The following post is from Krystal of Krystal Griffin Photography:

source: Krystal Griffin

Moms are often the memory keeper, and therefore, the ones who are usually missing in the photographs.  If by chance those roles are flipped in your family, that’s okay — all these tips still apply to getting dad into photos.  In either case it’s never okay to be missing from your family’s photographs.  You can’t be absent from family history.  Your family MUST be able to see you in their photographs! 

If you aren’t crazy about getting in front of the camera, that is another topic for another day.  But trust me when I say that your family will treasure your presence in your photographs, the same way they treasure you in their daily life.

I have six ideas to start getting you into the family photos:

source: Krystal Griffin

A six year old took this. I set up the basics for him and he did the rest. The camera was on manual and he could toggle the focus points. They really can do it. This photo isn’t perfect but I love it.

1. Teach your kids to use the camera.

Now, I have made this one easy for you and already provided some suggestions to get you started in this post.  Your kids may not take perfect pictures, and they may have to take a few extras before you all make it into the frame.  But you don’t need perfect pictures, just memories recorded.  You also might find that you enjoy those images taken from their perspective.

2. Teach your spouse.

This tip isn’t much different than the last.  If your spouse doesn’t know what to do with the camera, show them.  Keep it simple and you will both be happy.  Your spouse may already know how to use the camera and take some great photos.  This is my situation and all I really need to do is remember to hand the camera over more often.

source: Krystal Griffin

3. Take a reflection shot.

We have all seen (or taken) those bathroom mirror shots that end up as a Facebook profile.  While they sometimes seem cheesy (usually accompanied by the duck face and some squished eyes), there is a lot of promise in that method.  A mirror in your home is a great way to photograph you with a child or your spouse.  Large dark windows (the kind on a store front or museum) are also a great spot to get a reflection.   Even a large puddle or a wet sand bar will work well.

4. Use a self-timer or remote trigger.

Most cameras come with a self-timer and they are pretty easy to use.  Pull out your manual (Google the instructions if you lost the manual) and start to practice.  If you practice when it doesn’t matter, you will be a pro when you really want it to work.  Another option is a remote trigger or shutter release.  Most camera models are compatible with at least one remote.  They are a pretty cheap item to buy and really easy to use.

source: Krystal Griffin

5. Ask a stranger.

Yes, the traditional stand by, “Will you take our picture?” works wonders.   Get your spot picked out, frame your photo up and find some generous soul who will help you.  I often look for someone who is also trying to get a picture and offer to take theirs while asking them to take ours.   If you are concerned about handing your valuable camera over to a stranger, consider who you choose to give it to.  A mother with a stroller, an elderly couple or an employee of your destination is not likely to take off with your camera.

6. Pay someone.

While it is important to do all you can to chronicle your everyday life, and keep all family members in those photos, there is something to be said for hiring someone to photograph you and your family.  A professional will be well worth your money to capture photos of you and your family just as you are right now.  If you aren’t ready for a big family session, or you already did one, you might consider finding a mini-session.  These are great for Mommy and Me photos or a few updated photos of just you.  There are many kinds of sessions available with a professional:anniversary, family, modern glamour, lifestyle, etc.  Any professional will help you get what you need with just a simple phone call.

source: Krystal Griffin

How do you get into your family photographs?

	Krystal is a stay-at-home mom of four children, ages 4-9, whom she homeschools. She is acutely aware of how fast her children are changing and is passionate about keeping family memories alive through photographs. Now and then she gets to help other families’ bottle up their own memories at Krystal Griffin Photography.

6 Ideas for Getting Mom into the Photo is a post from Life Your Way

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The following post is from Lauren Rothlisberger of Get Me Geeky:

If you have thousands of unorganized photos in your iPhoto, if you keep every photo you snapped, even the blurry one of your kid running by, if you have tons of iPhoto Events all listed by date… repeat after me: “I am a Photo Hoarder”.

Well at least you admit it, now it is time to do something about it. I have good news and bad news, the good news is I have a program for you, and it is 4 steps, not 12! The bad news? You need to set aside a block of time, this process can take awhile.

Here are the 4 steps to get your photo hoarding under control:

Step One: Import.

