Apple Podcasts
Google Play
iHeartRadio
Spotify
Stitcher
TuneIn
Andrew Darlow is a New Jersey-based photographer, inventor, author, and digital workflow coach. For over 25 years he has helped people preserve, protect and back up their irreplaceable photos, videos and other digital files. His photography, tips and reviews have appeared in many publications and media outlets, including: People magazine, Animal Planet, Reader’s Digest and Professional Photographer Magazine. He is the author of four award-winning books, including his newest book: Focus and Filter.
Andrew talks with me about what drew him to photography, what we lost and gained in the shift to digital photography, the improvements in phone cameras in recent years, how best to preserve your photos—and weed out the junk—and more.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 Introduction
01:22 Creativity explored in childhood, grandparents encouraged art.
03:57 Transition from drawing on walls to discovering photography.
05:30 Fascination with darkroom photography and its magic.
07:00 Different methods in darkroom, use of contact printing.
10:00 Engagement with photography, schools in Washington D.C.
11:27 Shift from film to digital, instant access vs. patience.
14:41 Improvement in phone cameras, use for scanning documents.
15:59 Loss of thoughtful consideration with digital photography.
19:16 Exploration of aperture and shutter priority.
21:39 Impact of phone cameras on traditional photography.
23:44 Usefulness of phone photography courses.
24:25 Concept of the best camera being the one with you.
26:11 Ethical considerations in photography, respecting subjects.
28:06 Dangers of distractions, selfies, and phone use.
30:01 Tips for safely backing up digital images.
34:06 Managing and organizing digital photo collections.
38:12 Strategies for dealing with physical photo preservation.
40:27 Importance of online backup services like Backblaze.
43:39 Overview of local and cloud backup solutions.
47:31 Andrew’s upcoming projects, including course platform.
51:19 Insight into unique, personalized photography prints.
Show Links: Andrew Darlow
Andrew’s website
Subscribe!
You can subscribe to Follow Your Curiosity via the handy links at the top of the page for Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, TuneIn, and YouTube. If you enjoyed the episode, don’t forget to tell your friends!
Transcript: Andrew Darlow
Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Andrew Darlow is a New Jersey based photographer, inventor, author and digital workflow Coach. For over 25 years, he has helped people preserve, protect and back up their irreplaceable photos, videos and other digital files. His photography tips and reviews have appeared in many publications and media outlets including People Magazine, Animal Planet, Reader’s Digest, and Professional Photographer Magazine.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:43]:
He is the author of four award winning books including his newest book, Focus and Filter. Andrew talks with me about what drew him to photography, what we lost and gained in the shift to digital photography, the improvements in phone cameras in recent years, how best to preserve your photos and weed out the junk, and more. Here’s my conversation with Andrew Darlow. Andrew, welcome to Follow Your Curiosity.
Andrew Darlow [00:01:10]:
Thank you so much, Nancy. I’m really excited to have a nice chat with you.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:13]:
Me too. So I start everybody with the same question. Were you a creative kid or did you discover your creative side later on?
Andrew Darlow [00:01:22]:
Oh my goodness. I think I was a creative kid. I have memories of my grandparents apartment in the Bronx and me decorating their walls with crayons and pens and I, I guess that’s creativity. And you know, Dr. Seuss did the same thing I hear, but I’m guessing his pictures were a little bit more detailed than mine.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:52]:
Sounds like potentially you were not terribly popular for that, but it depends on the kind of grandparents you had.
Andrew Darlow [00:02:00]:
Yeah, they were wonderful. And I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if they eventually painted them over, but that led to things like playing with light bright, which is kind of creative. I’ve always loved that idea of putting things together and creating larger pictures in different ways. And there’s a lot of other things that I was exposed to as a young person, whether that was through photography, which came a little bit later, or just doing drawings during school. So I would say definitely creative in different ways.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:40]:
So your grandparents left the drawings on the walls there?
Andrew Darlow [00:02:44]:
I don’t know. But I’m guessing when they sold it, somebody probably asked them to paint it over.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:51]:
Probably, yeah. But I’m just thinking most people would not have taken kindly to that. So if they left them there, that’s pretty remarkable.
Andrew Darlow [00:03:01]:
Yes. You never know. I mean, who knows? Sometimes some art is left behind and it actually becomes part of a space. But in this case I’m pretty sure it was covered over as soon as they could.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:17]:
You’ve reminded me of stringing up red yarn all over my grandparents place when I was a kid. And I think they left it up as long as they could practically leave it. But I’m not sure that it wasn’t a tripping hazard. So it may not have lasted for very long. But yeah, it’s amazing the things that we do when we’re kids that our grandparents let us get away with, isn’t it?
Andrew Darlow [00:03:42]:
Yes, absolutely. Probably a lot more than what our parents allow us to do.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:46]:
Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. That’s why they’re grandparents, right? That’s why your parents look at your grandparents and go, you never let me get away with this when I was a kid.
Andrew Darlow [00:03:58]:
Without a doubt. I can totally empathize with that. I think it’s because the stress level goes down and they don’t have to spend the day to day generally with the little ones. They just get the smiling, happy kids for the most part.
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:16]:
Yeah. And I think when you get older, you chill a little. It’s not as big a deal to you anymore, which must be nice. So you mentioned all of these different things when you were a kid and how did that shift and change as you got older?
Andrew Darlow [00:04:36]:
Well, I always love photography. Probably from about age 12, I can really remember going on a school trip to Washington D.C. and coming back with photographs of the different monuments and some of my friends. And so that was always in my memory. And then that really became much bigger when I became 15, 16 in high school and I discovered the dark room and I went in there and saw the black and white images just appear out of nowhere. And it was like magic. And I then started taking more photographs for the school yearbook and the school newspaper. And that led to so many more things that came afterward.
