• Communicating through visuals
• The complex process of digitising photos
• Being guilty of not deleting the multiple photos on your phone
• Features you may not know about in your phone’s photos
• How people can access your photos when you’re no longer around

About Carly

Nicole Smith
Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of Take Control with Nicole. Today I am speaking with the fabulous Carly Michael all about bringing order to your photo chaos. Carly Michael has spent her whole life surrounded by photos having grown up in her family’s camera store – Michaels camera video and digital in Melbourne’s CBD. When Covid hit, the family decided to close the store so she took the opportunity to become a professional photo organiser – something she had developed a passion for during her time managing the family’s photo lab. She now spends her days organising both physical and digital photos, helping people get back in control of their photo mess! Well, Carly, I feel we all need a you in our world, because I know I’ve got a few of those massive photos, storage things, and I just have to scroll through to find the things. Welcome. I’m so excited to have you here.

Carly Michael
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Nicole Smith
Oh, this is great. And I know we crossed paths in one of our fabulous communities, we are one roof. And I just I’ve known of your family’s photo store there on the corner in in the CBD. And it’s so wonderful when you connect humans with an institution such as such as that.

Carly Michael
Yeah, I find people get really excited when they meet me because they actually meet a human being behind the family name of which is so well known in Melbourne and I loved working on the shop floor and like proudly wearing my badge that had my surname because and people are like just really lit up when they just really got to see that we are a family and like human beings who are highly involved with the business. So yeah.

Nicole Smith
I love it. I’ve loved learning about your story and your your history with working at the store and what you’re doing now. But I’d love to get you to share a little bit of your journey with the listeners who may not have met you yet.

Carly Michael
Certainly. So I grew up in a camera shop. I’m actually the fifth generation of my family to work and manage Michael’s Camera and Video in the city in Melbourne. Actually my family’s Seventh Generation Melburnian, which is pretty I find it extraordinary. We worked on Elizabeth Street that whole time. So I feel very, very connected to the city. But personally, I actually when I finished school, I studied behavioural neuroscience. And so I’ve got this degree in neuroscience, I was always interested in human behaviour and the brain. And then when I finished that degree, I felt like something was missing. Like I wanted to do something a bit more practical. And I always had an interest in photography. I liked taking photos, I always had access to cameras and always travelled with cameras and my friend said, you know you’re a good photographer, maybe try and study it. So I went to RMIT I did a Bachelor of Arts majoring in photography, documentary photography, people just thought that was really weird that I went from neuroscience to photography, it being a documentary stream, I loved observing human behaviour, making comments about it. My passion is about the interaction of man and nature. So that’s what I focus my photography practice on. And then when I finished that degree, I didn’t really know what to do. And so I ended up working at my family business of which I’d worked on and off my whole life, like, you know, as a weekend job, etc. And I started working in the photo lab, well, actually customer service. And then I worked in the photo lab itself. We printed photos, we developed film, we were right there in the film resurgence of the 2010. You know, because a lot of young people had never experienced film before. And so which means a bit strange because I grew up with film, but yeah, like we really specialised in family photos. So people would bring us slides and videos and prints and we’d help them put together slideshows for memorials and we were just a real specialist for family photos. So, I really worked there. I also manage the education department because I love teaching. That’s another passion of mine. So I was just very much involved in, like lived and breathed Michael’s photography, that world until really COVID hit when we had to start to take a new direction.

Nicole Smith
I love what you’ve shared there with you too, you know, areas of study and they asked are intertwined, aren’t they, because behind the photos, even when it is a landscape or anything like that there is that sort of connection with how you’re looking at the world through the lens. And then also the humans behind, you know, in those photos and their relationships. And, you know, it’s amazing what you can see, you know, look, you know, what you can take from that. So I can, yeah, it’s amazing to see that transition through and how you use all those skills.

Carly Michael
It was, I think, on a number of levels, there’s a connection, the initial one that I noticed was the scientific connection, because neuroscience to me was about science and psychology, but more science. And then I moved to developing film, which is a chemical process. So that was the initial connection like that I could see were aligned. Besides, as I mentioned before, the like, I guess, commenting and understanding human behaviour, which brings in the psychological point of view. But yeah, photography is amazing. And really, it’s all about light. And that’s, I just love that. I’m lucky that my family happened to run a business in an industry that I was already passionate about.

Nicole Smith
What a bonus hey. When I’ve watched your on your Instagram, I know in your stories, you share a number of your photos of pieces, points of views as you travel through your journey, I guess if you’re walking down the street, and you’ll see a tree that looks a certain way, and I love watching.