You may be thinking, “This doesn’t make any sense, I thought we were trying to get rid of photos!” True we are, but lets at least get them all in one place so when we start deleting and organizing we don’t muddle it up with old pictures getting imported in.

The simplest way to import photos is through iPhoto. Plug in your camera or iPhone into your computer. If iPhoto is not open it should launch. If it doesn’t, open it up. Your plugged in device should show up in the left-hand column.

To the right you see the photos that are on the camera. You can choose import all, or select particular pictures and choose import selected. If you would like to pick out only a few pictures click on the photo, hold down the command button, then click on another photo. Or you can also drag your mouse across several photos and select them all at once. Be sure to choose “import selected” if you do not want all the photos. Before you import, take a minute to look down at the bottom. To the left, check the box to auto-split your events. This ensures that your photos are split into events by date making it much easier to organize. You also can give your event a title here, if you forget or aren’t sure what you want to call it, you can always do this later.

Most of the time you will probably import from a camera or phone, however there may come a time you need to import photos from another location on your computer or an external hard drive. This is particularly important if you purchase a new computer and want to bring in photos from an old computer.  Let’s say that a friend sent her a few photos of her son playing soccer this season. She saved them to her desktop and now wants to bring them into her iPhoto. Go up to the very top of your screen to the menu bar, click on File and choose “Import to Library”. Browse to the picture location and click import. After importing, iPhoto takes us to our Events. You can always access Events in the left-hand column.

Step Two: DELETE, DELETE, DELETE!!!

You need to delete photos that are not really great. Now note I didn’t say, delete the bad photos. I said delete the photos that are not really great. Just because we can take 100 photos of our son’s third birthday doesn’t mean we really need to save all those. One day many years from now you want to be able to enjoy looking through your life’s events, you don’t want to feel like you are drowning in them. 

I notice people become emotionally attached to their pictures, even the really bad ones, throwing away a photo of your child doesn’t mean you don’t love them. Become a curator for your photos; this is your personal museum.

Step Three: Create events.

While I won’t dive into a full explanation here, it is best to use Events (not Albums) to organize your photos. Event organization certainly leaves room for personal preference, but I will give you a method that will lead to successful organization. It is easiest to mentally divide your events in two categories. One category, is for a specific event, say a birthday party or vacation and the second category is for less specific pictures over a period of time. For example, you could have an event for Fall 2012 or a more specific event for Todd’s Soccer Fall 2012.

Obviously events don’t necessarily naturally import into the events you want, they import by date. So, let’s say you import 20 photos from your camera one Saturday night. Half are from your son’s soccer game in the morning, and half from a birthday party that evening. As you might guess, all these photos import into the same event because they naturally create events by date. 10 of these pictures are from soccer and ten are from the birthday party. The most important thing you learn about events is how to split and merge them.

Step Four: Split and merge.

As you can probably guess splitting them divides the events and merging them combines them. In this case, we are going to divide the photos according to soccer or party. Then, we will turn the birthday party into a separate new event and merge the soccer pictures with an already existing Fall Soccer event.

Let’s get back into iPhoto and take a look at how we do that:

To go into the event with all the photos I’ll double click the front picture, by the way this picture is referred to as the “key photo”. Once we double click into this Event we see the 20 photos. Highlight the first ten photos from the soccer game, go up to the menu bar, under Events choose Split Event. As you can see now you have split those pictures into 2 set of ten. Let’s go back out to “All Events” and take the next step. Click on the date to change the name of the event with the pictures from the birthday party. Let’s call it “Nana’s 60th Birthday”. Now, there are still the ten soccer photos in the event titled by date. Sally already created an event for Soccer this season so simply take the new photos, and drag and drop them on top of the existing event. That will combine those with the existing event.

Bonus tip: Photostream

If you have photostream linked to your iPhoto account, that gives you another set of pictures to deal with. Every month there is an Event automatically created your your photostream pictures. Just treat this Event like you would any other and split and merge with specific and general events you have already put together.

Bonus tip: Key Photo

Looking to change the cover photo of your Event? It is simple. Go into your Event, choose the picture you want to display on the cover and then control-click on that photo. Choose “Make Key Photo” and you are set!

I hope this quick step process gives you the inspiration to come clean with your digital hoarding and start a whole new life as a digital organizer!

Are you a photo hoarder? Do you need help?

