We’re Still Here to Help (Even Over the Holidays!) - find out more here.
Group Content
Pinned Post
What’s the one tip you’d give yourself starting out as a photographer?
There’s nothing quite like the power of hindsight, especially when it comes to some of those golden life tips you pick up along the way that would made your everyday a lot easier if you had known them when you were younger. While we don’t have the ability to travel back in time and give ourselves the helping hand that could have made all the difference, we do have the power to pass on these little nuggets of brilliance to people who are following a similar path to yours. So, here’s your chance to help and give some advice that could benefit someone who is just starting out as a photographer and allow them to take the next steps in their journey. Now, as I’ve said before, I am not in any way, shape, or form a professional photographer, but I have taken a lot of photographs over the years and made my fair share of mistakes along the way. When I first started to take photographs, I was using an analogue camera, with actual film in it, and I can’t tell you the amount of times I took a photo that didn’t turn out anything like I thought it would. So for me, the one tip that I would give myself now, would be to take more than one photo. This is, of course, a lot easier to do now than it was back then. Digital cameras and smart phones are awesome and being able to instantly see your photo and not being restricted to the amount of shots you can take because you’re running out of film is a huge plus for making sure you get awesome shots. I say, get totally snap happy, and when you think you’ve got enough photos, take some more, even if you think you’ve already got the ultimate shot, because you’ll never know if the next one will turn out better, unless you take it. I also pretty much exclusively use my phone for taking photos, and thanks to Camera uploads I can keep my phone memory relatively clear and make sure I never accidentally delete the best photo of the bunch. So, now over to you, if there was one tip you would give yourself when you were starting out as a photographer, what would if be?
Camera uploads from my phone and some photos of my cats
Now, I’m no professional photographer, but I do really enjoy taking photos and thanks to my smartphone 🤳. I can do this pretty easily, many, many times a day! If there’s one thing that you're almost guaranteed to see me taking photos of, it’s probably my cats. Like, seriously, it’s not even funny how many photos I have of them but I just can’t help myself. While my phone is a pretty awesome piece of technology, it doesn’t have an unlimited memory and with my propensity to snap away throughout the day, the memory that it has can fill up pretty quickly. Thankfully, camera uploads allows me to take as many photos as I like, without having to worry about filling my phone up. Turn on camera uploads If you haven’t already got your camera uploads turned on, I highly recommend you do it now. It’s really simple to do and only takes a couple of minutes, but it will save you a lot of time and space in the long run. If like me you're using an Android device, all you need to do is open the mobile app, tap on the menu button and select Settings, then under Features tap on Camera uploads, then tap on Backup photos and when prompted tap Allow If you’re on an iOS device, it’s a little bit different but equally as simple. Just go to the person icon and tap on Camera uploads. Then, tap OK and select what you would like to upload and if you would like to use cell data, then tap Turn on camera uploads. Organize your photos I often found myself looking for photos on my phone for ages, only to find I’d scrolled past the tiny image 2 or 3 times before I spotted it. Since I enabled camera uploads, I no longer have this problem because all of the photos I take are automatically added to a folder called Camera uploads in my Dropbox account. From here, I can move them into different folders, add tags, and do a few other things to help organize my photos, like changing the naming convention and adding various automations. Then I can simply search for the photo I want in the search bar, although I will admit, in my case, searching simply for “cat” doesn’t really make it any easier to find what I’m looking for 👀. Tell us what you think I’d love to hear about how you use camera uploads so please leave a comment below. I’d also equally love to see some photos of your pets, bonus points for cats!
Is Fall the best time of year for photography?
Fall is a great time of year for photographers, with possible photo opportunities at the turn of every corner. Beautiful Autumnal colors The changing of the season, moody lighting and a vast pallet of colours ranging from fiery oranges to deep purples, can be seen everywhere you look. Spooky season But, if you’re anything like me, there’s another reason why Fall, and in particular the month of October, is truly the best time of year for photography, a much more spooky reason, and that, of course, is Halloween. There is certainly magic, and a whole lot of fireworks, in the air every Halloween. From carving Jack-o’-lanterns, to houses decorated with elaborate ghouls, ghosts and goblins. You’re almost guaranteed to see something totally out of this world, or even otherworldly, if you leave your house on Halloween night. What do you think? Do you think this is the best time of year for photography? Let us know or, better yet, share your Fall images with us below.Automated watermarks and file renaming
Hey everyone, I hope you're all doing well and feeling creative. I just wanted to let you all know about some awesome new updates to the folder automation features that I thought would be really cool for photographers. You'll now be able to configure multiple automations on selected folders and subfolders to automatically rename files, add watermarks, and more. You can find out more about these automations and how to get started with them by reading this post. Do you think these automations will improve your workflow and save you time? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.Have you seen our Dropbox Replay group?