Carly Michael
It’s funny that you comment on trees. I love photographing trees. I love photographing trees that have been like cut in awkward places by humans or the trees fighting back. Like I love taking photos of trees on the sidewalk where like the roots have pushed up the the bitumen or the vines taking over. Like for me, it always comes down to we humans are trying to alter the landscape. And I also like to photograph that, because it’s something that we don’t visual language is extremely powerful when you can see something, it’s a very effective way of communicating. So yeah, I am very inspired by also other photographers who like to take photos of the interaction of man and nature and things that we don’t normally see. Like, for example, you know, we live in a very consumerist world, we buy things, we have everything at our fingertips, but we don’t necessarily see what happens in the background, and how this particular device or item that we’ve bought got here, literally the manufacturing process and the end of life process. So that’s also something I’m really passionate about shedding light and bringing to the forefront ideas or just what’s actually happening that we don’t know that we don’t know about the impact of our consumer culture on the environment. And there’s some amazing photographers out there, particularly one named Edward burtynsky, he is a Canadian photographer, I highly recommend checking him out, he really inspires me and informs my work because he visually shows it with great beauty, the, you know, rivers that are like fluorescent orange, because of the you know, they’re impacted by the toxicity of the minds, but it looks beautiful. But then when you actually have a look, you’re like, Whoa. So that’s a real passion of mine, as well and informs my own personal photography work.

Nicole Smith
There’s a lot of power that comes from the visual creations of photography, I know, you see an image and you can be had emotions that just come over just from that visual viewing of that particular photography. It’s a beautiful skill to have.

Carly Michael
Well, also, interestingly, I’m happy you brought that up, because I could segue into how we as a culture have also changed how we communicate lately and we do use visual language to do that. So over the last 10 years or so, since the advent of iPhones in particular, and smartphones, often now we take photos to demonstrate what we’re doing so if someone says how are you? What are you up to? Instead of writing I’m good, you know, I’m just at the park, we might take a photo of the park and send it and so it’s altered the way that we we communicate and also take photos and this has also contributed to the overwhelm and the sheer volume of photos that we take nowadays. And this is evolved and part of our evolution over the last 10 years in particular that and screenshots

Nicole Smith
Oh my gosh yes. Screenshots love a screenshot. Nail on head there because I even this morning, I’ve taken two shots of me because I got my Whatsapp group with my my my crew, and it was of Emette, my seven month old Groodle who’s doing all the things and my daughter Charlotte sitting on my bed, both of them and I took a photo of and I sent it to the girls. And I’m like the vibe here this morning. You know? So an easy thing to do. And yes, you don’t want to look in my phone, the amount of especially since I’ve started my business as well, two kids, a dog and a business. The phone is got some things going on there. And like, has that been an interest of yours? You love just organising things in general and like getting in there and be like, there’s a mess. Let’s make order of it. Is that something that just kind of moved you into? Or what? Why? Why photo organising?

Carly Michael
It’s a really good question. And I’ll circle back to when I was at Michaels. What I did notice when we were in the lab, people would bring their entire collections of family photos or big portions of that maybe like all the slides, and maybe someone’s got 3000 slides and carousels. And what we would do is we would digitise them like any other photo lab, we just, you know, scan them make digital copies, number one, number two, number three, number four, number five, and ultimately I realised we’re just creating a digital version of the physical mess. Yeah, so I was always thinking about that. And then I was really fortunate. I used to travel every year to a conference in the US for independent photo lab managers. And so there aren’t many of us in the world and we would meet every year and we would geek out about scanners and technical things like morning till night, I swear to you, We never spoke about anything social except like literally scanners and printing and whatever. So I went every year and one year must have been I think it was 2017 they had collaborated with a group called the Association of Professional photo organisers at the time APO. Now the photo managers, and they had a whole lot of speakers and they were talking about organising photos. So it was a little bit addictive. For me, I went to every single course that they offered. I felt like I’d found my calling the CEO of that organisation was there, they had a little trade show, I met her I bought her book on the flight home, I read the entire book, highlighted it put little tabs like like, oh my god, this is it came back to Melbourne and found out there were two photo organisers in Melbourne. And it was on my list to contact them. Like working in retail is really hard. There are so many things to deal with each day, I felt like I was a fire, like a fire woman like putting out fires all day running out Carly, Carly, Carly, like there was the phone would ring a customer would come in, like this machine would break, like just constantly putting out fires. So it was always on my list, but I never got there. So when COVID hit and suddenly I had time we decided we were going to close the lab and I thought beauty, what do I want to do? There were two options. I could open up a photo School, which is also on my list. And one day I will do that. Or I could be a photo organiser. And I thought, What’s my biggest why and where can I make the biggest impact? Now, so that’s where I chose photo organising. So I joined the photo managers and spent the last two and a half years doing all their courses. And, you know, networking and learning and experimenting. And yeah, like what I discovered was that there’s an industry quite young, only 12 years old now of people who have systems to organise and manage photos. So when the photos are digitised, they’re not just done in any order. And they’re not given generic names. They’re actually put in chronological order with descriptive names, and in a way that the digital files match the physical photos so we can reorganise the physical photos to be chronological and descriptive. centralise everything into one place gives everyone the ability to find the photos that they want, and also like create a bit of a legacy. And at the moment, I’m talking about physical photos. That was kind of my, as I said, how I came into this and where my experience lay at Michaels. But you know, if if someone passes away in your family, and then you have to go and deal with their estate, and you’ve got shoe boxes in like have disorganised photos in one drawer and albums and slides and films and all this stuff, and it’s all scattered, there’s no order to it. It’s very easy to lose the family story. If you don’t know who’s in the photo, the moment you don’t know who someone is in the photo, it loses all meaning. So unless the photos are actually organised, you do risk losing the family stories and losing the histories. So it is a real gift for someone to take the time to go through the process and organise their photos so that the family story can be passed on. And usually you find only one person in the family is like interested in family history and genealogy but that person will make it their mission to get it done.

