Pacific Northwest, you come to accept the weather as one of the subjects in your photos. Sometimes THE subject. If you can’t deal with rain or clouds you’ll never take a photo.

Now that I live in the Northeast, I have to recalibrate every time we have 2 or 3 days of rain. It’s like someone pressed a cosmic ‘pause’ button on activities and hunkered down to wait for relief.

Nuts to that!

Rain, clouds, and everything in between can be marvelous backdrops for your photos. In fact, they offer unique opportunities for pictures that you’ll love.

• Portraits with a colorful umbrella.

• Raindrops in water.

• A downpour blurred in Live Photo or caught in Slo-Mo video.

• A neon sign blurred through a rain spattered windshield.

• Red boots standing in a mud puddle.

• Passing thunderstorms.

As it happens, iPhones have been sealed against water damage for several years. The iPhone 12 and newer are rated for immersion to 6 meters for up to 30 minutes, so a little rain isn’t a deal breaker. It’s the perfect camera for wet weather.

Just keep that lens clean and have fun.

THE VIDEO EDITOR IN YOUR POCKET

One of the challenges with taking video is editing clips together. Long videos of a slow moving scene can get tedious, but cutting it into several shorter clips adds extra work after the fact. Best intentions that you never get to.

Shooting video on your iPhone, though, offers some nifty options for doing the edit while you’re shooting.

One and done.

It’s all in the buttons.

• Tap the big red button to start recording.

• Grab a few seconds; not too long. Happy faces. Laughter.

• Tap the Pause button.

• Wait for the cake/present/puppy reveal.

• Tap the big red button (used to be the Pause button) to restart.

• Get a few more seconds. Just a bit.

• Pause again.

• Change position. Maybe a close-up.

• Unpause.

• A little bit more.

• You get the idea.

Suddenly, instead of recording an event, you’re making a movie.

And when it’s done, you tap the button with the red square to stop.

One and done.

You movie maker you.

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Wanna go back?

Pam and I do that every few nights. Twenty-four square inches at a time.

We’ve accumulated many boxes of prints, slides and negatives over the years, being a family of photographers. Right now we’re in the 4x6 print period; growing a family, visiting grandparents, face-painting, carnivals, reading stories on the couch..

When that’s done, it’ll be a deep dive into my early years as a photographer. Black and white negatives of campus protests, sailing club, and the Pacific Northwest universe of the 70’s. Then a decade of Kodachrome that got me through my single years.

Yes, the point of it all is to choose the keepers, but chipping away at an envelope or two at a time spreads out the task and makes it as much of a Sunday-on-the-couch-album-review as it is memory housekeeping. Everyone has a different threshold, but the point is the forward movement and at the right pace it’s a lot of fun. Like playing an old movie and rediscovering how good it was.

Eventually, all of it will get digitized and added to our Photos Library where the software magic will refresh those moments as Featured Photos, Memories, and curated Albums.

That’s when the fun really begins.

For 175 years or so, photography has been pretty much an exercise in storage. Negatives in sleeves. Prints in envelopes and boxes. Movie film and video tapes on shelves and racks.

Viewing pictures was a deliberate task. Looking for Jimmy’s 5th birthday or that trip to San Francisco.

Except for the family photo album and a few desktop prints, revisiting our photos and the memories that went with them required intentional action and a lot of time to spare.

Apple Photos is built on the concept that you have your whole family photo collection in one place. It’s about reducing as much friction as possible between your precious - and sometimes forgotten - memories, all the way back to the oldest pixel in your Library.

You don’t have to mess with multiple Folders in the Finder, build different catalogs in Lightroom or Capture One, or log onto an obscure web address to get at the vintage era - or whatever you’ve split off - of your Photos Collection. Everything is right there at your fingertips.

Any task that adds steps to your organizing, requires decisions, or forces you to find something, adds friction and increases the likelihood that it’s too much bother in the moment.

That’s exactly what amateur photographers have struggled with since the release of the Brownie Camera. And it’s why you haven’t gotten around having all those shoeboxes full of prints scanned already.

I know. Me too.

Friction.

But that bright light at tunnel’s end really is the way out.

One comprehensive collection of all the photos and videos you have doesn’t sound like an earth shaking idea, but you’d be amazed at how odd it sounds to a lot of people. Raised on a lifetime full of filing cabinets and shoe boxes, the very concept of dumping all their pictures together reminds them of a McDonald’s ball pit. Or there’s something about a 5-digit photo collection that makes them uneasy. Better to split it up into “manageable” chunks.

