Having a New Year's Photo Rockin' Eve

This New Year's Eve counting down into 2019, finds this mama partying right in front of her computer. Haha... Yup no fancy soirees or late night out for me. Just a quiet, very early dinner out with my husband, getting back just in time to tuck our two little ones into bed. Now with our the kids settled in and no one awake in the house except for me, I'm celebrating the end of another wonderful year in photos. I just loaded my final snaps of the year into Lightroom, eager to see the grand total for the year. Just how picture crazy did I get in 2018? 16,692 photos (not including the thousands of video files I probably have). Interestingly my total for last year was exactly 1000 photos higher. Isn't that weird? Anyway, any year we do a trip to Disney you can count on a much higher photo total. In fact my record year was in 2014, with 18,422 photos! Sheepishly I'll admit to two trips to Disney World that year. Of course it's not about how many photos you take, but it is a fun fact to note each year. How many photos I take is reflective of my what's going on in my life. If I didn't know the totals, I would think the years my children were born would show me taking more photos, but interestingly, my photo totals dropped considerably. I suppose the daze of taking care of a newborn can cut into even the most die hard photography nut's shutter time. Had it not been for the ubiquitous camera phone I'm sure my photo count would have been way down.

So here I am happily typing away and reviewing 2018's photos with Ryan Seacrest and Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve in the background. Year's end has always traditionally been my time to organize my photos, take stock of how I've grown as a photographer and think about goals for the coming year. This year for the first time I printed some of my favorite botanical photos and had them printed onto notecards. I gave sets of my notecards as gifts to friends and family and everyone seemed to like them. I suppose they aren't going to say they didn't like them right? But I will stick to my personal mantra that most everyone loves personalized gifts. Ones where they can tell you put a lot of time and thought into your gift-giving. I also enlarged some of my black and white botanicals and finally filled up a blank wall that was begging for some artwork. It makes me happy to see them on the wall.

On the technical side, year's end is always a time when I take stock of my photo backup system. Before 2013 (the year I started backing up to the Cloud automatically), at the end of year I would initiate an additional manual backup of my photos onto an external hard drive in addition to the one automatically and continuously done by Time Machine (Mac). I would also do a backup to a smaller portable hard drive and give that to my mom to store offsite. So I essentially had at least 3 backups of my photos. Now, with my automatic back up to the Cloud via CrashPlan and an additional hard drive backup I have at least 5 backups. Sounds pretty serious huh? Well, I'm serious about my photos. They are absolutely irreplaceable. I'm kind of on a mission to help save my friends and family from losing their photos. You can read more detail about my photo management system and backup process here. I've heard so many horror stories and have some of my own. So many folks have lost photos due to hard drive failure, accidental deletion etc. Earlier this year I bought an iCloud plan and then backed up my mom's phone through family sharing. I also am buying my sister-in-law a hard drive for her birthday so she can do a manual backup and I encouraged her to buy an iCloud plan too. It's really a small cost for both (hard drive storage has become cheaper and much greater capacity in a smaller device). Amazon also offers unlimited photo storage and 5GB video storage for free to Prime members. So I suppose it's my last Public Service Announcement for 2018, to please back up your photos!

I want to thank you for your readership and I hope you're also enjoying looking back at your favorite photos of 2018. Here's to a wonderful 2019 for you and your family! Also, I'd love to read your comments - how many photos did you take in 2018?