	Lauren Rothlisberger blogs and consults over at Get Me Geeky. As a military wife and mom of three girls five years old and under, she loves focusing on technology and productivity and finding new ways to simplify her life. She recently started putting together MacMinis, which are easy to follow videos for Mac users, and also wrote an ebook, Evernote for Moms.

Confessions of a Mac Owner: Are You a Photo Hoarder? is a post from Life Your Way

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The following post is from Michelle of Mommy Misadventures:

Lupus is a chronic disease where the body’s immune system attacks one or more of the body’s organ systems, cause pain, inflammation and organ damage. Lupus can affect either gender and any ethnicity, however it is most common in women of color between the ages of 15 and 44. It affects 1.5 million Americans and 5 million people world wide. Lupus has no known cause and there is currently no cure.

May is Lupus Awareness Month and May 10th is World Lupus Day. I am one of the 1.5 million Americans diagnosed with lupus. As part of my contribution to lupus awareness, I’ve compiled a list of apps that I use to help me manage the daily challenge that come with lupus.

Pain/Symptom Management

Lupus is a disease that presents differently in each patient. It is also characterized by a flares, when disease activity increases and remission periods, when the disease takes a rest. Flares can sometimes be triggered by different things, such as stress or weather changes. Keeping a detailed diary of her symptoms is important to helping a patient learn more about her disease’s patterns.

Chronic Pain Tracker (iOS) – Lite, Premium $9.99
There’s a lot of pain trackers on the market but Chronic Pain Tracker for iOS is my hands down favorite. It allows you to create separate, custom profiles to track particular symptoms, especially helpful if you have multiple chronic diagnoses to keep track of. What I like best about Chronic Pain Tracker is that it has various pain tracking variables including type, intensity and location, as well as an analysis tool that allows you to compare data over time. Over time, the data collected by Chronic Pain Tracker can help a patient identify patterns or changes, as well as make it easy to share with doctors.

Productivity

Many patients with lupus experience what’s known as “lupus fog” which can affect everything from thought processes and memory.  For some, the fog is just a mild annoyance but for others, it can be debilitating.

I often deal with mild memory loss which can sometimes make it difficult to recall everyday information or what I’m supposed to be doing. To help me cope, I rely on productivity apps to help capture and access the information that I can’t always remember.

Evernote (web/Android/iOS)
From personal notes to client research, my Evernote account acts like my second brain. I have gotten into the habit of entering just about everything into my Evernote account and it has been well worth the time. I love that I can capture information from just about anywhere — manual notes, clipping web pages, photos, voice notes — and then access them whenever I need via Evernote’s search function. While I still prefer Chronic Pain Tracker for symptom tracking, Evernote is great for capturing questions or specific events that I want to talk to my doctor about.

Astrid (web/Android/iOS)
While Evernote allows you to create checklists within notes, the inability to sync with calendaring applications was always a deal breaker for me. Luckily, there’s a bunch of task management applications available that do just that. My personal favorite is Astrid because it has a robust notes and commenting feature, allowing me to keep track of the progress of a task. Plus, it syncs with Google, allowing me to see my tasks (and set reminders!) at a glance.

Dragon (Windows/Mac/iOS/Android)
My identity as a writer is second only to my identity as a wife and mother. Nothing can send me into a depression faster than being unable to write. More and more, I have found my hands being affected by lupus and some days they are so painful that typing is an impossibility.

Going a day without writing in some fashion just isn’t possible for me, I use Dragon’s speech recognition software to dictate. To be honest, it took awhile to get used to dictating vs. typing but the more I use it, the more comfortable I’ve become. Dragon is an expensive application but well worth it for the paint it saves me when I’m unable to use my hands.

Do you have a chronic illness like lupus? What do you use to help you manage your illness? 

	Michelle Mista is an IT professional, writer and blogger with a love for all kinds of technology. She writes about tech tips and trends for work at home professionals on her portfolio blog and muses about motherhood at Mommy Misadventures. She is on the constant quest to balance life, work and geekery.

Mobile Apps for Lupus is a post from Life Your Way

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The following post is from Michelle of Mommy Misadventures:

source: Justin See

I love making to do lists. There’s just something seriously satisfying about making a list and checking off the items one by one as you go. Being the digital junkie that I am, I was so excited when more robust digital task management services started becoming popular. Now instead of just creating digital to do lists, these task management services integrate with popular mail and calendaring applications for a far more organized experience.