Hey photographers, just popping by today to let you all know about the new Dropbox Replay group we launched a couple of weeks ago. What is Dropbox Replay? Repay is a tool that I am sure lots of you are already aware of and some of you may even already be using, particularly if you also dabble in the world of videography. It’s a video, image, and audio review tool that allows you to mark up, comment on, and finalize projects. With Replay, you’ll be able to share your work with clients, team-members, colleagues, or collaborators and get feedback in real time without ever having to exit your browser. Saving you time and helping to keep your projects moving in the right direction and completely streamlining the entire approval process. The Replay group will be a space where you can discuss your work, share your knowledge and experiences with Replay, and it'll also offer you the unique opportunity to connect directly with the Replay team and direct your feedback and ideas to the people in charge of the product. Joining the Replay group Joining the group is super easy; all you need to do is follow this link and hit the “Join Group Hub” button and you’re in! Hopefully, we’ll see some of you over there soon!Organize and share Christmas photos with Dropbox
Christmas is definitely a time of year that I find myself taking more pictures than normal. Meeting up with family and friends and wanting to capture special moments means that I have my camera on more than I don’t. If you’re anything like me, you’ll want to be able to share all of these photos with those closest to you. Social media can be a good way to share photos, but there are definitely times when we might want to keep these photos within a private group of people, especially when family are involved, Dropbox makes it easy to share with exactly who you want. To start with, I’ll always make sure that my camera uploads are turned on. You’ve probably heard me talking about this a few times before, but I’ll stand by my words again because I love this feature, it saves me time, space on my phone and makes sure I never lose any photos, so it’s a no brainer for me. If you don’t know how to turn on Camera uploads you can find all the information you need right here. Now that all my photos will be automatically added to my Dropbox account, I’ll figure out a way to organize all of the photos I take at Christmas into folders. Generally speaking, I’ll be meeting up with a lot of different groups of people on different days, so I’ll only want to share photos with the people that are in them, so I’ll start by making a Christmas folder, then inside that I’ll make folders for Christas Eve, Christmas Day, Stephen’s Day, New Years Eve and any other days I might be out and about. Then, dependent on what I’m doing, I might make different folders within these daily folders, for example I might do Christmas morning swim and Christmas Dinner, or Stephen’s Day lunch and Stephen’s Day drinks. Once I’ve got my folders created and all my photos put in the right place, it makes it really easy to share with all of the other people who I was with. To do this, all I need to do is create a view-only shared link to the folder I want to share, and share it with everyone who I was with when I took those photos, or anyone else I want to see them. This link will allow anyone with access to it to view and download the photos inside that folder. If you’re not sure how to create shared links, you can find out everything you need to know here. Now, if your friends and family are anything like mine, you’ll know there are 2 types of people, those who take photos and those don’t. When I want to add photos that friends or family took to my collection, I use file request. This allows them to simply add their photos, which then go directly to my Dropbox account, allowing me to easily add them to the folder they belong in. You can find out more about using file request here. When it comes to using Dropbox for organizing photographs, there are literally hundreds of things you can do, and everyone uses it a little different to everyone else. Check out how our very own Sheena used Dropbox to help create a Christmas Family Calendar for another awesome example. We’d really love to hear how you plan on using Dropbox to organize your photos this Christmas, let us know in a comment below.Here's how our Community Manager Emmet uses Dropbox to manage photographs
We really want to hear all about how you use Dropbox as photographers, so I guess it's only fair that before you tell us your stories, we tell you one of ours. Our very own Emmet has been part of the Community team here at Dropbox for the best part of the last 2 years but in a past life, he was a photographer and had a serious process for organizing his photos and files to make sure he saved those memories for everyone else too. Check his story out below. For about 5 years, I worked as photographer for University College Cork, providing photos and other creative content for the student societies in the college. There were over 100 individual societies in the college, and I would photography over a dozen events each week. During my 5+ years working in UCC, I uploaded over 250GB of photos, videos and graphics, for students, and the college, to use and share as part of their activities. Organising that many photos, videos and more could have been a bit of a nightmare, but thankfully Dropbox was there to help keep everything organised. I created individual folders to house the content for each society and created sub-folders inside these for each event. I would share these folders with the society/societies involved, and they would use this content for promotion, and sharing on their social media channels. This allowed me to keep everything organised and easy to find. At the end of each year, I would create a new folder to contain all the events that year, and ensure I could easily find them in the next year. Dropbox proved an invaluable tool over my years as a photographer, and allowed me to quickly access all of the photos based on the host of the event, time of the event etc. At the end of each year, I would create a compilation video, celebrating the hard work of all the student societies. When I was creating this, I found the Photo tab on Dropbox invaluable, as I would be able to see the thousands of photos I took every year, and quickly pick out my favourites for the video. It was an amazing tool for organizing my files then - and still is today, so it’s great to be able to use it at work everyday now. In fact, Emmet’s filing system was so good that he managed to dig out a 10 year old photo he took of fellow Community team member Amy on her first day of college - not knowing their paths had crossed before, Dropbox is really amazing sometimes! So, that's how Emmet uses Dropbox to sort his photographs, now we'd love to hear your number one tip for using Dropbox as a photographer.
About Photographers
This is a space for Photographers of all levels to connect and share tips about using Dropbox. Join today to network, collaborate, and exhibit your work.
Open Group