Become a Better Photo Editor… and a better story-teller and photographer

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Become a Better Photo Editor… and a better story-teller and photographer

Photo editing is story-telling. When we edit our photos, whether it’s for a photo album or just our general library, we are telling stories of an event, a trip, a person’s life or even just a great day we had.

As part of Save your Photos Month, I will be giving a free 20 minute webinar on how to become a better photo editor. I have over 20 years as a professional photo editor and will talk about the editing methods I have found to be the most effective, ways to train your eye and mind to work efficiently, and utilizing best practices to achieve consistent results with all your projects.

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Have you become the designated family photo historian?

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Have you become the designated family photo historian?

I recently became a regular contributor to the popular website Sixty and me.

Read my latest article here - Have you become the designated family photo historian?

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…scanned from my archive. Posing at Grandpa’s studio

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…scanned from my archive. Posing at Grandpa’s studio

I’ve mentioned many time that my Grandfather, Boris Lenoff, owned and ran a portrait studio on the Coney Island Boardwalk in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. It later moved to Ocean Parkway and probably closed sometime in the sixties when he sold off the entire inventory of cameras and photo files.

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Is your digital photo collection healthy, under the weather or ready for the ICU?

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Is your digital photo collection healthy, under the weather or ready for the ICU?

Sounds like the diagnosis of a patient, right? Well like the human body, a photo collection is really a system of connections, and if all is not well with that system, it doesn’t work quite the way it should.

As a professional photo organizer, when I see a client for the first time, I actually do a diagnosis of their photo collection to see how healthy it is. I’ve seen some pretty sick photo libraries in my time, but thankfully no terminal cases so far.

So the question becomes, what makes up a healthy photo collection? Basically I am looking to see how it works in these six areas:

Is it organized?
Are images findable?
Are images accessible?
Is the collection safe?
Can images be shared?
Is it endurable?

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Setting up Apple Photos right from the start

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Setting up Apple Photos right from the start

The Holidays are upon us and that means we are going to be taking a lot more pictures than usual. All good, except when the storage on our phones or laptops starts to max out and we have to scramble to free up space. Here are some Apple Photos settings that can help you avoid that mess and get you set up the right way.

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Adobe Lightroom Basics

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Adobe Lightroom Basics

Adobe Lightroom is a great way to catalog and edit your photos but it can be a very intimidating program to work with. Here is a recent article I wrote that tries it make it a little simpler to use. Hope it helps.

Many years ago during my misbegotten youth, I worked as machinist in the San Francisco shipyards. It was there I learned two very important lessons. First, you can lose a finger. Second, make sure you have the best tool to get the job done right. Happily I can report that I still have all ten digits. During my later years as a photographer, photo agency owner and now, photo organizer, Adobe Lightroom has proved, since its inception, to be the most valuable tool at the center of my workflow. Read the whole article...

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Don't run away from your photos!

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Don't run away from your photos!

We are living in a constant state of digital acquisition and accumulation, and nowhere is that more evident than with our photos. Last year it was estimated that over one trillion photos were taken.

How many did you take? Now think about how many photos you will have in 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? And what about video? Yikes!

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Apple Photos vs. Google Photos

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Apple Photos vs. Google Photos

Two of the most popular photo apps being used today are Google Photos and Apple Photos. I thought it would be helpful to look into and talk a bit about how they both work and what they actually do with your photos once they have them. You will find a number of other websites that show side by side comparisons of their editing features and the others bells and whistles they both offer, but as a professional photo organizer I am more concerned with how they handle your photo files, how accessible your photos are, and most importantly, if they keep them safe for years to come.

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