Actually I lived through that myself. When we didn’t have a choice but to save to Folders on the Desktop. It wasn’t pretty, and I’m still discovering photos that were lost from sight since the late’90’s.

But now they’ve found a home in my Photos Library.

The thing is that for the last few years Apple Photos has been improving what they call “machine learning” and Search features and there’s likely a lot more to come with A.I. in this year’s Operating Systems upgrades. So if you don’t have everything in your Library just yet, now is a great time to do that.

Here is what you get:

Memories -

This is the essence of the Apple Photos experience. Resurfacing meaningful photos from your entire timeline. Memory snippets from yesterday or from long ago and barely remembered. Memories like “Jason through the years” put together a collection that you wouldn’t think of doing yourself, even if you set aside the time. With OS 26 you can even create your own Memory movies by describing it. They can be saved, edited and shared.

Trips -

I found that my Trips Collection has created trips all the way back to 2004. As long as you have a date and a location, Photos can figure out that you were away from home.

People & Pets -

Facial recognition was introduced in 2017 on the iPhone and has gotten better every year. It is uncanny how well it can identify people as they age and now can recognize pets. People recognition is a huge factor in creating Memory movies that now include family members and friends as part of the context.

Featured Photos -

Kind of like the abbreviated version of Memories. Once Photos gets a sense of your favorite people, places, activities, it selects photos to share on Home Screen widgets and the Featured Photos collection. Random moments from your life like a delightful moment montage. Can be edited and shared.

This is the delight of Apple Photos. What used to be a storage vault has become a publishing system for your memories; big and small, old and new. It is an agent of rediscovery with your life. And each day you never know what will come to the surface.

Where are you on the road to memory resurfacing? Let me know in the poll!

You’ve probably dipped in your toes already. A backyard barbecue. Long drive to a favorite beach. Opening up the cottage. Memorial Day weekend cues the overture for the main event.

Summer is officially here.

So now is the perfect time to look at your photo strategy and get ahead of the curve. For many of us, June kicks off the annual photo “season” that starts with graduations, weddings, and travel events, and dissolves into Fall and Holiday festivities.

Here are six ways to approach Summer photos that will enrich your memories without adding overwhelm and turn you into a better photographer. It's like summer school without the deadlines, and you grade yourself.

1. Take photos with intention

Go looking for photos. iPhones make it so handy to take pictures that you can unintentionally overdo it, like a bag of potato chips. I call it a photo safari. It can be a 5-minute stroll through a garden, a city block, or a kitchen counter. Just the act of looking for interesting photos rather than reacting to a pop-up situation.

And take your pictures with the next step in mind.

Is it a moment that you will really savor or share? Is it just a reminder? Will those extra two shots get edited down to the one keeper? If you take your images with some clear intent, then you’ll become a better photographer and your photo library will become more interesting and naturally less cluttered.

It seems simple, but looking for photos is different than stumbling onto them. Photography is about how we see the world around us. You'll be amazed at the photos you find when you are looking for them.

2. The way we were

When you get to a certain age, you appreciate the power of time. How it changes our perspective and can add value to a picture. The people, places, and events we take for granted today will be the memories that we treasure years from now when the people are older and the places have changed. Kids' first bedrooms. Family around a campfire. Beach volleyball. A trip to the city. The summer cabin. What we did and how we did it. This is the rich world between selfies and landscapes that makes up our life story.

During the pandemic, the Smithsonian Museum recognized how important it was to collect photos and artifacts that would tell the story to later generations. In truth, we are all living in moments that will someday be remarkable. You can take photos now to capture that.

3. Guest photographer

Every family has a photographer who is never in the family pictures because they are taking them. It’s often the mom, but not always. You can fill that gap in their photo library by being the guest photographer and taking some family photos for them. Not the ‘stand up next to each other’ photos, but the candid, playing together, reading a book, floating sticks down the stream kind of photos. Whether you are visiting for an afternoon or a week, this is a one of a kind gift that will fill an important gap in the family photo library. You can just share the files or make a gift book. And once you’ve passed them on, you just delete them from your own camera roll.

4. Channel your inner photojournalist

Summer is the best time to take chances with your photography and push boundaries. Anything that catches your eye is fair game. From the bored lifeguard to interesting shadows on a brick wall. Graffiti. Storefronts. Travelers at the airport. People you know and people you don’t know. Your summer vacation. What interests you? Take pictures of that.

5. Motion pictures

I wish I had a video of my father. To hear his voice and see his expressions. Be sure to get some video in there where it matters. Not only for those small personal touch points, but to add depth to a story. Live Photo is both a gimmick and a gift because it can become a 3-second video. Easy to include in a slideshow. Holding down the shutter button on the iPhone will capture a longer clip as video. It’s amazing how much you can get in just a few seconds.

