iCloud seems focused on giving users easy access to the pictures they take with an Apple device, but it does little for those of us that also want to edit images, rename them, organize them, and store them somewhere safe.

Editing and accessibility aside, I have two basic needs when it comes to protecting my digital image files.

Recent pictures that live on my computer need to be backed up, in the event that my computer crashes. I want this to happen automatically, without my needing to lift a finger. And I want them backed up to the cloud, in case my house is blown away in a Wizard-of-Oz-style twister, dumping my computer and external hard-drives in Munchkinland.

What to do with my precious, embarrassing pictures of Christmas, 1991? I want access to them, but I don’t want them clogging up my computer. Where can I put them so that they’re accessible, and twister proof?

My favorite solution for these two problems is a service called Sugarsync.

Not only does Sugarsync seamlessly and continuously back up whatever computers and folders you request, and not only does Sugarsync keep your files synced across your many devices, but Sugarsync offers a “Web Archive” – which is online file storage. Move files into your Web Archive with a single click, and then delete them from your computer and free up that valuable hard drive space. They’re safely stored in the cloud, and available to you from all of your devices.

SugarSync offers several plans, starting at 30GB of online storage for just $50 a year. Use this referral link, and get an extra 10GB of free storage when you sign up.

SugarSync isn’t perfect, but it’s my favorite solution at the moment. Easy to use and affordable, and well worth a shot if you’re looking for an online storage solution. Let me know what you think!

One of my all-time favorite pictures was taken during my wedding ceremony, two years ago today. It was not taken by our fabulous wedding photographers, though you can see Phil Thornton of Phindy Studios working hard in the background. It was taken by Michael Fosberg, our good friend and officiant, in the midst of the ceremony. No one saw it coming. And every time I see it now, I am filled with the joy of that day. Awesome.

So, it’s no surprise that I’m falling in love with HDR photography. High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography involves a series of steps that allow us to see a wider range of light and dark areas of an image. This allows us to see a more accurate representation of the scene — more aligned with how our eyes see it. Our eyes are far more sophisticated than our cameras.

Until this week, I’d never tried HDR photography. I created the images below with the help of a number of online tutorials, especially Trey Ratcliff’s Stuck in Customs blog, and Scott Kublin’s HDR Photography Blog. That being said, I stubbornly take online tutorials with a grain of salt, and I tend to get off-track by applying my own knowledge… and, more importantly, I allow myself to learn by making my own mistakes. Plenty of them.

These images aren’t perfect, but they’re a fun start. They remind me of being a kid, and I’m sure there will be many more to come… Leave a comment and let me know what you think!

We also share the passage of time since 9/11. Though the attacks seem fresh in our minds, a decade has passed, and the world has changed, in ways big and small.

There may be no easier way to mark the passage of time than by looking at those things which did not exist a decade ago. We’d never seen a Lord of the Rings movie. We’d never heard of a Horcrux. We’d never yearned for a phone tooth.

In the spirit of reflecting on the last decade, here are five-ish products that didn’t exist on 9/11:

The iPod (2001) and iPhone (2007).
Apple’s MP3 player was not the first to market, and some would argue that it wasn’t the best. But it changed the game, capitalizing on a revolutionary user-interface, and, with the growth of the iTunes Music Store, the reinvention of an entire industry. Since releasing the iPod in November 2001, Apple has sold an average of one iPod per second for the last 10 years. Like the iPod, the iPhone, which was released in 2007, was also not the first of its kind, and it, too, had its share of detractors. The irony of these two devices being released within six years of each other is that while the iPhone has not yet completely cannibalized sales of the iPod, it eventually will.

Gmail (2004).
It’s truly difficult to imagine my life without Gmail, but it did not exist on September 11. Switching to Gmail, with its mind-boggling (at-the-time) storage capacity of 1GB, set in motion my dependence on future Google products including Google Docs and Google Calendar, both of which launched in 2006. In the seven years since I started using Gmail, I’ve used 4GB of storage space, on a remarkably reliable system, without paying a penny. Gmail is a keeper.

