Working with Google Photos

It's good that I am what some people call a 'night person' and in this case it's probably good that I am single ... It's 12:21am right now and I am just starting to upload my first batch of photos for the night from my computer to Google Photos.

Why now?

It' takes a lot of data to upload images no matter where they are going. I don't have a lot of data per month using satellite internet but it's my only option out here in 'the tropics' for the fastest speed. I get free data between midnight and 5am.

I was up last night until 5am before I stopped and turned off the computer for the night. The hounds?? It didn't matter to them what I did ... they slept the same amount of time in their same spots. Their two meals were served at the same time as always. I've always been able to sleep in small periods of time with interruptions between them.

While my photos are uploading I keep busy by getting caught up on my reading that I normally do during the day. Plus this blog post. It depends how images are involved but I have come up with a fairly good system I think to keep track of where I am at in the process and what gets loaded. Right now I'm loading 576 photos which will take around 30 minutes.

So far I like how Google Photos operates. I have learned some things along the way and it's amazing what this program can do, besides just sorting your photos with the most recent ones first. The picture quality is just as good as when I took the photo and it doesn't matter what device I am using to look at those photos. 'Automatically' is the key word in all this process.

Around 1:30pm we decided to head out for a walk. It was a nice sunny day today, a little warmer than last week.

Remember as I talk about this Google Photo process I am working on a iMac, MacBook Air and an iPhone. One thing different about Apple Photos, which is their program to handle your photos from your iPhone or a camera card, is this ....

Before uploading photos to Google photos from my laptop or desktop computer I have to export those photos FROM Apple Photos to a self made folder somewhere else on the computer. In my case those folders are on my desktop. I set a few up last year when Apple's new program came out and was force fed to us Mac users ... so I could upload photos to the blogs I have or had.

Tonight though, it was nice to log into Google Photos and see these photos on this blog post, that were moved on my computer earlier today from the Nikon camera to the hard drive ... were sitting in Google Photos without me doing a thing. The key was having these photos exported to that self made folder on my computer.

Since not all readers are Mac users I am just going to speak about the Google Photo process that I am working with. I can go directly from the camera or SD card but I prefer to have ALL of my photos on my hard drive or external drives that I have. Call me paranoid but after I lost all of Sadie's puppy photos due to my error ... I like having multiple copies of my photos plus other files on my computer ... an online service, just in case I have house fire, tornado damage, etc ... an unexpected catastrophe of some sort.

Just like doing it from Blogger, there is a screen of my file folders where I chose what photos I wanted uploaded. Pretty simple stuff. Of course since I take notes and like to 'track stuff' ... I wrote down each time I started a batch, when it ended, how many it started to load and how many it ended up loading (some photos cant be transferred) ... and what month I was uploading so I know where to start tomorrow after I stop this process for the night.

The problem I am in is because of the individual folders I had made in Apple Photos where I manually keep photos sorted based on subject. For example each hound has their own folder and even Heidi as a 2nd folder just for her skin photos so I can quickly glance back to see her skin history based on date.

For instance I don't want photos of my friends and tours mixed in with bloodhound photos. Google Photos do have folder options. In fact some of those folders are made automatically. I will have to wait to see how that works. The couple it had formed automatically last night are shockingly very good.

Google Photos sorts all of the photos loaded, by date, most recent on top. For the 2nd night in a row I am trying to decide if I want or even need the photos backed up here, in their own folders. Or do I use Google Photos just as one huge online fault that keeps all of my photographs for me.

It does have a pretty neat search feature. For example when I search "basset hounds" it will and DID pull ONLY the photos of my bassets from a group of a few thousand photos that I had uploaded. It knew what my Z4 looked like and only showed those when I did a search for "Z4".

So with the search system and Google Photos automatically setting up folders based on subject ... I may forget uploading manually by individual subject manner.

Google Photos will also not bother to upload DUPLICATE photos ... a very nice feature. For example my last batch of photos I just did, had only 516 of the 533 photos uploaded from what it found in the file I furnished ... due to duplication.

After thinking about it today and even a little tonight before writing this post ... I think I have decided to start by using Google Photos as one big vault for my photos and not worry about sorting by subject matter. It's goes faster that way.

CD's are an option for backup ... even in 2016. But what happens then ... I end up with a stack of CDs and I can only see them when I insert them into a computer. The neat thing is ... they last forever. Today while I was checking out some things, I found old cases full of CDs that I had forgot about. Some of these CDs were labeled "Photos 2004" ... 12 years ago ... sitting on a shelf. Rarely looked at if at all after I copied them.

Not only that but were saved using a Windows PC I had at the time. I loaded 4 different CDs into my iMac and found 1,000s of old photos that I had backed up years ago and never looked at again until Sunday afternoon !!!!

It's nice those photos are still in pristine condition, high quality ... but I have cases full of CDs, with more subject matter than I can write on front of the CD or it's case, as a label.