Nicole Smith
That is is such a powerful why isn’t it like that family story. I know I love looking into the history of my family and somebody was that sort of pallbearer earlier they’ve we’ve got a book on my dad’s side of all the way back to Aberdeen in Scotland. My maiden name is Gordon. So, Gordon from Aberdeen move to Amara and Island and then Allora in Queensland, my little claim to fame is we were there at the same time as PL Travers when she wrote Mary Poppins, or like, not when she moved from there. If you’ve watched Saving Mr. Banks, you will know what I’m talking about. But I love that history and being able to have a photography or videos that complement that. It’s just go and talk to Carly everyone. Because you’re right, it’s not just for us, it’s for our generations that have not even they thought off yet.

Carly Michael
Yeah, and look, sometimes I think, Oh, my God is it too underwhelming the end result, it’s literally just folders on a hard drive, in chronological order. So it’s got the date labelled with the photos in there also with like, descriptive file names like it’s, that’s the end result. But the magic is watching someone look, look through them. So I’ve had one of my clients, we completed her project, her son came to have a look. And he could just navigate through the collection with ease, he knew when he clicked on a folder, what he would find there. And so the file names gave context to the photos, he understood, it was all there, you know, if you wanted to find something, because the file names also when we digitise photos like so when we scan them, we also change the metadata of the file and explain that what that means in a minute, we update the date to be not the date that the image was scanned, and that therefore the date the file was created. But we actually changed that date to be the date of capture or close whatever we’ve assigned to this group of photos. So if you load that into your iCloud library or your Google Photos, it actually the photo comes up in the correct location in the timeline. If the file name has, let’s say, holiday, or Christmas, or whatever in it, that becomes searchable. So suddenly, your physical photos get incorporated into your digital files, and they get they become searchable. I’m still blown away.

Nicole Smith
Oh, no, I’m excited. This is obviously like, I love this stuff and organisations. So like I know, when we first met, I’m like, stop it. This is amazing. Like, yes. I’m just thinking about my iPhone. My file at the moment, there’s some that say that from like, a time gone by, that we were not even alive in because the date was set wrong. So having that searchable and organised in that way is, you know, it’s amazing. So and you can create things from there. Like I know, just last fortnight ago, I was sitting in one of the rooms and the kids found a couple of photo albums that I had, we sat there for hours, like looking through the photos, mommy, who’s this? What’s this? Where are you? Oh, where’s that daddy when he was a baby, you know, in that experience of being able to sit with your family or your children to go through? That was amazing. And what my aim to do is to create a book for them with those details. But at the moment, it’s like, it’s going to take hours because I don’t know where all the photos are, they’re just there.

Carly Michael
That’s a really good point. Most people come to me of like people who are like busy moms, you know, young moms in their 30s and 40s. They’re the people who come to me because they want to make a photo book, or many photo books, but they can’t because they can’t find their photos. So then when we actually go through the process of organising their photos, the process of making photo books is super easy and super fast. And that’s the biggest thing. So some of my, you know, the clients when we’re finished, I get these phone calls a few weeks later, oh my god, I made all the photo books. And I’m just so happy because it was easy. But yeah, if you can’t find your photo, then you can’t do anything with the photos. And that’s a real source of upset for people.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, that’s right, because you’re coming right back to the start where you’re saying, you know, we’re in this digital land and the iPhone or the digital camera, you can just click, click, click, click, click, click and how many times you actually go through and delete the ones that you don’t want. You know, so you end up with 10 images of one there’s really good, which just clogs up your files. So having them sorted, organised, easy to use, that’s like anything in life, right? If it’s easy, we’re going to enjoy it. We’re going to use them. We’re going to want to use them.

