On Our Best Behavior
On Our Best Behavior is a heartwarming podcast where Mom, Kelli and 16-year-old son, Maccoy delve into the complexities of school, life's struggles, highs and lows, and various challenges. With a blend of humor and sincerity, they navigate through these topics while sharing their own experiences and insights. Their conversations are not only relatable but also enlightening, offering listeners a fresh perspective on everyday issues. Alongside their engaging discussions, they welcome intriguing guests, adding a dynamic element to each episode. Tune in to join this duo on their journey of growth, learning, and discovery.
On Our Best Behavior
Organizing Your Memories
We explore the world of digital photography preservation and organization with Angela Andrieux, photographer, coach, and product evangelist for Mylio Photos.
• Only one in four people properly back up their smartphone photos
• The 3-2-1 backup method ensures memories stay safe: working copy, local backup, and offsite backup
• Mylio Photos helps organize lifetime memories across all devices
• Family plans allow up to 10 people to collaborate on photo organization
• Scanning and digitizing old family photos preserves history for future generations
• Face tagging, geolocation, and calendar features make finding specific memories easy
• Authentic, unposed photos often become the most meaningful over time
• Professional photo managers can help tackle overwhelming photo organization projects
Visit mylio.com to book a free demo and discover how to preserve your precious memories. The Mylio community at communitymylio.com is where Angela personally answers questions and hosts live events.
Thank you for listening to another episode of On Our Best Behavior. Today we have a special guest for you. Today I have Angela Andrew, and she is a photographer, a photography coach, experienced broadcaster, writer and content creator. Wow, what a long, lovely list of things. She is also a product evangelist for Mileyo Photos, the free photo management and storage app, on a mission to change the way the world remembers, via cutting edge technology that allows users to include essential information such as photos, dates, tagging, people and geolocations. Oh, all the things that I wish I had every day. Angela, welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me, Kelly. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:So take us back to the beginning. When I do this podcast, it's usually my son and I, and my McCoy is 16. And one of the things that we're always exploring is all the career paths out there and all the opportunities that we just don't even know exist as career paths. So take us back to your beginning. What first sparked your passion for photography out there and all the opportunities that we just don't even know exist as career paths. So take us back to your beginning. What first sparked your passion for photography and how did this evolve into?
Speaker 2:a full blown career for you? So I mean, that's a very interesting question, because I didn't start when I was 16. I was very into music. I played the piano, I was in the band and I did all those kinds of things. And when I went to college I actually double majored in music and business. I eventually dropped the music part of it and I stuck with business and I was actually studying finance. So I got my MBA and I did businessy type of things.
Speaker 2:But I've always had a creative bent. When I was younger I liked taking pictures, but it was film days and processing was expensive. When you're a kid, you know your allowance really doesn't go that far when you have to process film. So it was something I did a little bit of. But it wasn't till digital happened and became commercially accessible that that became a part of my life. I got my first digital camera in 2000. I think it was Tiny little thing and it just opened up this world of creativity because I could make basically limitless images. And it was this tiny little, I think, three megapixel camera. You would press the shutter and if you shook your hands at all, there was like a delay between you press the shutter and it would actually take the picture. And because of that I ended up with mostly blurry photos. But that's how I learned Photoshop was because I wanted to do something fun and creative with those pictures, so I started creating photo art with them very, very early on.
Speaker 2:Fast forward a few years. I got married. My husband saw my interest and he actually bought me my first DSLR and then he was active duty military. At the time we moved to Italy, so you can't be in Italy and not fall in love with photography. I happened to get in with a camera club. There I actually learned how to use my camera. I learned what an aperture was and an ISO and a shutter speed and how those things work together to capture light and make a picture. And by the time that we moved back to the States I decided I'm going to hang out my shingle as a photographer Now.
Speaker 2:Being a photographer can encompass many, many things, and most people think of taking pictures for a living. You're doing portraits and weddings and things like that, and I did dabble with doing portraiture. It really wasn't my thing, and weddings just scared me to death because they're so high stress, so I never really went that direction. Instead, I got into writing and creating and helping others learn how to use post-processing software and how to manage their photos and keep their stuff safe and backed up, and that evolved into being invited to work with some photography software companies and fast forward a few more years.