One other thing I have found to where I had to google and find out the reason why ... I have a folder that came with my computer called "Pictures". It is what I have been uploading from right now ... but it's something I am not real clear on until maybe this afternoon.

I think the only way photos can be put in that folder automatically is when I export photos from Apple Photo on my computer, where as before with their program iPhoto ... they were moved to that Pictures Folder automatically.

I have a big gap of time after January 2011 in that Pictures folder and not sure why.

When I thought about moving the photos by subject matter to Google Photos so I could make my own new folder as I uploaded ... today I exported every photo I had on my hard drive in Apple Photos, from it's own personal folder to a newly made (by me) Folder on my desktop with the same folder name as it came from.

That works well but it takes time to manually highlight what photos you wan to use to make that new Google Photos folder. From what I have seen I cannot just click the first photo ... go to the bottom of the page, hold my shift key down and click the last photo to include 4,000 photos for that folder (Sadie's).

In Google Photos you do click the first photo of that batch, hold your shift key down as you move your curser over rows of photos ... which highlights them as you go ... then click the last one ... which selects all the ones you have moved your curser over.

So as I end this rambling this morning (tonight) it's a choice I have to decide, whether to upload large batches at a time and not worry about folders or take more time and load them by individual folder ... that I already have set up in my Apple Photos program.

Of course, some Google Photo users that are reading this might be laughing because they already know what the program does and I might be thinking this is all more work than it really is.

Lynn ... please chime in if you see this.

Hounds are snoring ... I'm wide awake uploading photos, with plans of doing this until 5am. Yes, I still get my football games in and have already seen some great college football the first weekend of the season.

It's beautiful weather in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Football And Google Photos

Even with a beautiful day outside today, it's been nothing but watching football starting at noon. I am kind of in between games right now, so I have time to blog and we also fit in a hound walk.

From midnight to 4am last night I was reading about and working with Google Photos, for an online free photo backup service. By 3:30am I decided I was not going to use it and spent the next 30 minutes adjusting settings and deleting apps along with over a 1,000 photos I had uploaded.

By this morning I was doing more reading and seeing a lot of the computer experts were recommending Google Photos as the best way to back up your photos online for free. I was a lot like Stella below ... I couldn't make up my mind.

CNET recommended it, some of the bloggers for Apple Mac computers also recommended it so by 11am this morning I was reloading the apps, adjusting the settings and uploading photos. I did over a 1,000 this morning but have hundreds of thousands of photos to go.

Soon after the hounds had their lunch it was time for football. It takes too much data to upload photos during the day and night before midnight. I have to watch my data pretty close because with satellite internet service I only get 15gb per month or $10 per gig after that, if I chose to buy more data. One of the disadvantages of living in a rural area, is the choice of your internet provider.

Soon after the 3:30 games were over, the hounds and I took off for an afternoon walk. While carrying the 55-200mm lens and the hounds staying pretty close to me, I didn't get a lot of photos on the walk ... they were too close to the camera.

Temps have risen a few degrees, at least Stella acted like it was warmer. She not only walked slowly outside but would pant inside, which means she wants the AC turned on. After it's turned on, she will lay down and sleep but not until then.

Sadie walked right behind me most of the way home, so out of photo range.

After the football games are over tonight I will be back on the computer working with Google Photos and taking advantage of my free data between midnight and 5am. I don't plan on staying up that late but I'll be uploading photos at least until 3am.

I'll discuss what I have found out about Google Photos tomorrow in it's separate blog post. I will say the quality of the compressed files are good, the photos do load fairly quickly.

The main thing is ... it does not use hard drive space nor space on your phone or tablet. Since it is a website within your google email account and password protected, you can access all the photos you are backing up from all the different devices have you have. All of them synchronize the photos very well. They will also load automatically based on the way you adjust your settings.

More tomorrow ... football season has arrived for this sports addict in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Hounds Find Deer

As you can see from the leaves, the wind has been from the north and still is today. Most of the time our wind is from the southwest. The best part, it was cool and a lot like yesterday.

That means a lot time outside, eating a salad, reading a book and letting the hounds roam their field.

It wasn't quite 11:15am when I decided to get a hound walk in before their lunch since breakfast was not served until 9:30am this morning. You can see how wet the field is with morning dew. Actually my feet have never been wetter than what they were on this walk.

I went through google images yesterday searching "field wild flowers". Nothing in the field showed up in the results. Yet when I changed my search terms to "field WEEDS in bloom" I found everything that I see daily on the hound walk ... yet, I cannot remember their names today but can remember statistics from the football game I watched last night. That ... is the story of my life.

Lately I have seen more worn paths from deer traffic that cross our path a lot of the times or will run parallel. I am not a deer hunter so I really have very little knowledge about deer, etc. Still about the time I took this photo I could hear a strange sound in the woods to the right of us. We are at the first turn of the walk.

