Preserving Your family's memories

In my last post I talked about the importance of safeguarding your phone photos and why its important.  Next lets talk about how to “share” those photos with the people closest to you so they can see and enjoy them too.

First, a couple of alternatives: Airdrop and Hashtags

If you aren’t super tech savvy, you might have missed how to AirDrop your photos with people in the vicinity.  This isn’t my preferred method because you have to be near that person’s phone to do it, so it takes time right then.  But the upside is if you maybe don’t have the photo’s owner in your contacts on the phone, they can easily send it to you.  There are lots of online instructions for this so I won’t go into this here.

Idea two I can’t take credit for, Kat Calaway, my friend from Jasmine Star’s Social Curator Texas group hit a home run with this idea for sharing on her Instagram (popular with weddings, but I hadn’t seen it used like Kat does).  A few years back, Kat’s Nanny got to a point where she couldn’t live on her own any longer and moved to an assisted living home.  Kat was the closest of all the grandkids and was luckily the one to have time to spend visiting Nanny who suffered from slight dementia.  To be able to share with her cousins and extended family, she started taking phone photos of these visits and posting on Instagram under the hashtag #KatlovesNanny.  The family can now follow the hashtag or search and see the collection of photos.  Kat’s hashtag created a way to follow (over time) what her grandmother’s time was like, it is so special and I can’t hardly look without welling up with tears over how sweet it is.   This idea has so many different applications and is super simple- just share a common hashtag with your peeps to create a photo collection.  But it does need to be unique enough that strangers don’t happen to use it as well, so be as original as possible with the name.

The Real Gold: Shared Albums

The best solution is creating “Shared Albums” on your iPhone.  It took me a few albums for everyone in my inner group to understand how awesome these could be when everyone participates, so be prepared for a little bit of a learning curve.  But once it catches on, they have come to expect to get an invitation from me to join a shared album before family events. We can even include my mom, who doesn’t have an iPhone, but does have her iPad that we gave her to be part of family group texts.  This will alleviate the hassle of handing off your phone, or even better, that the same group photo needs 4 or 5 phones being used to snap the pic each time.  Bonus: Moms, you are in some of the photos too because others are taking them so YOU CAN EXIST IN PHOTOS (my personal struggle since I’m usually the photo taker).  Here are some ideas for perfect opportunities to share albums:

• Vacations:  Have your husband, kids, even extended family and friends join the shared folder.  This is my favorite because everyone is taking so many photos of the activities.
• Kids Sporting Events/Seasons:  Does your child play club sports?  Or maybe the season of little league, youth rodeo, boy scouts, etc….Open a shared folder with the other parents so you can all enjoy the group photos, or better yet, maybe you missed an action shot of your kid that they managed to capture!
• Girls Weekend:  Because who wants all these photos shared on Social Media???  But they are keepers none the less!
• Old Family Photos:  One time recently, when visiting my cousin’s house, we found an old family album that my sisters and I didn’t know about with all these “new to us” old photos, so I quickly grabbed some phone photos so that we had our own copies of these.  Its the “Old Family Photos” screenshot above- and I LOVE the ones of my dad as a teenager, sitting on the bumper of an old car, so proud of the fish he caught!  In a later blog post I will talk about how to capture these on your phone and great apps for this purpose.
• Family Reunions:  Perfect time to get photos of the special people you don’t see very often.  Announce in the family FB group (or however you communicate) to contact you to be added to the shared album- best done ahead of the event:)
• An ongoing Family Album:  Use a shared album to always be gathering photos to print.  Let the kids decide what photos they will like to see because they mean something to them.  And start to have conversations with your kids now about why these photos are important- their generation hasn’t been exposed to the importance of printing.I started doing a printed album every so often (a few months at a time) ordering printed iPhone photo albums.  Later, I will review some of the companies I have tried!

Here are some of my albums!  That’s it until next time, go out and create Shared Albums!