6. Check your work

Just like you learned in 4th grade math class, check your work before handing it in.

Remember what I said about intention? Well, the corollary to taking photos with intention is to edit photos with intention. Sometimes you just have to trust your inner photographer and get a shot while you can. Often there isn’t much time to analyze it. But there was “something” that caught your eye, so you took it. Writers talk about the words that seem to come from nowhere. Photography is the same with images.

So the edit is your chance to examine that judgment and confirm or challenge the intention. If you took it on wild impulse, then maybe it goes to the trash. If your instincts served you well, then you can embrace the experience and celebrate your inner genius. Or luck.

The thing is that photography is an emotional medium. Your impression of an image on first sight is usually the right one. It doesn’t matter if someone’s eyes are closed or a telephone pole is sprouting from a child’s head. If that image creates a laugh or a tear, then it is a good picture. Those are the images you want to keep and share.

So, embrace summer school. Keeping an eye on these 6 exercises will improve and enrich your summer photo experience and set you up for a new perspective on managing your photos for the Fall and beyond.

CELEBRATING THE MAC

One of the byproducts of Apple’s 50th Anniversary is the resurfacing of its cultural journey. The way the company and its products stood for something more than making digital appliances. From the beginning, Apple raised the tech bar from “cool” to “inspiring” in a way that no other company has.

For those of us who embraced the mission early on, the mid-nineties were brutal. Steve Jobs was pushed out by the company he started, and a succession of CEO’s tried and failed to build on the momentum that Jobs ignited with the Macintosh computer. The resulting ‘platform wars’ was a daily skirmish between the PC juggernaut and Mac faithfuls who put up with comparatively poor performance, Mac clones, and the fear that Apple would get sold off and dismantled for parts. It was like standing on the deck of the Mary Ellen Carter going down.

In a last ditch effort to avoid bankruptcy, Apple brought back Jobs as an advisor in 1997, and the “Think Different” campaign became his mission statement for the resurrection of the company he started in 1976.

In 2000, Apple reinstated Steve Jobs as CEO and here we are, 26 years later. The company philosophy that once seemed so outrageous and doomed to fail, now a tech leader that has changed the world.

When I was browsing YouTube recently, I stumbled on a compilation of the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ad campaign that ran from 2006 to 2009. In a series of 66 ads, Apple poked fun at the differences between the two platforms, solidified the Mac’s ease of use experience, and warmed the hearts of every survivor of the Platform Wars a decade before, like me. If you’ve never seen the full collection of the spots, or just need a little heart-warming, take a few minutes and enjoy this delightful reminder of what the Apple experience is all about.

THE APPLICATION THAT WOULDN’T DIE

If you were a camera-toting photographer in 2005, the announcement of Apple Aperture was a seismic event. Professional grade digital cameras were on the cusp of widespread acceptance and along with that was a preference for RAW file editing and a better file management system than a bunch of folders on your hard drive.

On top of that, Adobe Photoshop was created for the commercial printing industry and scanning services, complete with print world jargon like “high pass filter” and “blending modes” and features that favored high volume CMYK processing for ink on paper. RAW file conversions had to be processed through a separate Adobe RAW program. Edits and versioning required saving multiple files which quickly ate up costly storage space. Not a great fit for photographers, but about all that was available at the time.

In Aperture, pro and enthusiast photographers saw a post production application that solved all that by mimicking the analog tools they were used to in the darkroom with the user-friendliness of iPhoto.

It was an escape from the tedious folder organizing, it was non-destructive, and it was fun to use, letting photographers focus on the creative aspect of their art and not the tedium. Aperture immediately grew a loyal fan base among Mac using enthusiast and professional photographers.

But the iPhone launched 2 years later, in 2007, and it changed the whole trajectory of software development.

Apple had always been closely aligned with the creative community that sought user friendly professional tools, but the iPhone brought a much broader consumer base under Apple’s umbrella. Customers who never owned a Mac and were excited by the mobile phone/iPod/Internet device that fit in their pocket. The camera it housed was a minor player at first, but as it developed into a popular feature, and creating a whole synchronized ecosystem came into focus, the Photos App took more and more of the limelight and Aperture development stalled.

The launch of iCloud in 2015 was too much. To make the photo ecosystem work seamlessly across devices, the software that iPhoto and Aperture shared had to be rebuilt from the ground up and it was replaced with Photos. iCloud was a big deal that sought to take on Google Photos by maintaining an on-device security advantage via cloud-based synchronization.