Wikipedia (2001).
Ok, technically Wikipedia, which launched in January 2001, existed on 9/11, but with fewer than 20,000 articles at the time (0.1% of the 19 million articles currently featured) it was hardly the go-to resource that it is today. Wikipedia transformed an industry (does anyone still want a printed encyclopedia? I mean, except this guy…) and, for better or for worse, it relegated the model of expert-driven information sources to the 20th century, leaving crowd-driven data sources as the future means of information gathering.

Wi-Fi networks and always-on connectivity.
Wireless connectivity was a luxury in 2001. The New York Times reported that Wi-Fi hotspots were just beginning to gain traction at the beginning of that year. Boingo didn’t launch its service in airports and coffeeshops until 2002. Cellular data plans existed, but were rare. Perhaps we are fortunate to have experienced September 11 without the curse of constant connection to the internet. My heart lurches to think of the horror streaming from the top of the Towers prior to their collapse, had Twitter and Facebook existed at the time.

WordPress (2003). Flickr (2004). Facebook (2004). YouTube (2005). Twitter (2006).
None of these websites existed on 9/11. Not one. If I did spend waste time on the internet in 2001, I’m not sure what I was doing.

It may seem insensitive to reflect on the way the world has changed since 9/11 from the perspective of technological enhancements. For many people, lives changed on 9/11, and in the decade since, in far more drastic ways than those addressed in this post. But, in addition to helping us remember, reflect and reconnect over shared experiences of the past, anniversaries help us measure progress. They are opportunities to take stock of how our worlds have changed. They are markers of time.

I did not yearn for any of these technologies on September 11, and I’m not sure my life is better for having incorporated them. But the world has changed, and I’m certain I now couldn’t live without them.

I will spend September 11 reflecting on the events of the day, and the decade that’s passed since, undoubtedly telling someone where I was when the Towers collapsed. And I’ll probably do it over Gmail. Or Facebook. With my iPhone.

But I’ve had a luxurious couple of months, for sure.

Before returning to Nashville last week, I had the pleasure of spending a week in The Cayman Islands with a group of old friends… and one new friend. Cole is the three-month-old son of my oldest friend Oli, whom I’ve known since the second grade. I used to cheat off of Oli in AP Chemistry. Well, not cheating exactly. But I wouldn’t have passed a number of high school science classes without his… help.

Believe it or not, I prefer to keep my camera in the closet while I’m on vacation. I prefer to view the sunset with my eyes. But it’s hard to resist going overboard in a place as beautiful as the Caribbean. And it was even harder to resist Cole’s first vacation with the group…

A big congrats to Oli and his wife Megan… two of my favorite people, and two excellent new parents. Can’t wait for our next trip together.

I’ve got pictures to post from three different countries, Chicago and Massachusetts. Babies, families, and fried donut puffs. And some Nashville photographs, as well. It’s been a busy couple of months.

Let’s start with a few shots from the other side of the world, and round out my vacation Down Under. Part 2 of my trip to The Southern Hemisphere.

It seems to me that a good vacation has a few key elements.

First, you’ve gotta have pretty stuff to look at. New Zealand and Australia are a sight to see, no doubt. But we got our “scenery fix” in Samoa, and spent most of our time Down Under in big cities.

Second, great food. I don’t even know what I’m photographing in this first picture. But it’s fried, dipped in chocolate, and delicious. And besides, it photographed better than the kangaroo shank I tried a few nights before.

Lastly, no vacation is complete with surprises and oddities. I could share the picture of my wife getting emergency root canal surgery in Auckland, but that’s no fun. Instead, I present to you the underbelly of a low-flying aircraft, and a guy atop a 10′ tall unicycle, juggling fire, in front of Melbourne’s weirdest building. Enjoy.