Carly Michael
Well. That’s it really you’ve touched on a couple of really important things. One is our photo behaviour and how we don’t sit and delete our photos, and how we take a lot of photos. And that to behaviours that I actually think are important to address. And one of my missions in life is to actually help people create new photo habits to deal with these two things and nip them in the bum. Because no amount of photo organising tools or software can deal with those two issues, that’s actually behavioural changes that are required. What I would like to do and what I train my clients to do, is instead of scrolling on Instagram, or Facebook and flicking between them, or you know, nighttime to also add, going through your photo roll, and deleting photos on a regular basis. The other thing is to actually slow down and take less photos, we lost the prompt, when we stopped shooting film, and move to digital. It all started to seem infinite, like endless amount of photos we can take, we don’t have to worry, we can just buy more hard drives. Like suddenly, we didn’t have to be frugal with our photos, because that’s what happened with film, film cost money, you only had 24 or 36 photos. And so you were more considerate with your photos, you slow down, you waited for what’s called the decisive moment. So we had less photos, they cost something plus you had to print the photos in order to see them. So when we moved from film to digital, we lost the prompt to print. And then we also lost this frugal mindset. And so we’ve gone to we just take a lot of photos. So the problem is and where we’ve ended up is in complete overwhelm. We have so many photos. And you know, I think there’s a conversation about do we need so many photos? What you know, we as parents want to take a zillion photos of our kids everything they do we stick a camera in their face. But are they gonna need literally 5060 70,000 photos of themselves when they grow up to show their kids? Probably not.

Nicole Smith
I don’t even remember the last time well actually sitting on the floor two weeks ago looking at historical photos of me. But yeah, you don’t need that many do you? I just had a thought that maybe we could do when this episode comes out because it is photography month. You mentioned to me it’s a save

Carly Michael
your photos month. That’s correct.

Nicole Smith
Ah, fabulous. I wonder if we do a little challenge for humans that are listening with us and sort of commit to like the next seven days or something. Just instead of scrolling on your Instagrams and your socials like investing some time in there to start to cleanse out those duplicates even as a starting point. What do you reckon? That could sound fun.

Carly Michael
I think it’s a really great idea to challenge yourself to go through photos and start deleting. And I will I will pop in there. But there’s a difference between duplicates and burst photos duplicate. And I actually think we have very few duplicates in our iCloud accounts. Because duplicates are usually for like they’re created when, probably before we started using the cloud, and we took photos and we put them on hard drives, and then we made copies of those hard drives. And then we made another copy of that hard drive because we that’s how we form duplicates, exact copies. But we take burst photos, we just take a lot. And what I would have you consider as you’re going through this process is, in my experience, nine times out of 10 the first photo in a group of photos that you take will be the best photo. And the rest of the photos are after thoughts. So I just say that because when you have the thought, Okay, I want to take a photo and you go and you take that you take your camera out and you take that photo. That’s like the decisive moment. That was the moment and then the other photos come from I just want to make sure I got it right. And this one might be better from this angle and we start to get critical and analyse. And when we’re trying, it generally doesn’t work as well as when it just happens naturally in the flow.

Nicole Smith
That’s why I love that is it now I’m going to, repertoire, like that’s not the right word to basically in the moment they don’t stay. It’s not staged, it’s just natural. It just flows like that is a beautiful style of photography and you’re right I think we always try and pose the right moment that I love that you know that decide what did you call?

Carly Michael
It’s just called the Decisive Moment. It was a term coined by photographer Henri Cartier Bresson, I think in the 1800s And it was it’s a term that encapsulate just slowing down waiting and just feeling for that right moment, the decisive moment and look it’s different when you’ve got kids and animals you might have like they’re moving fast you might get blurry eyes this and that. But still that process of curating and culling on a daily basis does help.

Nicole Smith
I love that I’m I will commit to that. Put that in. I’ll share that on my stories as we go through and talk about not being on the socials. But tag us if you’re going to be involved come over on the socials. And let us know if you’re going to be a part of the the revolution to change the way you evolve. The way we look and manage our photos, oh love it!

Carly Michael
It’s definitely behavioural change. And the other thing I’d add about your digital photos, especially in iCloud, I’d say more than 50% of people use iCloud. So I tend to talk mainly about iCloud, the Apple photo in eco system is designed for photo organising and photo management, it’s actually very easy to use. The problem is we don’t know how to use it properly. It has so many functional tools in there that can help you find your photos. But the simple thing like we were never really taught how to use, we’re just always trying to survive and just manage whatever we need to get done. So I actually think iCloud I wasn’t really sold in the beginning. But the more I’ve gone down this journey, the more I realise it’s very, very powerful, and user friendly. So I think when you do start to declutter by taking less photos, and practising going back and deleting ones that aren’t relevant or important anymore, it does make it easier. But like a little top tip is that I don’t know if you already know this, but the search feature in your iCloud account or you might be looking for the Photos app on your phone or your computer. The search feature allows you to actually search objects in your photos. Did you know that that you could like type beach, and all the photos of the beach will come up?

Nicole Smith
Well, that’s a little bit clever, isn’t it? I know that on my phone, it like creates those beautiful for you. So if like the you know, like when we’re in London and that’s beautiful. So I can imagine yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. No, I’m gonna have to go and do some searching.

