I’m a fan of random photo samplers. Starting the day off with my pictures from a forgotten moment, portraits of a loved one, or that special trip is wonderful. It’s a delight that’s both simple and profound, like discovering an old cafe matchbook at the bottom of a memory box. Now, since iOS 16.1, you can enjoy that same experience on the Lock Screen itself.

If I hear one persistent complaint about Apple Photos and iCloud, it’s the ease with which you can unintentionally remove entire memories from your life. Precious photos deleted and gone.

But, ironically, it’s also what makes the Apple Photos experience so remarkably good.

Software is not that different than dinosaur evolution theory except that the whole Mesozoic Era is about 20 years in digital time and we play the creators.

If you’re an Apple user, chances are that you got an alert recently about My Photo Stream being discontinued on Wednesday, July 26th.

Somehow the announcement recalled my childhood obsession with dinosaurs and their evolutionary trees that played out over eons, dooming some creatures to branch off into obscurity while others kept evolving and adapted into birds.

Every parent has that moment, or will, when they notice that their kid has become an adult. You were so wrapped up in the journey that you missed the arrival. A few weeks ago I returned from the 2023 Photo Managers Conference in Orlando and felt smacked by the same discovery.

Last Year I replaced my old iPhone with a spiffy new iPhone 14 Pro and I’m all excited about the cool new features. A lot has happened since my iPhone 11 Pro was fresh out of the box, particularly with the camera. How about a 48 megapixel file? A 3X telephoto. Close up Macro photography.

GPS location tagging on iPhone photos is a world class gift and I can tell you that it's saved me more than once from minutes of swiping through years of pictures to find the one I want. When I show the Places tab in Apple Photos to my clients, and teach them how to use it, I swear that I see tears of joy.

I got the news recently, in an email, that they don’t want me anymore.

That hurts. Sort of.

But, I get it. Relationships are a two way street and I guess I dropped out. Didn’t pay at-tention. Things got in the way.

So there it was.

“It’s been awhile since you logged in . . . Due to inactivity, your account is scheduled for deletion on March 1, 2023”

If you visit any large city and photograph tall buildings, you quickly understand the problem of perspective. Unless you are about half a mile away (just try that in New York) you have to shoot up and use a wide angle lens to fit it all in. The inevitable result is a building that looks like it's falling backwards. And if you're shooting 2 buildings side by side, it looks like they are going to hug.

When I was a young man, I remembered every movie I’d ever seen. Places I’d been. Restaurants enjoyed. People met. My photos were mostly a creative exercise, like a journal full of detail and consideration rather than documents of time and place. I lived in the fantasy that my photos were incidental to the journey.

What professional photographers don’t tell you is how bad they really are. Even the best of them fail most of the time. Which is to say that the images they show are only a fraction of the images they create. The rest? Just digital debris. So success, ironically, is largely a matter of hiding their mistakes.

It used to be, with film, that there were only two kinds of photos. The Keepers and the Discards. Either a picture was worthy of printing or it wasn’t. The iPhone changed all that. Here’s how to manage your Photos Library and keep it under control.

iCloud is just like that gas station along the highway where $2 gets me a quick, accurate tire service on a rainy night. I’m thrilled that it’s there. I’ll pay a little extra for the convenience. And I’ll probably pay more attention to my tire pressure just because I don’t have to crawl around and fuss with the tire gauge thingy to get the proper pressure.

By adding the Photos Widget to your Home Screen, your daily Favorites and Memories are front and center every time you open your iPhone.

These days, a professional photo session generally includes a flash drive or download of the image files from the shoot. That can be just a couple photos for a head shot to hundreds of photos for a big event like a wedding or reunion.

Sadly, too many of those precious photos end up languishing on a flash drive in a drawer or in an online gallery that doesn’t get a second or third look. And if they are downloaded, the images may be saved in some obscure folder on the hard drive that rarely sees the light of day. But what’s worse than not being enjoyed is the real risk of losing those special photos altogether.

When people reach out for help with their pictures, the conversation always starts with their number. The takeaway is that there is no right or wrong number for the images in your Photos LIbrary. If you are overwhelmed by the state of your collection, it’s not the overall number that’s causing the frustration but is more likely the result. Adjusting your point of view about photo management and understanding what all the numbers mean will deliver a happier outcome.

For me, summer is like a movie. Memorial Day hooks you with the promise of long, fun-filled days in the sun and reuniting with friends. Plots and subplots play out week by week with activities, travel, and reunions.

Want a sure-fire/first class/award-winning Mom experience for Mother’s Day? For you or for the Moms in your life?

Here’s what you do.

How do you keep your workplace/remodeling/physical therapy/window treatment/shopping reminder/dinged bumper pictures from cluttering up your Photos Library?

The whole idea of Apple Photos is to create a safe, secure library of pictures that can be called up and exported on demand, customized for their particular destination.

My first real gig as a freelance photographer was shooting sailboat races in the Pacific Northwest. I'd stand near the bow of a 16 foot long powerboat, taking pictures, as we sped alongside crazy fast racing dinghies plowing through turbulent seas.