3 Best Storage Tips for Your Smartphone Photos
We’ve all been there. A prime opportunity to take a great photograph has come up. Perhaps you’ve spotted a wild animal through the treeline, or maybe a brightly coloured hot air balloon is passing overhead. You take out your iPhone, with only a few seconds to take the picture, and you get the dreaded message:
Gah! Panic! You frantically delete some apps and try again. But the message appears again! This time, you get serious and start scrolling through your gallery, deleting as many pictures and videos as you can. But by this point, the moment has passed, and instead of one extra picture, you’re left with fewer pictures than you had just a few seconds ago.
Forget the rule of thirds or negative space, running out of storage on your cell phone can be the biggest inconvenience for a photographer to get around. It’s not only time-consuming, but it can stop you from capturing an unrepeatable moment and make you delete photographs that really shouldn’t be deleted. So how do you get around it? Below, we’ve compiled 3 of the best storage solutions to avoid ever seeing that storage alert again. So the next time you have a great photo opportunity, you can actually take advantage of it!
Immortalise Your Pictures With a Photo Book
We might be a little biased since we specialise in photo books, but actually, a Facebook photo book can be the best and most reliable way to store your photos. Because it doesn’t exist in the cloud or on your Facebook page, a photo book won’t ever suddenly disappear, whether that’s due to a computer hack, a software error, or old and broken hardware.
If you’re thinking to yourself: Well, my photos have never disappeared. Just think about the photographs you took five years ago. Or six years ago. Or seven. Do you still have them? The chances are that you don’t. This is why photo books are seeing such a vinyl-esque revival. With a Facebook photo book, you can ensure that your photos remain both safe and celebrated. There’s something different about picking up a book from your shelf and going through your favourite pictures. In a way, it gives them personality, meaning, and gravitas that you can’t replicate while scrolling on your phone.
Search Beyond Your Gallery
If that annoying storage alert has popped up, remember that not all your images and videos will be in your gallery. One thing a lot of people don’t realise, for instance, is that the photos and videos they send take up a lot of storage on their phones. To get around this, go to your phone’s storage settings and look for ‘Messages’. In this category, you can see the amount of storage your attachments are using up, and you can subsequently delete them.
You should also check the downloaded media on your phone. A lot of apps now allow us to download content for offline viewing, but these downloads will definitely be a contributor if you’ve seen the storage alert. Make sure you go through your phone and delete any movies, television shows, podcasts, or music that you don’t need anymore. Check apps like YouTube, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Disney Plus for any downloaded content, and make sure your storage isn’t being used up by that full season of Bridgerton that you downloaded two years ago!
Take a Detox Now and Then!
Lastly, we’d recommend taking a detox at least once a month. If you’re an avid photographer, the chances are you take a few pictures every day. But unless you’re Ansel Adams, not all of these pictures are going to be great. Make sure you take an hour or two to see what’s on your phone and get rid of any dead weight. Once you’ve done this, it’s time to start completely from scratch.
When it comes to uploading pictures to our photo book maker, we understand that some people only like doing this for their really good photos – the ones that they want to display on the coffee table or their bookshelf. If you’ve got hundreds of other photos that you want to keep, but don’t want to display, then simply move them to an SD card, delete the originals, and then completely clear your cache. If you do this, then those pictures will remain safe in their own space, but your phone will be completely rejuvenated and ready to go all over again!