Carly Michael
Oh, that’s amazing. So iCloud and Google, because they’ve got the largest databases in the world. Very, very smart, very fast. They have the most powerful search features in built. So as I said, you can write beach and you could write, Rye, and the photos from the beach and Rye will turn up. Most people don’t know these simple things. The also they just released iOS 16, which has another advanced feature, which wasn’t there before. For the last six months or so we’ve been able to search for text inside of photo. So if you take a photo of a sign, you could search for that text, and it will come up it like by analysing the contents of the photo. And this new iOS upgrade that happened only this week. Also lets you search in videos as well, if you were to, I think it’s if you pause the video, but I have to look I just read that this morning. There’s some really It means it can search screenshots. It’s really quite powerful. So it’s what I’m saying. Understanding even that simple feature can help allow you to find photos quickly. And it’s already available to most people. Google does the same in terms of searching for content and subjects inside photos.

Nicole Smith
Isn’t tech amazing. I know that I use the Location one sometimes. So I go onto the map. And I zoom on in because I know I’ve taken it in the house for instance. Right? So I’ll zoom in and I’ll find it that way. But yeah, I love so how good is tech? Tech’s amazing.

Carly Michael
Actually, that’s a really good point. If I go back to the digital, sorry, physical photos and when we scan them I spoke I mentioned before metadata. So I want to just elaborate what that is for people who aren’t familiar. A photo. A digital photo has like two sides to it. I describe like two sides to a coin. We’ve got the visual information which is created by pixels.

Nicole Smith
Just interrupting this episode for one little message. If you have been listening and love what you hear and want to come in Connect, we have a take control with Nicole Facebook community right over there on Facebook that I would love to invite you to come and join us. We are a supportive community. We are looking to really take action in our businesses and change the way or evolve the way we’re working right now. So I invite you to come on over and join our community and connect with us all. Community is the essence of everything you Business, being able to really build those relationships that you can nurture, and grow and support and celebrate each other. Oh, how fabulous, I hope to see you over there, pop on over to Facebook, Take Control with Nicole. See you soon.

Carly Michael
And then on the other side, we have textual information, information that’s recorded by text and data about that photo. So for example, the time it was taken, the camera was used if it was on a phone with GPS turned on the GPS location, we can add keywords manually, which adds search ability. If we do facial recognition, and tag the people that gets embedded in the keyword, you can put descriptions, titles, all these other things that are attached to the photos. So something that we can do with printed photos that we scan, is we can actually add GPS coordinates to those photos, which I love. So cool, because it means once you do learn into iCloud it does, it’ll be included in your when you’re searching in the map there, your physical photos as well. So yeah, it’s pretty mind blowing what we can do.

Nicole Smith
But if we talk about data, our data is so powerful when you’ve got the data and it’s manipulated and captured in a way that is really usable. That’s where the magic happens, you know, the ability from instead of having a box of photos, you got them digitalized, and got all that, as you said metadata that you can search for it.

Carly Michael
And then it makes anything you want to do easy, someone passes away, and you have to put together a memorial video, great. I’ll just search for the photos of grandpa. There they are. Or you want to make a photo book right here all the photos, I’ll just pop them in a virtual album in my iCloud account, which is just a virtual holding space for the photos and then export them. There they are, it just makes things easy. Because the act of organising the photos, like it’s a bit tedious. But once you get it to a I call it a reset, like once we reset your photo mess, whether it’s the physical or the digital, it’s usually something you have to do once. Once that’s done, and you learn about the habits that you need to keep that updated and accessible to you, then you can actually do anything, you’re actually empowered to finally get the things done that you want to get done. And that’s all that we want to do work that’s organising photos is the means to making the photo books. And that’s what excites me.

Nicole Smith
Or putting the photos on the wall. It took us four years to get photos, not on that wall, the other side, we’ve got a thing, Charlotte’s not there yet. She’s four. She’s not on the wall yet.

Carly Michael
Is she the youngest?

Nicole Smith
She’s the youngest, yep. The dog is not on the wall. He’s only seven months. So he’ll probably, but that’s right. And it’s just about making that space to go in, find that find the image. And when it’s all organised, it’s just type in Charlotte, there she is, pick the one, send it off to print magic.

Carly Michael
And so I think it’s about bringing that into, like we pay our phone bill, we pay our credit card bills, we have things that we do on a regular basis that we need to do to make sure that life keeps going. I think organising our photos and managing them is one of those things that like, as I said, My dream is to have that be a habit and a skill that we do regularly. Yeah, and I think that will make the difference.

Nicole Smith
So some key things that I’m really feeling from all of this is the the ability to slow and enjoy the moment when you’re taking that those imagery, and also those habits that are going to allow you to enjoy those moments, not just in the moment that you take at that precise moment. But ongoing. So far past that experience.