Apple never officially commented on the decision to discontinue Aperture, but it seems like the combination of upgrading a niche photo enthusiast application while building out an iPhone-driven consumer ecosystem didn’t make sense.

In fact, the whole consumer focus of the times made many creative pro’s question Apple’s commitment to the professional community that had been core supporters of the platform during leaner days. Hardware and software offerings seemed less competitive and many creatives moved to Adobe or other pro-focussed apps.

But while other apps have come and gone, Aperture is still considered by many as the best photography production app of all time. While Adobe Lightroom drives a whole industry of courses, gurus, and masterclasses, Aperture was accessible in a day or two with few trips to the Starter Guide. And there are still photographers who keep their old Macs running just to keep using Aperture as their photo management app rather than “downgrade” to Adobe Lightroom or other software.

Which is why Apple’s recent announcement of the Apple Creator Studio has stirred up the rumor mills and the hopes among the Aperture holdouts. The Apple Creator Studio bundles all the Apple Pro creative apps at a very attractive price with some nice new features and some support content. Viewed alongside the recent acquisitions in the space, it points to a renewed interest in serving and supporting the enthusiast/pro creative community. And education pricing is practically free. $3 per month for a bundle that includes the $300 Final Cut Pro if bought separately.

Last year Apple bought Pixelmator, a European company that developed Pixelmator Pro, Photomator, and Pixelmator for iOS, a suite of products that offer photo editing and composition tools compatible with Apple Photos.

Pixelmator Pro is an alternative for most of the features in Adobe Photoshop, so it’s a natural addition to the Creative Studio. But Photomator is conspicuously absent. And with some tweaks to expand the photo management features, could offer a legitimate alternative to Lightroom for the enthusiast crowd.

So with Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference - WWDC2026 - less than a month away, a renewed commitment to the creative audience, and a hole that could be filled by a super-charged, AI-driven Aperture, one wonders if Apple is saving it to use as a “one more thing” signature keynote announcement.

It’s not far fetched.

Apple photographers have over a decade of experience using the Photos model, and the subset of enthusiasts that has pushed it to the limit are ready for a photo experience that has a bit more juice. Particularly with what everyone else is doing on the AI front. OS 26 introduced a reimagined user interface that was long overdue, but you can only push average users so far before they get overwhelmed.

At the same time, rumors abound of an even more sophisticated iPhone camera in the iPhone 18 Pro series, coming this Fall. With features that will only matter to enthusiasts and pros. Wouldn’t it be nice to have an Apple flavored post-production photo app that took advantage of all that.

In a bundle targeted to the mid-level creative space at a price that smokes the competition.

Announcing the return of Aperture at the WWDC2026 would be a crazy cool development and would create a lot of buzz among the crowd that still longs for the photo application they loved a decade ago.

I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope . . .

MY 80 MINUTES OF FAME

I was thrilled to be this month’s guest on Inside Photo Organizing, the industry podcast co-hosted by my good friends Allison Freedman and Susan Wolak. It seems like every year about this time they have so many questions about Apple Photos that we get together and kick around the latest Apple News and rumors. It’s a lot of fun and it gives me a chance to discuss aspects of the larger photo management landscape that don’t fit into 5 Minute Photos.

Key topics were:

• How Apple Photos is changing from a scrolling/browsing experience to a custom search and app-created Collections experience.

• For users who are thinking about upgrading their iPhone, what are some important features with the iPhone 17 Pro camera.

• Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference is happening mid-June. I share some of the hot rumors and my take on what new things might be coming.

You can also download my handout for the podcast which includes a way to make the new Liquid Glass theme more readable.

EPISODE HANDOUT

Inside Photo Organizing is a must follow podcast if you are seeking a larger view of managing your photos or have a toe in other software like Lightroom and Mylio Photos. Guests cover a wide range of topics such as how to use photos in genealogy, backing up your photos, and organizing strategies.

Check it out.

You can find Inside Photo Organizing at:

WEBSITE

MY EPISODE

And you can see the Podcast on Youtube:

YOUTUBE RECORDING

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In Finding Space Part 1 we looked at the 5 scenarios of photo management. From stand-alone-every-photo-on-one-device (hello, iPhone only users) to a distributed network of devices that share the responsibilities of your photos health and wellness. Effective photo management is a balancing act of space, convenience, and security.

In Finding Space Part 2 we focussed on how Apple created a frictionless system that supports multiple devices through iCloud, and the role of a Primary Device to give you local access to your whole collection of Original media.