Andrew Darlow [00:05:30]:
And photography has been the glue that has been a part of my life ever since.
Nancy Norbeck [00:05:37]:
You know, the closest I’ve ever been to a dark room is watching someone develop photos on a TV show. And I don’t know how close that is to reality, but it always looked like, you know, like you said, the magic, like this image just suddenly appears and you have all of these different little trays of something that looks like water, but you know, it must not be that that’s on the, on the screen. And I mean, how, how much is reality like that?
Andrew Darlow [00:06:07]:
That’s basically what it is. You have, you have a few different trays with smelly chemicals, which is my least favorite part of the whole thing, but that’s what you have. You have developer and then you have a fixer which keeps the image from not fading too fast. And then you have a water bath at the end. And it’s like a healing thing. Now that I think about it, you know how baths can be healing. I lived in Japan, so the ofudo or bath is very sacred. So it’s almost like going from one to the other.
Andrew Darlow [00:06:41]:
And then in the end you get this magical piece of art. So it’s exactly like that. There’s nothing that different, but there are different methods. And I was really blessed to meet someone at a photo exhibition named Joe Oppenheimer, who introduced me to the world of contact printing. Which means you take a negative and usually it’s about the size of like an 8 by 10 inch photograph, and you sandwich it together with paper that’s been coated with some type of chemical, like platinum or platinum palladium. There’s like about, I don’t know, eight or ten different things that you can coat it with. And I’d say once you have that experience, the dark room, you know, with the baths of different paper developer and fixer, is not quite as exciting anymore because you end up being able to paint your emulsion onto paper. And when you see it, you get these beautiful painted borders and on all kinds of papers, not just semi gloss papers or somewhat matte papers, we’re talking really matte fine art type papers that you can coat and then do a sandwich with your negative and then expose it to light and then you get a print from that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:12]:
Wow. So is it a negative of an image or are you adjusting, you know, kind of creating your own image through that negative or. I’m not sure if I’m picturing exactly the right thing.
Andrew Darlow [00:08:26]:
Well, the key is that you have a negative that looks like a negative. If you remember strip negatives from 35 millimeter, it just looks like that, but it’s much larger and it’s generally black and white. So picture a big one of those and picture a piece of paper that you’ve painted on some chemical, and then you put it on top of there and you sandwich it together, generally in a frame that looks like a frame, but it has a special way of closing so that it’s really tight, tightly sealed, and then you expose it to light. And what it does is the light causes the emulsion or the area that you painted to then be sensitive. And the negative, whatever came through it, allows it to show like a photograph.
Nancy Norbeck [00:09:16]:
So only where you’ve painted it, where you paint it.
Andrew Darlow [00:09:20]:
But then the negative is what determines what part is allowed.
Nancy Norbeck [00:09:23]:
Right? Right. Oh, that’s kind of Wild.
Andrew Darlow [00:09:27]:
It is. It’s beautiful.
Nancy Norbeck [00:09:29]:
I can see where. Where that would be much more interesting than just, here’s step one and here’s step two, and here’s step three. And. Yeah, and. And I was actually. I was going to ask you. It’s worth asking anyway. Like, when you’re in the dark room doing step one and step two and step three are, do you have a lot of control over how those images come out? Like if you use different amounts of different chemicals or something like that too?
Andrew Darlow [00:09:55]:
Yes, absolutely. In both cases. In every case, you have a lot of control. And going back to more chemicals and the water baths and things like that with the liquids that often is mostly controlled by your negative and also then by how long you allow it to be exposed to light. And those things together will determine all kinds of things and along with the paper.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:24]:
So it’s way more than just what you do with the camera itself.
Andrew Darlow [00:10:27]:
Yes, that’s for sure.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:30]:
Wow. So I can see where sending it off to be developed is just not what you would be interested in if you’ve started developing your own images.
Andrew Darlow [00:10:41]:
Right. Unless you’re doing, like, pictures. When I went to Japan, for example, the first time, and I just had my little film camera and I just wanted to get four by six prints. They did fine because I didn’t want to go and try to print them in color because color darkroom work is much more difficult. And so. And it’s much more expensive and I believe it’s much more toxic. So I just had them done outside and then I had the negatives if I really wanted to make any enlargements or make reprints and things like that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:11:13]:
It’s amazing to me when I think about all of this because, you know, I’m. I’m old enough to remember when this is just how it was, you know, that you would take your pictures and for most of us who didn’t develop our own stuff, you would send it off and wait your two weeks or whatever it was until you got your photos back. You had no idea what was going to turn out. You hoped for the best. You hoped you didn’t have your finger over the lens, you know, all of that kind of stuff. You got double prints so that you could share them with somebody. And that’s how it worked. And now, you know, it is so different in the world of I have this camera in my pocket 24, 7, and I can take a picture of whatever I want.
Nancy Norbeck [00:11:59]:
And most of us don’t even really think about taking a picture anymore. We just do it. I mean, how many pictures do we take every day? Whereas, you know, 30 years ago it would be how many pictures do I still have left on this roll of film and how much is it going to, how much did the film cost me and how much is it going to cost me to develop this role? And I don’t want to waste the last five that I have. And it is so dramatically different now.