Carly Michael
You’ll actually enjoy the photos more when there’s less. Because to wait. If you again, I always bring it back to the film days, but I have I bought a digital camera recently my very first digital camera that I bought after Michael’s closed, I realised I needed a digital camera, my phone wasn’t cutting it. I need to go to a camera store and buy a camera experience. I practice only taking one photo at a time like I almost use it as a film camera. And when I scroll through that camera, each photo has more meaning because it’s just one up in this like the contents of the photos are symbolic of the bigger picture. So it’s just it’s a more it’s more enjoyable experience when there’s less.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, that’s a message for for everything in the world though, right? It’s were in such a busy fast paced doo doo doo doo doo all the time, that when we actually do declutter and focus on those things that really hold meaning to us. It’s such a different experience than wading through the noise and the mess. So yeah, absolutely. So we’ve spoken about, you know, if people are listening, and they’re like, Yes, I need this in my world, we’ve, you’ve given us already some fabulous sort of places to start, is there anything else that they should be thinking about? Or, you know, wanting to bring into their worlds?

Carly Michael
Look, I think it starts with getting clear about what you’re dealing with. A lot of the time, the noise is this lack, I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what to do. My phone’s telling me it’s full or approaching, like, I just don’t know. And there’s this like panic. And I think it starts by going through? Well, this is how I start with my clients. We go through the process of seeing alright, you have an iCloud account. Great. Let’s have a look. What email do you use to log in? Sometimes people don’t even know that. How much storage space Am I using? Versus how much am I paying for? So it might be I’m using 120 gigs out of my 200 gigs? Or it might be I’m using 198 Out of my 200? Well, that’s why it’s asking you for more. So just understanding and getting clear on that. Then looking at your iPad, for example, in your on your phone and seeing if they’re actually synchronised? Are they showing the same things? And then you can have see, alright, is my iPad connected to iCloud or not? Understanding, you know, your computer? For example? How much space do I have on my computer? How much is if I’ve got the Photos app running on my computer as well? Is that also showing me the same photos on my iPad, like that I’m seeing on my phone? Or not understanding? Like going through some of the settings on the phone? For example? Am I using live photos or not? What are live photos?

Nicole Smith
I love live photos, I have to say that’s one of the features that I do.

Carly Michael
What do you love about them?

Nicole Smith
It’s the ability because as you said, kids and dogs, lots of moving the ability to capture the moment. So if for instance, she’s moved, I’m talking Charlotte, because she’s always gone and doing things, you know, there is that one shot in there, that if I just drag it along, I find the right one in that sort of series. And that’s the one that I save and use. So it’s not all the time, but it’s good to have that ability in those situations.

Carly Michael
And that’s, that’s good to understand and know and it is, therefore using live photos is something that has a specific purpose. Like I only, I only recommend it if there isn’t practical application like your own, like kids and dogs, for example. But for people who aren’t in those situations, I generally recommend they turn them off. Because what they actually are is a still photo and a two second video. And they take up a lot of space. And if you don’t actually use that feature, it’s worth at turning it off.

Nicole Smith
It was um, really interesting, actually. So when it first I don’t know if it had been around or not, but I first realised it was a thing. And it was holding it down and watching the video, it was actually wonderful. There was some beautiful moments that I didn’t realise we’ve captured and to and we had them in that video, which is also and then I sniffed them together into a little like little lateral videos. So yeah, I can absolutely see those video files take up more than photo files. But yeah, there has been some beautiful little surprises in there.

Carly Michael
And I think if you’re creative and willing, you know you make videos. And that’s what I’m saying. If you use live photos creatively, like you’ll see a purpose for them. Go ahead use them. But if you don’t use them, and you find them annoying anyway. And to turn it off, just suddenly save space because one thing about iCloud and Google Talk iCloud in particular, for the $4.99 like $5 a month plan, which most people start on, you get 200 gigabytes of data, which isn’t a lot. And then the next TR is $15 a month for two terabytes. It’s a huge jump. So they do that on purpose to have you quickly fill that up and then move to the next one, which is like a significant jump in price. So if you can reduce the amount of photos or videos, you know, it makes a difference. You actually save money in the long run.

Nicole Smith
That’s funny, isn’t it? I’ve never thought about that like that. But yeah, I know that we’ve we jumped up to the two. I don’t even think about it. I’m like, Yep, cool to do that. But yeah, it’s it’s all about those habits on how we’re creating those images. Right. I know we’re going off track but I want to touch on this. You mentioned a couple of months ago about something that’s happening with Google accounts. Are you happy to share that?

