Monday Q&A | My hair, my favorite kid to photograph, & storing pictures

Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!

First up, a while back someone asked about my haircut in the comments of this post and I never responded (I really wish I could manage to be better about answering all the questions in the comments!). It’s basically a very layered cut with some long bangs that are meant to be swept to the side, and goodness no, I don’t mind if you copy my haircut. It’s not like it’s a super-unique style that I’ve copyrighted. 😉

I wonder if you have a favorite child of yours you like to photograph better than the others. NO! I don’t mean to suggest you like one better, but I wondered if one was more appealing to capture in photos for whatever reason. They stand still in better poses, they aren’t shy, they ham it up for the camera or they simply won’t let you take a picture so when you finally get a good one, you shout, “YAY!”

-Glory

I’d say that Sonia and Zoe are probably the easiest to photograph. They’re the least likely to give me a fake smile, and I think they’re most accustomed to being photographed (I got really interested in taking pictures around the time that Sonia was born, so the two of them have never known anything different).

I also tend to be around them the most because they need me more. For instance, at the beach, I’m most likely to be directly by Sonia and Zoe, and the same goes for when we’re at the pool or at the park. For obvious reasons, I end up taking more pictures of the people who are right around me.

The same thing happens when I babysit other people’s children…when I watched my nephews for a few days last fall, I had way more pictures of AJ than of the other two boys simply because AJ needed more watching!

Joshua and Lisey don’t mind being in pictures, but Joshua hates having to pose for pictures. He much prefers for me to take pictures of him while he’s occupied with something. As long as he doesn’t have to look at the camera, he’s good.

I have a question for you about preserving photos. I was wondering what you do with the photos you take. I read on your blog that you upload them to Picasa. After that do you delete the memory card and reuse it? Or do you save the memory cards as back up? Do you burn the photos to cds? Do you print them out? Do you have a hard drive where you store all your pictures?

I was reusing memory cards and burning photos to cds as well as putting them on an external hard drive as back up (infrequently though) I seldom ever print photos because of the cost, but I love taking them!

I am trying to figure out the best way to preserve memories and I’m just not sure which of the above methods (or a combination of) is best… I’m worried about the longevity of cds vs memory cards and the unpredictability of computers (ie: losing pics because of a virus).

Chelsea@Sowing Dandelion Seeds

When I unload my pictures onto my computer, I always delete the data on the memory card. With the amount of pictures I take, I’d rack up an enormous memory card bill if I didn’t empty the cards out!

The backup system I use is one Mr. FG built for me…he designed a computer with mirrored hard drives, which means that all the data on one hard drive is copied to another automatically. You don’t have to have a built-in hard drive, though…you can buy an external hard drive and use it to back up your photos (I’d back them up once a week or twice a month, depending on how many photos you take).

I’ve considered signing up for a cloud storage service as well, though, because if we were to have something like a house fire, my mirrored hard drives wouldn’t be worth a thing. An online backup storage service has a definite advantage there.

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Readers, how do you deal with digital photo storage?

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Today’s 365 post: Goodbye, small bike.