Andrew Darlow [00:12:28]:
Yes. And you mentioned you may have to wait up to two weeks, even with the one hour photo craze, which was an amazing technological breakthrough to have all these places all around the world able to process your film in about an hour. And then you still though didn’t know what you were going to have. So even, even so the difference between digital and even a one hour photo is monumental. So you’re right. And people don’t realize how much more difficult it used to be and how much more expensive it used to be to just Capture, let’s say 500 pictures in a year compared to now to do something.
Nancy Norbeck [00:13:18]:
Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I’m sure somebody has come up with stats for how many pictures the average person takes in a year now, but I’ll bet it’s way more than that.
Andrew Darlow [00:13:27]:
Yes, it’s probably more like 2,3000, I’m guessing if people just take pictures of what they’re eating a couple days a week and a few other things around the holidays, et cetera, et cetera. And a lot of people are using their cameras as a scanner for all types of things. Like I use it to deposit my checks and I use it, if I need to get a serial number off of something, I will sort of, you know, bend over, you know, to get to the back of a TV or something like that. It’s an extremely useful tool. It is.
Nancy Norbeck [00:14:05]:
And I only just discovered recently that if you, at least with, with an iPhone, if you take a picture of, you know, a page in a book or some kind of text, you can highlight the text on the phone and copy it. And I was like, what?
Andrew Darlow [00:14:21]:
Yes.
Nancy Norbeck [00:14:23]:
I mean, I, I remember going off to undergrad and seeing, you know, a scanner that could recognize text for the first time. And it was like this wild, miraculous thing. And those things cost thousands of dollars back then. And now it’s in your pocket.
Andrew Darlow [00:14:38]:
Yes. It’s amazing. If I need a number off of something, I’ll take a picture of it and boom, right away you have the text available to you right in the photograph.
Nancy Norbeck [00:14:48]:
Yeah, it’s amazing. But I wonder too, now that it’s so easy. Do you feel like we’ve lost something with, you know, it being so instantaneous? Was there, was there something about not knowing what you were going to get? Did it make us more careful? Did it, I don’t know, make us more thoughtful? What do you think?
Andrew Darlow [00:15:09]:
Yes, absolutely. So what I recommend people experiment with is to cover their camera lens. I mean, the cam, not the camera, the. The screen on their smartphone or on their camera, and go and just take 20, 30, 40 pictures. Obviously it’s harder on a smartphone, but you can certainly do it on a digital SLR or a mirrorless camera, the larger cameras. And it really is fun. But few people will think about doing that. But once you know, you’re set up and it’s pretty much auto exposure, whether you use aperture priority, shutter priority, or just auto, you could just go explore and you will get the same type of feeling that we used to get with film.
Nancy Norbeck [00:16:00]:
Yeah, that’s funny. I’m thinking that probably we should explain aperture priority and shutter priority for people who are not really up on those. And frankly, it’s been a while since I’ve played with my mirrorless camera, so I could use a refresher too.
Andrew Darlow [00:16:16]:
Sure. I will give you a quick overview. And I actually have on my YouTube channel a quick overview too. And there’s so many other people who do it. Well, there’s a couple very long, how should I say it? They’ve really been around a long time, which has been wonderful for photographers because then you can focus on things like gesture aperture, which is the opening of the little disc that’s inside either of the back of the camera or the actual lens. And if you ever were to put your finger in front of your face and you made like a ring and you look through it and if it was really big, you’ll find that you the world, things close to you are sharp, but things are further away or not. But then if you make a tiny little hole with your, with your pointer finger and your thumb and you look through it, you’ll notice that both the things near to you and the things further away suddenly become sharp. And that’s the idea of aperture priority.
Andrew Darlow [00:17:23]:
You can set your aperture lower. F stop numbers will allow you to focus on things nearby in the outer things that are further away will generally go out of focus. And then higher F stop numbers like F11, F16 will allow you to stop down the lens. And then you’re able to make things that are close and a little bit further back. And depending on how you Set it up potentially much further back to be sharp. So it’s essentially controlling that bokeh. It’s called the difference between focus at different levels in your picture. So that’s aperture priority.
Andrew Darlow [00:18:02]:
Shutter priority is like truly magic because you can decide how long you want your shutter to be open in the camera. And that allows you to capture things like falling water, like from the falls, like Niagara Falls. If you put your camera on a tripod and you shoot at shutter priority and you set it to 1/1,000th of a second, which if you, you can think of what 1,000th of a second would be, it’s very fast. The falls are going to look very. Not smooth, they’re going to look very sharp. But as you slow it down to, let’s say a quarter second, half second, you’re going to get this beautiful flowing look, which everyone has seen at some point in a photograph. And that’s shutter priority.
Nancy Norbeck [00:18:54]:
Yeah. Everybody who sees that goes, oh, how’d they do that, Lisa? I know I certainly have, because every time I see one of those, I want to know how to do it myself. And I’ve never had the opportunity to try that, but I think it’s the coolest thing. Which probably makes me sound really, really cliched, but there it is.
Andrew Darlow [00:19:16]:
No, that’s good. And you can do it with phones. You just have to learn a little bit. Sometimes you have to get a filter for the front of your phone because phones don’t have the ability to change the aperture generally. And so you can put something in front of it and essentially then you’re knocking down the light to force it to create a longer exposure so that you can get the same kind of look using a phone.