American Samoa is an American territory located 2600 miles southwest of Hawaii. It’s one of only two American territories in the Southern Hemisphere. (Can you name the other?) Western Samoa, on the other hand, is an independent island nation, about the size of Rhode Island, located 70 miles to the west of American Samoa. I recently made the journey to both Samoas with my wife, who is half-Samoan, to meet her family for the first time.

We faced a number of challenges on our trip. Not just the emotional highs and lows of meeting family for the first time, but unexpected challenges like tsunamis, root canals, and more. What was intended to be a journey of exploration and self-discovery quickly became an exercise in endurance and self-preservation. Our vacation in paradise was strenuous, emotionally and physically, but, through even the hardest moments, my wife showed incredible resolve, the likes of which I certainly have never mustered.

It’s difficult to express how proud I am of my wife’s courage, and how happy I am to have taken the journey with her. In spite of the challenges, meeting her family was joyous and fulfilling. And Samoa, a part of the world relatively untouched by tourism, is the sort of lush, tropical oasis than one imagines Hawaii must have been, before statehood. We are looking forward to heading back.

Here are a few shots from our trip. Not the hard stuff, just the beautiful stuff. Naturally, I’ll start with my wife.

Well, on February 1, Eliza Mae entered the world… and, man, is she a cutie. She’s got more hair than her father, and far more charm than her photographer… but most importantly, she’s got loving parents and a happy life ahead of her.

Here are a few follow up pictures from our recent session together. She’s just about five weeks old in these pictures.

Congratulations to Richard and Emily. Eliza Mae — welcome to the world!

1: Get rid of some images.
You can delete images. Really, you can. You don’t need 100 photographs of your child having fun at your favorite Nashville playground. Pick your favorite 10, and trash the rest. Better yet – don’t take as many to begin with. The resulting image gallery will be leaner and more manageable, and you’ll feel like a better photographer for having kept the best of the best.

2: Name your files with the date first, for easy sorting.
You should be able to organize your digital images, chronologically, without any effort. (Try that with a shoebox of prints!) Name your files with the date first (YYYY-MM-DD), and you’ll be able to sort them quickly and easily. Be sure to use underscores for spaces, and a zero for single-digit months and days – “02” for February, for example. Here’s an example of how I might name three files from a recent trip to the zoo with Sally on February 9:

3: Download Picasa, and let the photo organization begin.
Hands down, my favorite software for managing photos is Picasa. Owned by Google, Picasa is easy to set-up, easy to use (it doesn’t take a professional photographer to operate), attractive, and as feature-rich as any free software on the market. That’s right, it’s free! What’s more, Picasa has one feature that is inexplicably missing from most other consumer-level photo management software options: the ability to watch a folder. If I create a folder of images on my computer, Picasa will know it. I don’t have to tell Picasa that I’ve added images – it already knows. And if I move images around on my computer, or rename them, Picasa won’t miss a step. It will automatically update to reflect the files on my computer. Easy!

4: Avoid the temptation to use Apple’s iPhoto.
If you’re a Mac lover like me, you may be tempted to use Apple’s photo management software, iPhoto. It comes pre-installed on most new Macs, or it’s available for $14.99 on the Mac App Store. Like most Apple products, iPhoto looks glossy and polished. The reality, however, is that iPhoto is a buggy, half-baked, inferior piece of software that Apple should really toss out the window. Yes, iPhoto integrates smoothly with your iPhone/iPod/iPad, and it enables you to easily order a bevy of attractive books, calendars and printed products. But beneath the gloss is iPhoto’s frustration engine: the iPhoto Library that it creates on your computer. Seemingly separate from your image files, this library includes two folders – one with your original images and another with modified copies. That’s right. You may have multiple copies of the same image living in different folders on your computer. What? Too confusing.

iPhoto will frustrate you – if not now, then down the road. If you ever decide to leave iPhoto, you’ll have a hard time knowing where to find your files, many of which will appear in more than one place on your computer. Apple’s strategy is clear: once you use iPhoto, you’re expected to stick around. It’s best to avoid it from the beginning.