Carly Michael
I released a webinar as part of save your photos month. Awesome, save your photos month isn’t initiative by the photo managers, it’s been happening for, I think seven or eight years now, where it’s a whole month dedicated to raising awareness of how and why we need to save our photos. So, as I mentioned before, I’ve been talking about this digital dark age for a few years. Um, maybe I didn’t mention that. So I was having a conversation with some people this morning. So I think that’s why it was in my head. So one of the architects of the internet, his name is Vint Cerf. And he’s now the vice president of Google and has been for a while. And he has been raised, raised, waving this red flag for a few years now saying, we’ve created a bit of a monster. If we don’t manage and organise our digital data, were at a huge risk of losing it forever. Because there’s obsolescence for example, like, can you still buy a computer with a CD drive? Or even now the new computers don’t even have the standard USB plugs, then now everyone’s moving to USBC. So what does that say about the future of USBs. So things become obsolete. So you need different type of adapters and technology to take that data off. Hard drives, die, they’ve got shelf lives of five to seven years. So that was kind of his call out that got me very interested in raising awareness. And I’ve been speaking about this for years. So this year for saviour voters month, I’ve released a new webinar that’s really focused on a change of policy announced by Google in December 2020. It came, everyone who has a Google account would have got this email, the subject was important change of Google policy important to read,

Nicole Smith
Delete.

Carly Michael
We got a few of them now. Yeah. But if you read it, it says that from July 2023, free accounts that have not been active for two years, will may and will be deleted. So this is because Google in the cloud isn’t an ethereal cloud, like a cumulus cloud or something that’s like in the air there in the eighth.

Nicole Smith
All the data is just floating above us in the sky.

Carly Michael
It’s a very, very clever marketing name. It’s not done unintentionally, let’s designed. The cloud is a series of hard drives huge hard drives cold servers in like server farms in buildings, some of these buildings can be the size of a small country. So these are huge places where your data is being stored.

Nicole Smith
Which costs money to run and maintain and all those things.

Carly Michael
So you know, they need to be temperature controlled, and the devices themselves become redundant, obsolete, they all everything’s backed up, there’s a whole thing happening there. 90% of the data is junk, is spam emails is MySpace pages is your very first blog from 10 years ago, it’s all of this stuff. And Google, for example, is maintaining it, because if you need to log in there, okay needs to be brought up. So they’ve started to say enough, we can’t be the digital wasteland of the world anymore, we’re going to start purging the data. This is the beginning of the digital dark age on a mass scale. And so they’re starting with free accounts that haven’t been active in two years. So someone who hasn’t logged in, all you have to do is log in. But if you haven’t logged in, they’re going to start to delete the data from July well, they’re gonna give you warnings, they’re going to send those emails to your accounts you don’t log into, but whether they’re going to warn us for three months, six months, short, who knows, but they’re saying they’re going to do it. So what that for me what that looks like, and the impact that I can see straight off of people who’ve passed away. People who might be in jail, people who might be elderly, and move to an aged care facility, people who’ve been in accidents, acquired brain injuries, I don’t know just people who aren’t active in their email accounts anymore, their data is going to start to be purged. So that’s what I’ve been sharing about and bit alarmed about. Because I think it’s really important to understand that this is about to happen, because it’s very easy to lose, it’s going to become very easy to lose your data. Now, something it’s important also to understand is that only in the last 12 months Once or so, both Google and Apple have given us processes to allow people to access our accounts once we pass away, before this time, there literally wasn’t a way for anyone else to access your account. So that’s alarming in itself. And I’ve dealt with people who’ve been in their situations where someone they love has passed away. Even for Memorial Day, this was my very last day at Michaels, I had this lady come in, and her son had just suddenly passed away. And she was clutching a printed photo from I think, 15 years before. And she was like, this is the last photo I have of my son, and here is his phone, can you help me get in there so I can get some photos of him, there was nothing we could do. So unless you actually go through the process of assigning someone to be it’s called a digital legacy contact, and just filling in the forms and going through that process. There’s no way people can take your photos or access any of your data in your iCloud account after you die. And Google has a facility it’s something about inactive, like inactive accounts. So you can go in and say, you can say, if I’ve been inactive for one year, then you can you assign someone to receive a code or initiate Yeah, they still have to show up Google’s a bit yet. Google can just give you could assign someone went once it’s deemed inactive, they can access it. But yeah, even with iCloud, you still have to produce a death certificate and this particular code, but if you don’t do that no one can get in. So that’s really important there are these things we need to do to maintain our to deal with our digital data we don’t think about.

Nicole Smith
I gonna say what is it you just because you just think that it’s infinite, it’s there, it’s in the cloud, it’s in the thing like, don’t need to worry about backing up, I don’t need to worry about anybody accessing it, I’ve got my passwords, I’ve got my thumbprint on its thing on my phone, like, or even my face. Now. That’s a really, really good point, I guess to wrap us up on is all of our data, wherever it is, knowing that confidently knowing where it’s located and how you or others are able to access that when required or when needed is a really good thing to think about.