Nancy Norbeck [00:19:41]:
Interesting, because that is something that I’ve found kind of fascinating with the rise of phones and cameras. I mean, when they first started doing that, which was what, 20ish years ago, I remember, and this is one of these things that makes me feel like, should get out my blue hair in my cane now. But I remember thinking, you know, what the heck does anybody want a phone in their camera for? You know, and back then they were so bad that that was a really valid question because you were not going to get much of a picture out of the. Out of those cameras in the phones. I almost said phones in the cameras, but. But now that they’re so good, you know, I have a good mirrorless camera that I bought nine years ago that I will admit I hardly ever take out because I have the one that’s in my pocket. And it’s not the same. It can’t do the same stuff.
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:45]:
Though. I kind of think it’s better at a panoramic photo having having done both of them side by side. I kind of think my phone was better. But, you know, I’ve heard there was somebody and I. It’s been so long that I don’t remember who said this, but I think they were kind of famous for it. Who said the best camera is the one you have with you?
Andrew Darlow [00:21:06]:
Yes.
Nancy Norbeck [00:21:06]:
And I think there’s some truth to that. But at the same time, I think, you know, everybody just knows how to point and shoot now. And so, you know, real photography is becoming this subset and potentially kind of a lost art. And if there are ways to make an iPhone do better things, like I see these iPhone photography courses advertised on like Instagram sometimes and I think, but how much can you really do with an iPhone? Like, I, I would love to hear what you think about that.
Andrew Darlow [00:21:39]:
Oh, there’s a whole lot you can do, including night photography and astrophotography, but it’s not going to do a lot of things still. Although I’m amazed at what my Samsung S23 can do. Like the 10x lens on that is crazy good. So it used to be that telephoto photography was the real limiting thing that you could not do with a smartphone, but that’s kind of falling by the wayside. And however, it’s still better to have a good quality long lens if you’re photographing things further away for a number of reasons, but the gap keeps getting narrower and narrower. So that I will say, and then apps also help because whether it’s the Apple app or the one you get with Android, they keep improving them and they keep giving you more and more features that start to lessen the need, let’s say, to bring a bigger camera with you.
Nancy Norbeck [00:22:52]:
That’s amazing. So do you think it’s worth it to actually, if you want to explore, to take one of those classes in iPhone photography? They’re not just trying to say that you can do things that you can’t necessarily do with your phone?
Andrew Darlow [00:23:08]:
I would say definitely check it out, especially if it’s not very expensive. And do you think that when you read the description, if it hits some specific check mark boxes for you, then I would say go for it. Why not?
Nancy Norbeck [00:23:24]:
Fair enough, fair enough. And I think, I mean, I’m just going to go ahead and guess that there’s truth to the notion that the best camera you have is the one you have with you because obviously, if you don’t have one with you, you’re not going to take anything.
Andrew Darlow [00:23:39]:
Yes. You’ll just have your memories. And I’ve had plenty of situations where either my camera card was full or my phone ran out of batteries, or I felt like, you know what? This is not appropriate for me to take this photograph. And I’ll give you one example. I was with my family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, one of the most picturesque places. And we were driving either to or from our hotel, I think, and we were sort of going through this narrow road and by some fields, and we saw a bunch of the Amish buggies, I guess you’d call them, the ones where they. They have their horses. And they were all sort of like in a.
Andrew Darlow [00:24:30]:
I’ll call it like a parking lot area. And then there were, I guess, teenagers mostly, playing volleyball, and it was like, oh, my God, this is like the most amazing scene. But I am not going to take my camera out because I felt like it wasn’t appropriate. But I have it in my mind and I’ll always have it with me. So I feel like sometimes you just keep it in your mind. It’s valuable there as well.
Nancy Norbeck [00:25:03]:
I think that’s really, really good. Awareness, discernment. I grew up in York, so right across the river from Lancaster. And, yeah, generally speaking, the Amish get treated like tourist attractions, so I think that was a really good call.
Andrew Darlow [00:25:22]:
Yeah, I felt that way, too.
Nancy Norbeck [00:25:24]:
Yeah. I mean, it’s sort of an. I want to say occupational hazard, which is not really the right word in that context, but it’s the best one I’ve got of living there for them, but at the same time, they didn’t ask for that. So. Yeah, definitely. Definitely a good call. So.
Andrew Darlow [00:25:44]:
But I could share it with you.
Nancy Norbeck [00:25:46]:
Yeah. And I can. I can picture it, you know, especially having grown up near there. So. Yeah, I’m sure that they appreciated it, even though they probably didn’t know that you were thinking about it. But, yeah, the less staring that happens in their direction, the better, I think.
Andrew Darlow [00:26:06]:
Yes. Yes.
Nancy Norbeck [00:26:08]:
And, yeah, I think we’re. The disadvantage of having the phone in your pocket is that it becomes harder and harder for people to make that distinction, and fewer and fewer people do, so.
Andrew Darlow [00:26:20]:
And I’ll add that people unfortunately put themselves in jeopardy with selfies, and it’s heartbreaking when I hear people have either been injured or lost their life because of a selfie.
Nancy Norbeck [00:26:33]:
Yes. Yeah. And. And that’s. That’s. I don’t know. Sometimes. Sometimes I think that I don’t Know, there’s a.
Nancy Norbeck [00:26:52]:
There’s a balance between a need to preserve a memory and a need for solid judgment. And the judgment part is not always there.
Andrew Darlow [00:27:03]:
Yes. And then I’ll just go one step further and say, I believe it’s very dangerous to. To look at your phone in any parking lot or near any cars, because on multiple occasions, I have seen cars just coming right at me. And if my head was in a phone, I may not be here right now.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:24]:
Yes, yes. Or when driving a car.
Andrew Darlow [00:27:28]:
Oh, yeah, of course, when driving a car is like. Should not have to even say that, but. Yes.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:34]:
And yet we do.