5: Get your images off your computer.
If you have a large number of digital images clogging up hard drive space on your computer, you may want to put them somewhere else. Move your image files to an external hard drive, and let your photo management software know that you’ll be storing your images externally. (Most have a setting for this.) When you want to organize or view images, simply plug in your hard drive and start your software. Your computer will run faster, and you’ll have more space for other things.

6: Let someone else organize your images.
Overwhelmed? Or just not interested in all of this digital organization? You don’t have to do it yourself! A number of crafty entrepreneurs would be more than happy to scan, rename, and organize your images for you. It might be well worth the money, if it saves you some valuable time. Contact my good friend Mridu at Memories Organized, and she’ll set you up with peace of mind and terrific service.

7: Share your images with friends, and you’ll feel better about having taken them.
There are lots of great services available for sharing your images online. Three of my favorites are Picasa Web Albums, SmugMug and Facebook. I use all three, in very different ways. Picasa Web Albums (free!) easily integrates with Picasa; with just a few clicks, I can publish and share albums with friends and family. SmugMug is more robust, and allows for greater control if you’ve got a lot of image galleries. SmugMug also boasts some of the best customer service you’ll ever experience. Facebook is Facebook. It allows your images to quickly make the rounds between friends, which is great — if that’s what you want. Privacy is harder to manage on Facebook, so be careful with what you post. These services differ greatly in their functionality and ease of use, and you may need to make use of more than one to adequately meet your needs.

8: Backup your images every day – without lifting a finger – before you regret it.
Backing up images used to involve burning them to a CD every once in a while, which left us with piles of CDs… all of which needed to be backed up, in case of accidental loss. What’s the point of backing something up, unless the backup is backed up? These days, backing up is simpler and much safer. A number of online services like Mozy, Backblaze and Crashplan give subscribers the ability to backup files, online, automatically, without the need to do a thing. Update a file on your computer? It’s automatically backed up online. And if your computer crashes, you’ll have a simple (though not necessarily free) method of retrieving all of your files. Piece of mind and convenience, for just a few dollars a month. Worth every penny.

The ease and relative inexpense of digital photography has resulted in a dramatic surge in the number of pictures being taken, and the amount of organization required to keep up. It’s also increased our stress levels. You can get organized, but you’ll need some strategies for keeping your head above water. Got one that I missed? Share it in the comments!

1) A business is only as strong as the people who work for it.
Ask any portrait photographer who uses SmugMug for the number one reason they do so, and I doubt you’ll hear anything about SmugMug’s popular image hosting service. Instead, you’re likely to hear stories about the people that work at SmugMug, and the way those employees interact with professional photographers. SmugMug’s employees are everywhere, at all hours – interacting online, via email, on the phone, and even in person. SmugMug’s employees are as valuable a commodity, if not moreso, than the photography services it offers.

2) A company that sends an automated answer isn’t listening to the question.
I’ve never received an automated response from SmugMug, and when SmugMug addresses my inquiries, the reply is always personal and – wait for it – relevant! In this age of robotic emails and canned answers (I’m looking at you, Google), SmugMug bucks the trend and never fails to treat me like an individual. The heroes at SmugMug, as they’re called, never fail to engage in a conversation that makes me feel heard, and makes me feel like I matter. With that option available, why would I ever choose to work with a company that treats me any differently?

3) It’s okay to talk about your flaws.
SmugMug is not only aware of its flaws, but it doesn’t mind talking about them. Its employees actively engage with customers on their digital forum, Dgrin, as well as their UserVoice feature request site. This empowers customers to feel like they have a voice, and it permits SmugMug to understand its customers’ concerns. Those conversations can turn whiny, and even angry, but SmugMug’s employees never shy away, and they’re a stronger company for it.

As a portrait photographer, I’m proud to partner with SmugMug. As I prepare for some exciting changes in the coming year, I’m happy to continue relying on SmugMug for killer customer service, and terrific photography services. I look forward to learning even more from the way they do business.

Got a story about great service from SmugMug or another company? Share it in the comments!