Which brings us to the big picture. Creating a photo management strategy that you understand, supports the way that making, managing, and sharing pictures fits your lifestyle, and is sustainable in the long run.

Because time is the essential ingredient.

If there is anything negative about digital photography, it’s the feeling of impermanence. Or perhaps, less value.

A lot of us still have one foot firmly planted in the analog photo print / photo album / wall print experience. There’s intrinsic value in the physical form, plus the perception of “oneness.” That there’s an original image which is unique and irreplaceable.

There is still the original image, what some developers call an “instant,” but it is easily duplicated and shared in either the original or edited versions. Which makes it less remarkable when viewed on several devices and in different formats. Digital removes the “artifact” component of a picture and whatever portion of that contributes overall image value. Even a scanned image carries a bit more integrity, to me, than a straight to pixel digital image. Perhaps it’s a generational thing that will become extinct, but as a Baby Boomer there’s a difference.

Another aspect is that mobile has made the cost of pictures essentially zero. There’s no real skin in the game like pacing yourself to get the most out of a 24 exposure film roll. Or paying for the processing and double prints. Not to mention the fact that we all carry that little camera with us every day.

Pictures are free and easy.

There’s virtually no friction left in the process.

No downloading. No save to a folder. No need to organize on import.

We can actually whip out our phone, snap a shot, and share it to the world in less time that it took us to cock the shutter on our film single lens reflex for the next shot.

Which means, as a visual species, that we’ve adopted photos as a memory accessory in addition to what they’ve always done - illustrate our vision of the world around us.

Or maybe we’re just illustrating more of the world.

The upshot, as it relates to storage, is that we take more photos than ever and will likely continue that growth every year. Estimates are over 2 Trillion photos taken worldwide in 2025.

One stat is that the average person takes about 3500 images per year. That’s an average of 9.5 photos per day.

• 35,000 photos over 10 years.

• 175,000 over 50 years.

But who knows? The actual numbers vary widely, even if the trends are consistent.

As a Photo Manager I’ve seen several 200k+ photo collections already. Those are 10k image years, if we count the iPhone launch in 2007 as the beginning.

In my collection, I have:

• 1632 images in 2023.

• 2116 images in 2024.

• 3589 images in 2025.

As they say, your numbers may vary.

Which brings us all the way back to our plans for digital real estate.

The takeaways are these:

PHOTOGRAPHY HAS BECOME PART OF OUR LIFESTYLE

Images have become a part of everything we do. In addition to their creative benefits, we use photos to document, record, remind, and communicate.

OUR COLLECTIONS WILL CONTINUE TO GROW

Whatever your own photo usage looks like, it’s going to need more storage over time, guaranteed.

PHOTO LIBRARIES NEED ONGOING MAINTENANCE

Our photography experience is going to be driven by technology and support. Whether it’s developing a do-it-yourself routine, hiring a photo manager, or relying on artificial intelligence to update, cull, and create meaningful stories, they need the same kind of attention for your digital home as you do for your real home.

BEYOND STORAGE

Up until now, digital photo organization and management was mostly a storage issue. It was about filling volumes and folders and albums with images. The right ones in the right place.

But the sheer number of pictures we’re going to be dealing with, and the kinds we have to keep straight, means that our thinking needs to change. Containers alone aren’t enough, we need systems to keep everything straight.

Apple is already pushing us in this direction. The new navigation in Apple Photos is offering up Collections - where our Library is reimagined in subject matter groups - as a way to quickly drill down and find your photo in an efficient manner. With little or no scrolling.

You can also filter out Screenshots from the Library view and find them instead in their own Screenshots Collection. For all but the most recent pictures, the Library view just isn’t as useful as it once was.

And the same thinking went into the Apple Photos Ecosystem as a way to manage the big picture. If you have an iPhone (Capture photos), iCloud (Backup and Distribute Photos), and Mac (Manage and Backup Photos), you’ve got everything you need to have a complete photo environment. As your collection grows, you have the flexibility to add more storage and create multiple backups if you choose. As you get more in tune with how you want to curate your collection, your changes get synced across all your devices.

If you are in the iPhone only or iPhone + iCloud camp, the time has never been better to add a Mac to complete your ecosystem. Both the new Mac Neo laptop and the Mac mini desktop are in the under $700 range and will complete the system.

In the end, proper photo management comes down to being realistic about your storage needs, anticipating the inevitable growth, and taking advantage of the technology to merge your photography with your lifestyle. Eliminate friction wherever you can. Swiping to find, manual organizing,

Build your digital real estate portfolio so you and your family can enjoy a photo collection that will support and nurture your life experience every day.