Andrew Darlow [00:27:36]:
Yes, yes, yes. It’s. It’s unfortunate, but definitely, if you are in any area and, hey, I could be saving a life now or a future life, please do not take your. It’s so. It’s like a drug. But just realize how dangerous it is when you’re around cars and you’re not paying attention. Also, kids can run out in front of you and people will not see them as they back out, which is very scary. It’s scary for the people who are driving, and it’s scary for the parents who I see.
Andrew Darlow [00:28:14]:
And I’ll just tell you one other thing that bothers me a lot, is when people let their kids hang off the front of a cart backwards. And I’m like, oh, my God, Really? You’re gonna let your kid ride backwards on the front of a cart? You know what I mean? Right. When they hold on to the front and like, what if there’s one loud bang or something? Or like, and the parent gets shocked. I don’t want to think about it, but I do think about it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:28:42]:
Right, Right. No, I’m with you. And along that line, the image that’s popping into my head is, I was in New Zealand several years ago, and you go to the geothermal park, and they have little walkways. Those walkways are not wide and there are no railings. And there are signs all over the place about, don’t. Don’t fall into the water because it is very hot.
Andrew Darlow [00:29:05]:
Oh, my.
Nancy Norbeck [00:29:06]:
And if you are staring at your phone, I mean, it’s one thing to be standing on the walkway taking a picture, but if you’re walking along the walkway staring at your phone and you don’t see someone coming your way and you bump into them and you land in the water, you’re going to regret it a whole lot. You know, like, there are places where, when you’re not taking the picture with your phone, it should go back in your pocket and you should pay attention. You know, I’m, you know, I’m the kind of person who, on a walkway that narrow, gets very nervous because I think if I put one foot out of place, I’m going in that water. So that, that is what I was thinking the entire time I was on those little walkways was just, I just want to stay in the middle of it as much as I can and get to the other end without falling in. Yeah, so. So yeah, there are chances you should not take for the sake of a picture or checking your text messages.
Andrew Darlow [00:30:01]:
Absolutely. Yes.
Nancy Norbeck [00:30:04]:
Yeah. So with all of these pictures, I know that you’re interested in helping people to back up and preserve photos. So what can you tell us about that, especially that we might not already know?
Andrew Darlow [00:30:20]:
Okay, well, there are a lot of things that anyone can do to preserve their photographs. I won’t go into like all the collections of print, prints and negatives right now. That’s a whole nother area. I’ll talk more about the world of digital. And one thing anyone can do, just the easiest thing you can do is just to make sure your phone has a plan. Like, for example, Apple has different plans. I believe 200 gigabytes is like A$99 a month. I would highly recommend that if you have, let’s say a 256 gigabyte iPhone, you buy the 200 gigabyte plan.
Andrew Darlow [00:31:04]:
Because then everything will be backed up. All your photographs, all your settings, all your apps. If something happens, at least you’ll have everything that was on the phone, assuming Apple doesn’t have some problem with its servers. And even then you have an option in your phone to either keep all the originals on the phone or because they understand that people take a lot of pictures and videos, you can choose something called Optimize, which is great with regard to the fact that you could just keep taking hundreds of thousands of photographs and your phone will not tell you that it’s full, of course, depends what else is on there. But you could just keep going and going and going. The problem is if you didn’t pay for enough storage, first of all, then you have a real problem. So that you have to do. And more importantly, if Apple has some kind of hiccup, which is very possible, it has happened.
Andrew Darlow [00:32:05]:
I don’t know if it happened to Apple, but it certainly happened on other systems. Your pictures are gone, or at least the higher res pictures and certainly the videos are gone. So you really, really want to at least purchase the plan that covers the data. And if you have an Android, you may be all set with regard to unlimited storage, so you can just check on that. But you really want your photos and videos to have some type of automatic backup after you actually take the pictures and they get uploaded into the cloud. So it’s a magic system. But if you’re not paying a little bit every month, you could be at great peril. I mean, your data can be, not you.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:55]:
What about like, I know when I go flipping through my pictures there’s a lot of junk in there. Is there a way that you recommend to weed that junk out? Because I’m sure that that stuff doesn’t all need to be backed up. And yet it feels so intimidating to think, good lord, I have like, you know, eight or nine years worth of photos on here and to go through all of them just feels so daunting that I don’t do it. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Andrew Darlow [00:33:28]:
Yes, there’s a number of things you can do. You can start by using some keywords, because whether it’s on Apple or an Android phone, you can generally put in a keyword for something like document. So let’s say you’re someone who takes pictures of documents all the time and you really don’t need them. It’s probably going to show up because it knows what a document looks like or if there’s other things. This is just at a starting point that you know that are in there that are some kind of topic that will like bring up a thousand pictures or if you know there’s a place you always go to that you only take those pictures for some short term reason, you can then go and search by a location and then you can just wipe all those out, for example. That’s another way. And otherwise it’s really best to do it on a computer and you find a way to get it into your computer. There’s a number of ways to do that and you just take some time and then you can select like 10, 20, 30, 40, 100 pictures at a time and delete them.
Andrew Darlow [00:34:41]:
You could also keyword them, but that’s going to be the easiest way to get through them fairly quickly. That’s the starting point.
Nancy Norbeck [00:34:51]:
Okay. The keyword thing had never occurred to me before, so that might make it a little bit less daunting. I was going to say more appealing, but I don’t know if anything’s really going to make it more appealing.
