Why I love Dropbox // and how I use it

Let's talk some Dropbox shall we? 

This resource is probably one of my absolute favorites when it comes to my photography business. Why you ask? Because it makes things incredibly easy. Like saves me a whole bottle of Advil per year easy. 

What is Dropbox? Its basically a cloud storage service. You can upload documents, photos, all sorts of things to the cloud and then access them later and even from a different computer and/or device. 

I'm sure many people use Dropbox for many different reasons, but I want to focus on exactly how I use this system and why I find it so helpful. If you use Dropbox for a different purpose, please share in the comments b/c I am sure there are ways to use this that I am not even thinking of and I would love for my life to be even easier (who wouldn't?!) 

Have you ever been sitting comfortably on the couch, laptop on....well, your lap and you crack that puppy open ready to write the most awesome blog post ever when you realize all the photos you need for that post are saved on your desktop? Ugh!

Have you ever been at your "regular" job (b/c lets face it, a lot of us photographers don't do this full time {yet}...)and and email from a client comes in asking for your print pricing again because they accidentally deleted the email that you already sent, and you would love to send it right over to them, but DOH! the document is saved on your laptop at home? And you won't be home for another 6 hours and by that time you will probably forget since you have to make dinner and drive the kids to all their sports and feed the dogs? Double UGH. 

Have you ever wanted to post your professional pics on Instagram and have no earthly idea how to really do this? <---this one stumped me for a while

I experienced all of these things and more. The best part is that I had Dropbox this whole time and was failing to realize how it literally could solve all of the problems I was having in this arena. 

When you have Dropbox, you can just download it on any computer/device you use and save stuff to folders. You can access whatever is in those folders from whatever device you have DB on. It works just like your hard drive. 

I have it installed on my laptop, desktop, work computer, iPhone and iPad and I moved all the stuff I need to access from multiple computers over to it. It is all at my fingertips. 

Now I have all of my business documents saved in a file so I can access them anywhere if I need too. 

All of my phone pictures upload directly into Dropbox so I can access them from any computer I feel like blogging from. 

If I have a document that I am working on on one computer and know I will do future work on the same document on another computer, I just save it in DB and I can access it later. 

I keep files as my portfolio. I have photos for Family, Seniors etc... saved in DB so if anyone wants to see my portfolio while I am out and about, I can quickly pull it up on my phone or on my iPad. 

This next one is one of my FAVORITES. I use BlogStomp to get my session photos ready to blog and put on facebook and instagram. My "Stomped" folder (the folder where any stomped images instantly get saved) is in my Dropbox. That way they are all there and ready whenever (and wherever) I am ready to create the blog post. 

I also stomp photos that I specifically want to Instagram. I move them into another folder and then when I am ready to IG them, I simply open DB on my phone and save the photo to my library. Then I use InstaSize to keep it in normal crop and upload to IG. BRILLIANT and so so so SO EASY. 

This is what it looks like on my phone

There are many other cloud storage programs out there, but Dropbox has my vote for now. Its super simple to use, no confusing bells and whistles and it just plain WORKS for what I need it to do. Doesn't get much better than that!

(All thoughts and opinions on dropbox are my own and I was not compensated in any way for this post. Dropbox has no idea how much I love it. ) 

Importing images into Lightroom

As with most software programs, there are multiple ways to do the same thing when it comes to importing your images into Lightroom (LR). None of the ways may necessarily be right or wrong, they are just different.

I have found there are two main ways to import images into LR.

1) You can import directly from the CF or SD card and the images will go on to your hard drive as well as into your LR catalog.

2) You can import the images on to your hard drive and then import into LR and on to the catalog. 

I'm not sure if I just didn't give it enough time or practice, but option 1 just did NOT work out for me. I already had a set system for my photos and importing directly from the card was interfering with that. I'm sure with a little more time and research I could have figured a way to incorporate this into my existing process, but option 2 seemed to work great for me so I just went with that. I have not regretted that choice and it continues to work great for me!

I hear often of people having issues with using method 1 and having images appear and disappear from their hard drive and from LR. Although I don't know the specifics and user error might be a factor, option 2 seems to work perfectly for me and for over a year I have never had an issue or complication from doing it this way. And honestly, the thought of images disappearing from my hard drive scares the daylight out of me, so I'm going to stay far away from that! 

As soon as I get done with a shoot or am ready to import images, I create a folder within my Pictures folder on my hard drive. I organize by year/month/date/session specifics. Once the folder is created, I insert the SD card and open it up. I copy/paste all of the images into the pre-created folder. 

Once all the images are copied over I open LR and click "import". I find the folder on the hard drive and import the images into LR. 

Then I copy the folder on to my back up hard drive so the images are in two different places. 

Once I have done this, I eject my SD card, put it back in the camera and format the card. 

Viola. 

Done. 

***The most important part to remember is that if you move or change the name of the folders on your hard drive, LR will no longer recognize/find your files. You can re-find them through LR, but its kind of annoying, so I definitely recommend creating your organizational system for your photos first and then stick with it when importing!