Adam Pratt - Declutter Your Photo Life: Curating, Preserving, Organizing, and Sharing Your Photos

Curating, Preserving, Organizing, and Sharing Your Photos

ADAM PRATT

Declutter Your Photo Life

Adam Pratt

chaostomemories.com

Project editor: Jocelyn Howell

Project manager: Lisa Brazieal

Marketing coordinator: Katie Walker

Book interior and cover design: Aren Straiger

Layout and type: Danielle Foster

ISBN: 978-1-68198-875-7

1st Edition (1st printing, September 2022)

2022 Adam Pratt

All images Adam Pratt unless otherwise noted

Rocky Nook Inc.

1010 B Street, Suite 350

San Rafael, CA 94901

www.rockynook.com

Distributed in the UK and Europe by Publishers Group UK

Distributed in the U.S. and all other territories by Ingram Publisher Services

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022937114

All rights reserved. No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.

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While reasonable care has been exercised in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein or from the use of the discs or programs that may accompany it.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in China

ADAM PRATT loves people, photography, and a good story! He spent the last twenty-five years at the intersection of creativity and technology, including twenty-two years at Adobe, where he worked on the Creative Cloud team. Hes a professional photo organizer, software trainer, and photographer. Hes also the founder of Chaos to Memories, where he helps people enjoy their photos again by turning their photo chaos into precious memories they can enjoy and share.

1. INDEX

In 1986 my Uncle Ray and Aunt Doris bought me my first camera, a Minolta Weathermatic A. It was a waterproof point-and-shoot camera that used 110 film and was the perfect rugged camera for an eleven-year-old boy to take to camp, to the beach, and on vacation to Yosemite National Park. I would often shoot an entire roll of film in a week as I explored the world around me and captured my early memories.

In 1988 I started using my mothers Asahi Pentax K1000. This was a classic 35mm SLR that sold more than three million units, and it was the camera I used to learn about the interplay of aperture, shutter speed, and film speed. I learned to develop my own film in the bathroom, and in my eagerness to improve my photography, I sometimes shot an entire roll of film in a day.

In 2001, Russell Preston Brown, a Senior Principal Designer at Adobe, gave me a Canon digital camera as a gift to celebrate the birth of my first child. That 2.1-megapixel camera was an amazing way to capture his early years. On important days like Christmas and birthdays, I often shot one hundred or more images.

For Christmas 2003 I bought my first digital SLR, a Canon Digital Rebel. It was mind-boggling that I could afford a 6.3-megapixel digital camera with interchangeable lenses for less than a thousand dollars. By todays standards, that camera is archaic, but at the time it was an impressive piece of gear and an amazing breakthrough in the camera industry.

FIGURE 1.1 The first camera I owned, a gift from my Aunt Doris and Uncle Ray, was a bright yellow Minolta 110 Weathermatic A. This rugged, underwater camera was sold in the early 1980s and shot 110 film cartridges.

FIGURE 1.2 The Pentax K1000 was the first real camera I used as a young photographer. It was my mothers camera, and I fell in love with it. I was rolling my own film, processing it in my bathroom, and printing contact sheets of my work at age eleven.

FIGURE 1.3 This Canon PowerShot S110 Digital Elph came bundled with an 8MB memory card that could hold twelve JPEG images at a time. This camera captured thousands of memories of the early life of my young children and will always hold a special place in my camera collection.

FIGURE 1.4 Christmas 2003 was our familys first holiday with my new Canon Digital Rebel with a whopping 6.3-megapixel sensor. I took a lot of photos that year.

My photographic world exploded with my Canon Digital Rebel. My kids were three and one at the time, and theres nobody more snap-happy than a parent of toddlers. The first year I owned that camera I shot more than 50,000 exposures. In fact, I took so many photos that I wore out the shutter (one of the only mechanical parts of a DSLR), and I had to have it replaced by Canon. The transition to digital was a new world of creativity and learning for me.

But I wasnt the only one making the switch. In the early 2000s, people around the world were transitioning from film cameras to digital. Not everybody was dropping a grand on a DSLR or shooting 50,000 photos a year, but with the accessibility and low cost of digital photography, we all started shooting more.

On one hand, this digital revolution was amazing because we were creating more photos, capturing more memories, and enjoying more creativity. The transition to digital photography included the freedom to experiment, learn, and grow as photographers. But because we werent paying for film, processing, and printing, we picked up bad habits like using burst mode and selfie sticks, and taking photos of our lunches. Despite having access to higher-quality cameras than ever, most of us are still taking more bad and thoughtless photos than we want to admit. Were burying ourselves beneath our own photo backlogs, and the joy of digital photography has become an overwhelming burden for many.