It wasn't a second after I took this next photo that a deer jumps out of the woods not more than 10' in front of Sadie. She is off on the chase with Stella taking up the rear.

Deer and hounds are moving faster than I can click the camera ... auto focus is not instant.

By this time Sadie has fallen back in the chase but Stella is sprinting at full power and howling all the way.

The deer is over the small hill heading north and you can barely see Stella in the center of the photo ... barely.

I continued walking, not running, on my path. I knew that Sadie would come back for sure but today I had a feeling that I would have to walk to the far north edge of the field to look for Stella. Here is Sadie returning soon after her chase.

I thought I could still hear Stella howling so Sadie and I continued to walk through the weeds toward the northwest corner of the field. Luckily not soon into the walk, I turned around and Stella was behind us and was already heading back to our path.

They love chasing deer although it doesn't happen a lot. I think this is the 5th time this year. They are always so proud of themselves after they return from their chase.

Stella was positive there had to be more from where that one came from and she was going to make sure she was not missing more deer for the day.

Once they figured out there were no more deer around, both trotted for the house. Just another normal day in the life of a bloodhound. Both were sound to sleep right after they got home and slept through most of the afternoon.

The last bindweed in the field, there use to be a lot of these.

Stella double checks to see if there are deer near her house before returning inside for a mid-day nap.

My 18-55mm lens mechanically failed yesterday. At the time it would not focus. Later it started making a plastic grinding noise as I tried to turn the adjustment to a different length ... 18, 35 or 55mm. It was not the first time for this camera to do this. I've been thinking for a while to buy a lens that had the range of both of the ones I had ... to eliminate having to switch back and forth between lenses.

I didn't want to buy another camera just to hold and use the different size lens. ZippyPinHead had talked about a 16-300mm lens he had bought and really liked it. I haven't found many times I need a 300mm but they did have a model that was a 18-200mm and that range would cover what I have now between two lenses.

I ordered it late last night and received a tracking number this morning after it had shipped. It should arrive soon after the Labor Day Weekend.

Today was once again too nice to stay inside. While I sat in the shade next to the house, the hounds ... even Heidi soaked in some sun.

Of course Sadie spent all her time roaming the field, she doesn't have the patience just to lay there.

Stella ended her time with some dirt eating. I wonder if that is good for dental hygiene ... doubt it. I guess her nose dirt will have to wear off, since she doesn't let me touch it with a wet cloth.

By 4:30pm it was time for the 2nd walk of the day. Both hounds were excited as usual. No deer this time ... just walking.

It was suggested to use Google Photos to store all the photos I take with my iPhone by the people that sold me the phone. I aways download them to my hard drive which still has a lot of space left on the hard drive. I am going to read more about Google Photos before the next football game tonight at 7pm.

I have used Flickr, which is free for unlimited amount of photos. I can go back to that but it takes so much data I have to wait until after midnight to take advantage of my Exede free data between the hours of midnight and 5am.

I see that Flickr and Google Photos have an iPhone app plus their desktop version. From the short reviews I just read, people favored Flicker. Since I like to play around with computer stuff I think I'll try Google Photos.

Although my computer automatically backs up the iMac hard drive every hour on an external hard drive I still like the thought of having photos and documents saved online somewhere.

Another great day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana today.

The Hounds Get Two Today

 I'm not really sure why but I think it started yesterday when I thought it was Thursday but it was only Wednesday. Maybe it's because the 1st was on Thursday or because of the football schedule on tv.

Being retired I have found one of the nice benefits is losing track of what day it is. Everyday is a 'weekend' ... I love it. Add some great weather today, and I could already see it was going to be a day of two hound walks.

We did our first walk of the day at 5 minutes until 1pm. Temps were in the mid 70's, and there wasn't any humidity that I could feel. The hounds trotted out in front of me from the very start.

Sometimes the hounds have to get there noses deep into the weeds to get what they have found. There are even times they don't mind sharing.

I came with the 18mm-55mm lens today, I think that might be the lens of choice from now on. Yet, when those surprise deer show up, it's always nice to have that 200mm lens on the end of the camera.

I used my voice as Stella's leash again today. She does not need to be leashed at all but lately needs some 'voice motivation' to keep our group together. She is on "partial probation".

We are not quite to the halfway point of the walk ... along the back edge of the field.

Headed home and they both stopped suddenly ... their noses had picked up something in the distance, I didn't hear anything that would make them interested. It's their noses that dictate their activity.

Headed home with a slow walk ... the first of two walks today.

Heidi stayed inside enjoying the opened windows and the cool breeze blowing through the house. I am once again thinking about carrying her to the edge of the field so she will walk with us ... it did work when I did that last April.

The afternoon continued to be great weather. We took our 2nd walk around 5:30pm, taking the 18-55mm lens. Soon after the start of the walk, the lens quit working so no photos.

It's been nothing but college football tonight on tv, here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.