Here are three of my top favorite to do lists that are available across the popular desktop and mobile platforms.

All three of these task management services are free to use but have premium service options.

Wunderlist

source: Michelle Mista

Wunderlist is a sleek task management application that allows you to easily create and organize task lists. You can create recurring tasks, as well as a limited number of subtasks, and set priority. Wunderlist integrates with Facebook.

Wunderlist offers a premium option for $4.99 per month or $49.99 annually, which allows you to delegate tasks to other users, create an unlimited number of subtasks, and access to a variety of backgrounds. According to the Wunderlist website, file attachment for premium users is slated for future updates.

Astrid

Available for: web/iOS/Android/Windows/Mac

source: Michelle Mista

Astrid is a task management service with an easy to use interface. Task creation options include three levels of priority setting, task assignment (even to non-Astrid users) and an extensive notes and commenting feature. Astrid offers integration with both Facebook and Google. It also includes widgets for the Android platform.

Astrid offers a premium option for $5 per month or $50 annually, which buys you the ability to attach files (including PDFs, images, and documents), and voice backup and notes.

Remember the Milk

source: Michelle Mista

Since its launch in 2004, Remember the Milk has been a popular choice for task management. Compared to Wunderlist and Astrid, Remember the Milk’s(RTM)  UI is a bit clunky and dated, but its task creation and management options more robust than either Wunderlist or Astrid, offering location, tagging, time estimation, and URL options in addition to priority setting and notes.

RTM’s free service allows you to create tasks and lists, integration with Google calendar and Gmail, add tasks using Siri (on iOS devices) and task sharing. For $25 annually, RTM offers syncing with Microsoft Outlook, unlimited syncing between devices as well as the ability to use Android widgets.

Do you use an online to do list application to help organize your day? What’s your favorite?

	Michelle Mista is an IT professional, writer and blogger with a love for all kinds of technology. She writes about tech tips and trends for work at home professionals on her portfolio blog and muses about motherhood at Mommy Misadventures. She is on the constant quest to balance life, work and geekery.

3 To-Do List Apps for Your Computer or Mobile Device is a post from Life Your Way

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We try to live a fairly simple, old fashioned life in many ways. We’re a one-car family; we mostly avoid disposable products in our kitchen; we believe kids need hours to roam outside and play and, yes, be bored.

But…I also make my living on the internet, the girls love being able to text and FaceTime their grandparents from the iPod, and Teaching Textbooks (a digital math curriculum) has saved our sanity this year.

Navigating the digital world is tricky enough for an adult, and with children steadily marching toward the pre-teen and teen years, I spend a lot of time thinking about the rules and boundaries we’ll put into place as they get older.

The truth is that even though I’m fairly immersed in the online and social media world myself, the rules and pitfalls and, unfortunately, dangers for children and teenagers are an entirely different issue altogether.

Thankfully, my good friend, Amy Lupold Bair, has written the guide for parents for raising digital families — Raising Digital Families for Dummies. She spent hours and hours and hours researching and writing a handbook that is full of practical information and commonsense wisdom.

With information on monitoring programs for computers and mobile devices, advice for dealing with cyberbullies, tips for children who want to blog and templates for developing a digital family policy, this book is a must-have for any family that uses technology in this day and age!

Disclosure: Amy is a personal friend, I received a complimentary copy of this book and the links above are affiliate links. But I really do believe this book is an important read for today’s families, and all opinions above are 100% mine!

	Mandi Ehman is the founder and publisher behind Life Your Way and the co-author of All in Good Time, as well as a wife and the homeschooling mom to four beautiful girls. She lives with her family on a little slice of heaven in wild, wonderful West Virginia and loves coffee, chocolate, easy meals, beautiful things and minimalist spaces.

Raising Digital Families in the 21st Century is a post from Life Your Way

© 2010-2013 Purple Martin Press, LLC | All rights reserved - This feed is provided for the convenience of Tech Your Way subscribers. Any reproduction of the content within this feed is strictly prohibited. If you are reading this content elsewhere, please send an email to contact@yourway.net to let us know. Thanks.