Carly Michael
I would add one more little tidbit to that. I would also have it be known to someone in your life that if something was to happen to you, how they can access your mobile phone, keep it going. Because a lot of the accounts that people in your life would need to access like your bank, or things like that require two factor authentication. And so they send codes to your phone. So my partner’s in tech, and he helps people in this situation. And the first thing when someone dies or knows that they’re soon about to die,he’ll say to their family, make sure you keep their phone active and you can access it because if you need to get in, you need the two FA otherwise your family will be locked out. It’s a serious thing.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, all the security elements that are I guess protecting the data. Yeah, you’ve got to have those those things in place to know how to access it if if required. So yeah, like I love all the security stuff and how important it is. But you’re so right, knowing how to get around it as well. This has been so fun. I love photos. I just think that anybody who’s listening here has had a moment that they’re like, Where is that thing gone and can really see how investing that little bit of time in those habits daily can really enhance the way that we experience our memories and our photos.

Carly Michael
Yeah, we want to be able to sit use them. That’s how we take photos to enjoy them. That’s what’s amazing about the memories that pop up with Google and iCloud now like it’s brilliant.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, exactly. I love it. All righty. Let’s jump into our three questions. So you’re ready. We all have our fabulous guests. Okay. Oh, I’m interested to hear your answer on this one. What is your go to app that creates ease in your day?

Carly Michael
I’m just gonna stay simply my Google Calendar. Knowing what’s coming up if it’s in the diary that’s happening. Everything else is a bit fluid but the calendar is the go to.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, that’s in our world. We’ve got my our especially our family calendar, like when we created it, I said to Simon if it’s not in the diary, it’s not a thing. Sorry. Like, you’ve got to get it in there. So love that. Online, paper, hybrid to do this lover?

Carly Michael
I would definitely say I’m hybrid and it depends on the week of the day. But I do love a spreadsheet with checkboxes, and I like to tick things up with the checkbox.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, your spreadsheets are amazing as well. I’ve been privy to the backend in there. They look amazing. So, yeah, what a great, great way. Okay, so what would you do if you created more space in your world?

Carly Michael
It’s a really good question. I think for now, in my current state, I would relax more. If I created more space in my world, I’m very ambitious. And I set myself huge goals. And then I often they drive me to do things. But then if I don’t meet them, I can be a bit hard on myself. So I think if I created more space for myself, I would give more time to myself to relax and recharge.

Nicole Smith
That’s a beautiful answer. I love that answer. That is, yeah, that’s something that is front of mind for me as well. And making, giving myself that kind of special be thing each week or month that I’ve got to look forward to and to enjoy just to give that calming so that you can be the best self when you are doing all the other fabulous stuff.

Carly Michael
Yeah. And I promised myself that once every three months, I will take one week off. And I’ve promised myself that for three years, and I have not done that. And I can see the impact.

Nicole Smith
Has it been in the diary?

Carly Michael
No, that’s the problem.

Nicole Smith
Put that the diary, as soon as we finished, find some time and put it in, then it will be a thing because your favourite app is Google Calendar, and it’s not telling you to take the time off. There we go. Solving the world problems. I love it. Thank you so much for joining me today. As I said, you know, when we first connected, I love what you do for your clients and your community and your your passion around photos. It’s just been so fabulous to talk about a little bit more here today. I would love though, for you to share where can people find you? Because I know people will want to find you. Where are you hanging about?

Carly Michael
Okay, so I’m not so active in socials. But I should be. My handle is @photogenie.au. That’s on Instagram and Facebook. But my website is www.photogenie.com.au. And now probably from next month, also www.photogenie.au. Since we have the ability to drop the.com

Nicole Smith
Beautiful, we’re gonna put all of those links in the show notes and your webinar you mentioned as well, maybe we could pop that in the show notes as well. Is that accessible for external humans or just in your community?

Carly Michael
Anyone can sign up to saveyourphotos.org. The I think we have till the end of October to access all of the videos. On my website on the About Us page, we’ve got my previous webinar from two years ago. And I think at the end of the month, I’ll add this new one there as well. But yeah, it’s definitely worth worth checking out. It’s very, I think it’s got really valuable and important information.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, wonderful. We’ll grab those links and pop those in there as well. And when it is live in on your website, we can go in and update them for people listening in the future. Welcome back to September 2022. Hello. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Again. It’s been such a fabulous conversation. So exciting.

Carly Michael
Thank you, Nicole, it’s been great to be here.

Nicole Smith
Well, thank you everybody who is listening out there today. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and enjoy creating space and time freedom by now. Well, there we go. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such a pleasure having you on board. Have we connected on social jazz? If not, please come on over. Say hi, I’m on all the platforms at the artisan solutions. So I’d really look forward to seeing you over there. And if you enjoy today’s episode, don’t forget to tag me and I’d love it if you could leave a review. And of course, share this with others so others can come and join us next time. All right, that everyone have a fabulous rest of the week and until next time, see you then.