Andrew Darlow [00:35:05]:
Yes, it really is not easy when you have mostly pictures that are potentially keepers, because if you have, if you’re Trying to decide between two pictures a thousand times. Like a thousand times you have two or three pictures and you just want one of the three. That’s when it takes time and then. But you can take the time and then give them like a five star or I like to do five star for definitely keep and one star to just delete and then everything else sort of stays. So it’s like. But the five stars go to the top because those are the ones I want to see later on. It’s just a fast way to delete a bunch and to keep a bunch. And then the ones that fall in between, they fall in between.
Andrew Darlow [00:35:58]:
So that’s kind of a method that may help you. And there’s different ways to do it on a more automated method. If you learn the key combinations for one through five stars, for example, that could get you through, let’s say 10,000 photographs in a few hours.
Nancy Norbeck [00:36:16]:
Wow. Okay. Okay. That sounds less than the horrible multi day extravaganza that I was picturing. So that’s encouraging.
Andrew Darlow [00:36:29]:
Yes, absolutely. I agree. The only other thing you can do is you can get software like Lightroom. I love Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic. That’s the full name for it, but everyone calls it Lightroom Classic. Adobe Lightroom Classic. And there’s Adobe Lightroom, there’s Adobe Lightroom Classic. I prefer Classic because it allows you to easily work with your own external hard drives or the photographs that are on your Mac or Windows machine.
Andrew Darlow [00:37:07]:
But the interface and the way you can organize things and the way that you look at your photographs and the way that you can go through them and the way that you can set this paintbrush tool to like imagine you have 200 pictures in front of you on the screen and you can use a paintbrush and like you’re dabbing. Dab, dab, dab, dab, dab, dab, dab, dab, dab. You can dab one star or you can dab, dab, dab, dab, dab A keyword or not just that you can do a whole stroke across one whole line and they all become five star. It’s sort of like a magic wand. That’s when you start really having the power. And it’s only $10 a month, which is amazing. But please let me know if you can’t find a $10 a month plan. Send me an email, because let’s just say it’s not always easy to find it.
Andrew Darlow [00:37:59]:
And you get the latest version of Photoshop and Lightroom, at least as of we’re speaking here. In late 2024, early 2025. So that’s when it really starts to almost be fun. I’ve helped so many of my clients learn to use the paintbrush in Lightroom Classic.
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:17]:
That’s cool. That does sound like it would make life easier. And if it starts to be fun, then that’s a bonus, because anything that makes cleaning stuff out seem fun is definitely a bonus for a lot of us.
Andrew Darlow [00:38:31]:
Yes. Make it a party. Sort of like Tom Sawyer and the painting of the picket fence.
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:37]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well. And I know you were sticking to digital things, but I want to ask you too about, like, if you have any thoughts about old family photos, because. And this is coming from a very particular place for me. I just had a roofing accident where part of my ceiling collapsed. And the big casualty of that was that it happened in my dining room and right over the end of the buffet table where I have my family photos. And they.
Nancy Norbeck [00:39:12]:
They told us this was my. My condo association did this. And the only reason that the ceiling was involved was that they replaced the insulation under the roof and they dropped a roll of insulation through my ceiling. And when that happened, it landed on the end of the buffet table, and it. That landed on the antique photos of my great great grandparents and basically snapped them in half.
Andrew Darlow [00:39:39]:
What? Wait a second. They were made. They’re like glass plate or. They were.
Nancy Norbeck [00:39:44]:
No, they were in a plastic frame, and the plastic frame snapped in half, and so did they. I’ve just been wondering, like, I’ve had them. I’ve taken them to a photo, a paper restoration place, and they’re going to try to do their best to put them back together. But it’s had me wondering, like, is there. Was it a mistake to have them out? Should I have had copies out instead? Like, I hate to put things like that in a box. You know, I think that. That that’s a shame. But at the same time, maybe there’s a better way to.
Nancy Norbeck [00:40:19]:
A better way to. To put them out or. I don’t know what. What do you think? Maybe I’m being paranoid about.
Andrew Darlow [00:40:27]:
Depends a lot on whether it’s more the actual photographs that are important or is it the image that’s on the photographs that’s important. And you can decide if it’s the actual photographs that are most important, then it makes sense to make copies of them and then make. And then go ahead and make prints and then put those in the frames and put those somewhere much safer. But if it’s the opposite, if it’s about the image, then if you don’t mind displaying them, then just make sure you have a good copy of it so that you can restore it if you have to.
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:11]:
Yeah, yeah, I had, I had scans of them, but they were not great scans because whoever sees the ceiling falling in coming. So. Yeah.
Andrew Darlow [00:41:22]:
Yes. And who sees absolutely terrible house fires coming or floods or. It really is unbelievable what can happen. And that’s why I also love online backup, which is something that I always talk about because it’s very affordable. And there happen to be a couple really good companies. My favorite is one called Backblaze and essentially just plug in whatever you want. You have one main computer and anything that you can plug in and you just let it go into the cloud. And then when you’re done with one hard drive, if you have more, you just can keep plugging them in.
Andrew Darlow [00:42:06]:
And you just need to plug them in at least once a year to make sure that they don’t drop your data off of their servers. And it’s unlimited. Like, I have like 16 terabytes on their system and I think I pay eight or nine dollars a month.
Nancy Norbeck [00:42:24]:
Wow, that’s amazing.
Andrew Darlow [00:42:28]:
A lot of people don’t know what 16 terabytes.
Nancy Norbeck [00:42:31]:
It’s a lot. It’s a lot, folks. It’s a lot.
