Round Table Photo Mastery: Find That Picture Before the Conversation Moves On.
CAN YOU MEDAL IN PHOTO MANAGEMENT?
With the Olympics coverage now on TV I can’t help thinking of the sport I see played out daily in small groups and gatherings wherever I go.
That sport is Find the Photo.
Doom scrolling has become a genuine cultural touchpoint of the moment. So much so that even Saturday Night Live made a viral skit about it - Mom’s Camera Roll.
Whether you are old enough to remember flipping through albums at Tower Records or grew up with digital browsing, the iPhone has ingrained in us a browse-first habit. It ignores all the time-saving tools and organizing tricks Apple has added to Photos over almost 2 decades.
Swiping for pictures is like scouring your whole house for misplaced car keys when you could just ping the attached AirTag.
The thing is that photos and videos have become an essential part of our social fabric. Sharing pictures is as common as describing an event or crafting a paragraph.
The irony is that organizing your photos is really about being able to find your photos. But in the heat of competition - i.e. a lunch, afternoon tea, meeting break, or social mixer - we forget everything we’ve set in place and fall back on scrolling through the camera roll to find that picture.
If you want to Gold Medal in Photo Finding Sprints you need to rethink your approach and go at the task in a more effective way.
Rather than attack your camera roll, think first about your last interaction with the image(s).
Most timely conversations or chats will center on something recent. A picture that you recently received and saved, one you shared, or one you just found - maybe an old one - that reminded you of your companion’s relationship and history.
In that case you can go straight to the Recently Saved, Recently Shared, or Recently Viewed collection to find that picture.
Another gambit is to leverage the People & Pets Collection. If someone (or something) is tagged there, a quick tap will bring up all the pictures in your Library with that individual; newest photos at the top. You may have also created Groups from the People & Pets tags for more specific results.
Beyond that you may be offering travel advice and want to share a favorite spot from your own travel history. The Maps collection is the place to go. Or simply search on the place name. You can add a year to narrow the search.
The Illustrations Collection will pull up artwork you’ve snapped.
Documents, Screenshots, Videos do the same. As do others.
In fact, with object recognition, searches of all kinds are very possible and easy. A friend recently wanted to share an old picture of his musician son and searched on “5 guitars” to pull up his group shot on stage. Describing a key feature of a picture is often all you need. And when looking for a series of photos, you only need to find one and the option to “Show in All Photos” will get you to the companion images in your Library.
Finally, there are the Albums that you create in your collection. This is your chance to curate a short story of some event or experience. And you don’t even have to browse for it, you can search on the Album name to get there. Album creation is not the essential it once was, where every photo got put in an Album, but they have their place in the process.
Developing your own technique to win the Photo Finding Sprints is not only useful, it builds confidence and helps you identify the most important tasks for your own photo management.
And it keeps the conversation moving.
If you are struggling with the new Library/Collections structure of Apple Photos on the iPhone, you might like my mini-course,
Find Your Photos Fast: How to Use the New Apple Photos on iPhone
Paul, I can’t believe this post didn’t receive a million “likes” and tons of comments. We see it all the time, people scrolling through the Photos Library furiously looking for that one picture to share with you. What drives me crazy is that you try to stop them and suggest using “search” or as you suggest checking one of the “collections” that Photos provides. They ignore you thinking that is too much to bother with and just keep scrolling along. Allow me to say thank you for writing this article.