Wednesday, August 31, 2011

This Life is Full of Magic Moments

Since I received my first camera at age 10, I have been mesmerized by the story that photographs tell. In recent years I have been trying to create a timeline of my past, piece together the places and faces in the shoe boxes, peel and stick albums (ouch!) and envelopes - no dates, no locations and often times no idea who everyone is.
Sadly all of my family's older generation has passed on, long before I even understood the importance of these pieces of history. My parents and I have tried to fill in the blanks, but it is a long (and emotional) process.

Now, as a mom, photographs hold a special place in my heart...a way to capture a sweet smile, a silly face, and even a tantrum for the future. I have watched how quickly those special moments in time slip away, and have documented everything I can.
I treasure each photo, every moment, every smile and tear...

...Like these when my mom came to the hospital after Jules was born.
She came toting a baby photo of my son so we could all compare the two.
OR
...to re-live how my son beamed when he held his baby sister for the first time.
These are moments not to be missed, or sometimes through the magic of photography, moment to be relived...honestly I had completely forgotten my mom brought that photo of Joe to the hospital (I do get a pass, right? I had just given birth!).

But, I confess, I have not kept up with the organization of my photos (Oh how I tried).  My major goal is to get all of my photos organized and tagged so that my children will have the pieces of their past, those magical moments in time that are our family's history in one place and ready "to go." That also, means I need to stay on top of organizing current photos.

This becomes an even bigger challenge as photos are now spread over my smart phone, Facebook, (3 different) emails, and Picasa. My tendency is to put them in a folder marked "to be filed," or never move them to "a safe place at all"...and then forget where, why, who, etc. about the moment. I always say I am going back to organize...
but then more photos come and it all seems overwhelming.
 Now there is a way to help make organizing my digital moments easier!
ThisLife, "the Magic Box that gathers,
improves and organizes your photos/videos for you
in a chronological timeline while keeping them all safely stored in the cloud,"
has come to my rescue!

ThisLife offers so much, but some of my favorites are:
  • Gathers the disconnected Moments through bulk imports from social services such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Picassa, and Smugmug. Moments via Email and desktop uploads can easily be dropped into the Desktop Uploader.
  • Improves photos using the only self-adjusting algorithms in the world that apply just the right amount of photo correction based on what is actually needed. Color is balanced, contrast adjusted, highlights corrected, noise eliminated, and red-eye removed. We improve videos by applying the same algorithms used by Hollywood studios to remove the shake caused by hand held cameras.
  • Organizes Moments by displaying them on a timeline with face, date, and location tags. The timeline is completely searchable by person, date, location, or media type, and a scrubber bar at the bottom of the page allows for easy scrolling through the strand.
After signing up for the free trial, I was surprised and
delighted to see so many moment that I had forgotten about come through ThisLife ...
in chronological order, tagged with a who, what, and when!
GENIUS!

You can try it yourself now!
ThisLife's Adventure Box free trial for 6 months,
which stores up to 20,000 photos! 

Be sure to check in with ThisLife on Facebook
 and follow ThisLife on Twitter for ideas and tips and new information!
Signature
ThisLife sponsored my story today. I received compensation and a free trial service in exchange for telling my story. ThisLife is offering my readers a 6-month trial of their Adventure Box package, which will house and organize up to 20,000 photos. Go check out the ThisLife free trial today.

7 comments:

  1. Interesting. My photos are all over as well. Organization is definitely a gene I missed out on!

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  2. I'm so scattered with my photos as well. May have to go check this out! Thanks for sharing!

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  3. Holly:

    Though I have zero talent in photography, I could sit for hours looking at old photos and wondering about the people and places depicted.

    That said, This Life looks interesting and I'll follow their link.

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  4. Isn't there that cloud thing...where you can upload all your pics. it's too complicated for me, but I bet you could do it!

    Good morning!

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  5. Thanks for the offer, but I am still in COMPLETE DENIAL about the state/locations of pictures that are precious to me ;)

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  6. I love this product too. I just got my free trial set up a few weeks ago and it is amazing. It took me just a few minutes to set it up and voila - 8 years of photos chronologically organized. Amazing!!!

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  7. precious images holly and you don't look like you just gave birth in these... no fair!

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