Andrew Darlow [00:42:35]:
It’s a lot. Yes. I don’t know how many millions of typical Apple iPhone pictures that would be, but it’s probably like, I don’t know if it’s 70 million. I’d have to do the math. It’s. It’s a lot. But if you are someone who takes video, let’s say with an iPhone or even an Android phone, and you choose like the 4k option, you are going to be eating up some data. So that’s why you may want to think about this, because most people will not have a local second copy.
Andrew Darlow [00:43:16]:
In a perfect world, you’ll have your things on your computer and. Or hard drives. I prefer having all important data on the external drive, but doesn’t really matter. One copy. And then ideally you’ll have another copy locally. So when, as the day goes by, you’ll have the first copy, it’ll copy to the second copy. It’s called a mirror. And then ideally, then you’ll have another copy that you kind of move in and out in some way so that it’s not connected to your computer all the time.
Andrew Darlow [00:44:00]:
That could be something called a time machine for Mac. That’s the easiest way to do it because you just plug it in and say, hey, this is a time machine. And the beauty of Time Machine is it will back up not just your internal drive, whether it’s like an imac or Whether it’s a MacBook Pro, for example, it will also, if you tell it to back up all your external drives that are connected, that is like magic. Because if you have a problem, if something happens, you go on a trip, and who knows what could happen to your drive, to your computer? You can actually, as long as everything’s working, get back, just get a new computer and get right back up to where you were when you left off. That’s the beauty of a time machine. And Windows has something somewhat similar.
Nancy Norbeck [00:44:48]:
Yeah, that kind of backup is great because with Time Machine, it’s. You can go back to different versions and, you know, this time of day, this, this was this backup and this was that backup which is, you know, revolutionary. When that came out.
Andrew Darlow [00:45:03]:
Yes. I’ve helped multiple clients go back when they’ve done something wrong, and it does save the day. And a lot of people don’t know this, but you can have multiple time machines, so you could swap them out whether you want to keep one off site or not. That’s the really powerful way to do a backup. But you can actually have two. And I give Apple a lot of credit for thinking of that because that’s the game changer with regard to having a secure backup inexpensively and easy.
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:41]:
Yeah, yeah. Your backup is only as good as, you know, if you’re. If your house burns down and your backup burns down with it, then it’s not much good to you.
Andrew Darlow [00:45:51]:
Right. A lot of people, they say, oh, you got this RAID system with eight drives and redundancy and okay, then what happens when your power supply fails? You’re gone. So I always say, you know, two, hopefully two local, three local, and then one that is in the cloud, and hopefully one semi local, which means one that goes back and forth. The easy way to do, do that is like a time machine. Back and forth.
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:26]:
Yeah.
Andrew Darlow [00:46:27]:
In and out of your home.
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:29]:
Yep. Yeah, you’re. You’re speaking to the ex techie in me now, so. Absolutely. And, and it’s, it is the easiest thing in the world to slack off on backing up, which is why the cloud is great. And I will admit, I just updated my OS the other day and I looked at my backup drive and I was like, okay, I think it’s probably been way longer than I realized since I backed this up, because you put it off and you put it off and you put it off and then it’s been eight or nine months and you go, aha. And how much good is this backup doing me? Because it’s missing. All of this recent stuff I did.
Andrew Darlow [00:47:10]:
That’S the magic of, of the time machine or the Windows equivalent. Because you don’t think about it, you.
Nancy Norbeck [00:47:17]:
Don’T have to think about it. Yeah, yeah, it’s great stuff. All right, so what’s next for you? What’s going on in your photographic life?
Andrew Darlow [00:47:31]:
Okay, a bunch of things going on. I joined a wonderful course platform called the Great Discovery and I’m uploading courses and sharing them. They have a really unique business model that can sound complicated, but on a simple level, I upload courses and then I can share free courses or paid courses. And there are ways to earn income both ways. But the most important thing is that I can share free courses and people can get at least a taste of what I want to offer. And in my case it’s going to be Apple related tips, especially iPhone and then photography related tips. And you would think, well, if you share free courses, how does that really help? Well, it helps in a few ways because of their system on the backend. If you bring people in and then that person becomes active in either helping more people come into the system or if they start purchasing courses, then you can earn income.
Andrew Darlow [00:48:41]:
So it’s a very interesting platform, but I also see it as a great way for me to be able to share my story with more people. Because anytime you’re on a new platform, let’s say like YouTube or in this case the Great Discovery, that means more people will see it and they have a way of translating into different languages, which is mindblowing. So to. To know that I could potentially be helping people in like a hundred different languages is also really, really interesting to me.
Nancy Norbeck [00:49:12]:
So what kind of things can we learn on that platform if we check it out?
Andrew Darlow [00:49:16]:
Oh gosh, there are almost endless things. Like there’s a great TikTok course. If you’re into TikTok, there’s a lot. There’s information on procrastination. There’s a gentleman named Philip Griffith you asked earlier about hard copy photographs. He’s an expert in archiving and everything related to that. And also on the digital side and he has a wonderful free course that I would recommend to anyone. So maybe there’s some way I can share some links afterward and you can share them?
Nancy Norbeck [00:49:52]:
Absolutely. But what are you offering on there?
Andrew Darlow [00:49:55]:
Minors are going to be iPhone tips. Like one will be how to use the side button on most newer iPhones so that you can Turn it into a light, for example. A lot of people don’t realize that you can change that new action button on the left side of an iPhone to things like a flashlight. And how often do we need a flashlight? In my case, it’s pretty often. So it’s so much easier than the other methods that they have. So that’s one example. And then I’ll probably put up some of my photography related stuff like aperture priority, shutter priority. I have to see what rights I have for my four books, but I guess once I learn I can determine like what to do.
Andrew Darlow [00:50:38]:
And I have a 50 video course that takes you through one of my books, which is called Focus and Filter, which is all about photography. And that would be perfect for the Great Discovery more on a premium course. And so I need to just move on with that. In fact, if, if we’re, if you’re listening, listening to this in 2025 and you go to the Great Discovery, hopefully if you put my name in, you won’t get not found. So that’s my goal. Have it there by January 1st. At least one of my courses.
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:12]:
All right, but we’ll get the links from you and we’ll put them in the show notes when this goes out so everybody can check them out.
Andrew Darlow [00:51:19]:
And then I have something else that I’ve been trying to do in some way for like the last 10 years. So I had this dream of somehow offering prints, but in a different way. I’ve been selling my prints on and off for probably 20 to 25 years. But I said to myself, like, how can I create some type of print that would be affordable, somehow personal, not just like a signature, not just a number if it’s limited edition. So I came up with this idea and so far I’ve made 200 prints. And I know we’re on a podcast, so I’ll direct people to where they can see it. And it’s a photograph of a purple iris. And since we happen to be on video, I can show it to you and I can just tell people.
Andrew Darlow [00:52:16]:
When you’re ready, you can hop over to Backup fm Frank. Mary. S as in Sam. S as in Sam. P as in Peter. Okay, so for your eyes only.
Nancy Norbeck [00:52:36]:
Oh, that is beautiful. That’s gorgeous.
Andrew Darlow [00:52:41]:
Thank you very much. It was taken one day with my mom, who I’ve gone to many places that have flowers, including like just in front of our home. She’s always loved flowers and she’s always been my biggest supporter and everything I’ve done and it was photographed on film in the 90s. And I just decided, let’s make this one as this first 200 print run, like a print drop and see how it goes. But what really sets it apart is I’m going to have, first of all, party on December 19th, and I’m going to ask people if they’re interested to have me inscribe each one. So, for example, I’m doing like a buy one, give one. It’s not an original idea. People do it with shoes and belts and things, but I’m doing a buy one, give one at least till the end of 2024.
Andrew Darlow [00:53:50]:
And. But my thinking is I’m going to have two places for people to put who they want to inscribe it to, whether that is to them or to someone else who they want to give it to. So I’ll. I’ll number it, I’ll inscribe it, and I’ll sign it. And if for some reason people just leave those two spaces blank, they still get two prints. But I’m just going to initial it so it’s a little less special. And so that’s what I’ve been dreaming of on and off for 10 years. And I’m finally making it a reality.
Nancy Norbeck [00:54:23]:
That’s a cool idea.
Andrew Darlow [00:54:25]:
Thank you.
Nancy Norbeck [00:54:26]:
I think they’ll like that. Then it kind of becomes an heirloom.
Andrew Darlow [00:54:31]:
Yes, that’s my hope. I want people to have the same type of feeling that I see. And I’ve had this feeling too, when I go to YouTube and I see people commenting on different songs. And one person I think wrote, this is a song my mom used to sing to me every night before I went to sleep. Or this is my first song that I danced to at my wedding. And, you know, unfortunately, my husband just passed away. So you see all this emotion come from people related to these songs. And if I could capture in some way that same type of feeling through my photography and prints on someone’s wall, and every time they walk by it, they have a good feeling, then I know I’ve done something right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:25]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s, you know, the images that we live with definitely fall into that category, whether we recognize it or not. And I think a lot of the time we don’t because they’re. They’re kind of part of the scenery, but we know it when they’re not there anymore. And we know it if, you know, we. We go somewhere and we see that same image or we see something that reminds us of that image. But what you’re doing is kind of making us more aware of it in that moment.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:57]:
And I think that’s great. So I hope. I hope that it works. I hope that people appreciate it in that moment when you’re doing it, and then that it carries on over time. I think that’s going to be really cool to see how that works.
Andrew Darlow [00:56:11]:
Well, thank you. And also the event that I’m doing, we’re inviting people to talk about an image with something that has some kind of meaning to them. So, like, this has meaning to me because it has my mom as a part of it. It’s also some of the first flower photography I did on film, and then I made a whole series. So it has a lot of meaning to me. But I want people to talk about some type of image. It could be something they photographed, they drew, maybe an album cover, something that has a meaning to them. And during this party, the first one, like I said, will be December 19, 2024.
Andrew Darlow [00:56:52]:
But I intend to do more. I’m just inviting people to come on and tell their story, and I thought that that would be fun instead of just making it all about Andrew.
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:03]:
Yeah. Yeah, I like that. It’s a great combination. So I’ll. I hope you’ll let us know how it goes, because I. I think that that’s going to resonate with people.
Andrew Darlow [00:57:12]:
Yes. And I will send you an invitation, so in case the timing works for.
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:17]:
You, that’d be great. All right. Well, I really appreciate you coming and spending some time with me today. This has been a great conversation.
Andrew Darlow [00:57:27]:
Oh, thank you. I really enjoyed it, too.
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:31]:
That’s our show for this week. Thanks so much to Andrew Darlow and to you. I hope you’ll leave a review for this episode. There’s a link in your podcast app and it’s super easy and really makes a difference. If you enjoyed our conversation, please do share it with a friend. Thanks so much. If this episode resonated with you, or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, join me at the Spark on Substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free and it’s also where I’ll be adding programs for subscribers and listeners.
Nancy Norbeck [00:58:06]:
The link is in your podcast app, so sign up today. See you there and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.