Speaker 2:Here I am with Miley of Photos and my job here is as product evangelist, which means that I help people be successful with the software. I write the documentation, I host live webinars and live events and I interface with the product team to make sure that things that customers are telling me about what they need to do, what they are trying to accomplish that gets back to our product team and I can actually help shape the future of the software. So it's kind of come full circle. So when you ask about somebody who's 16 and trying to figure out their career, when I was 16, I had no idea and it's interesting where life takes you. But you're going to, he's going to pick a direction, but whatever he kind of gravitates toward and for me it was something creative. I still dabble with music, but I don't play like I used to, but I still have to have something creative in my life, even though I'm a more analytical person by nature, so those things come out and it's. It really is all about putting your passion into something that you really like.
Speaker 1:So when you went to college, what was your vision for what you were going to be when you grew up at that point?
Speaker 2:You know it was. I was really not sure it was. My parents were entrepreneurs. They ran their own business for over 45 years and business was the smart, safe thing. I didn't know if my path was going to lead me to at some point taking over their business or being more heavily involved or going out on my own. When I was in college I looked at places in Silicon Valley and the big companies and it was kind of my dream to go work with one of these big companies and be in the accounting department at that time. And that's not my dream anymore.
Speaker 1:I know when you think about sitting behind a desk from nine to five. It's like that's a long day.
Speaker 2:It's a long day and it's if you're doing the same thing all day long. I mean, some people are really good at that and that's what keeps them steady and grounded. For me, I need to have variety. So when you're listing off all the things that I do, it's like I really am kind of all over the place. I touch a lot of different stuff, both with Mylio, and I have my own side hustle for my photography and I'm always doing something.
Speaker 1:So I feel like I fall into this category of making mistakes with digital photos, because I'm one of those people who I posted on social media. I just think it's going to be there forever. It's on my phone, I have my phone backed up. It's going to be there forever. But what would you say are the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to storing their digital photos? Because I feel like that's me.
Speaker 2:So excellent question, and I think the one thing that kind of comes to mind is there's a statistic out there that I believe only one in four people are using cloud storage with their mobile phone. So they may think that they're backed up, but they're not actually paying for additional storage, so only either a very small portion of their photos are backed up or they might be in the cloud at a lower resolution. So not having enough storage to cover everything that they have, that's probably the first mistake. So if people are listening to this and you aren't paying for cloud storage to go with your phone, I know it's a painful thing to think about, but you have to have those pictures go somewhere because otherwise they are just sitting on your phone. Your phone gets lost or damaged and then all of those pictures are gone and a lot of people have the mistaken notion that, oh, there is a cloud service attached here, everything's backed up and safe, and that's not necessarily the case for some people.
Speaker 2:The other thing is is a cloud is a wonderful tool, but it is still putting your stuff only in one place. So I like to suggest to people a three-to-one backup scenario, so for anything that's important to you digitally, and this can be other stuff on your computer. It can be your pictures, you know your video files. You want to have three copies. You want to have your working copy, which that can be you know what's on your phone. You want to have a backup copy, which ideally would be a hard drive connected to your computer on your desk at home, and then that third copy would be your offsite backup in the cloud. So you have that local copy. If your phone gets lost, you still have that copy sitting on your desk, and if something horrible happens to your home natural disaster then you have that cloud copy. So I think that's where a lot of people don't realize that their stuff isn't as secure as they think it is. So don't put all your eggs in one basket.
Speaker 1:And if you are relying on backing up your phone to the cloud and that's where all your photos live, make sure you're paying for enough storage. Now, if somebody wants to listen to this great advice and say, okay, what should I do to do this the right way? So how can someone get started with organizing and backing up their photo collection, because it feels overwhelming, not only digitally, but now? I'm talking about, like? I have boxes and boxes of photos in my basement that my mom gave me, that I've had since I was a kid, because I'm old enough that I also did not have a smartphone when I was younger. So the thought of even starting to start going through all those I just pretend that they're not down there and if I need them one day, I know where to find them, or you know what it's going to be whoever I pass them off to will be their problem. What's a better way to handle that?
Speaker 2:So it is a project and it's something that you have to have a little bit of passion to do. But what I would suggest is you can use a service like MyLeo. So MyLeo Photos just to give a little bit of background is an application and a service. What it does? It helps you organize your lifetime and memories and it's an application you can download to your computer, to your phone, to your tablet, any of the devices that you have. Those devices talk directly to each other, so you have access to everything from every device and it helps you get all of those things organized from all of those just different sources you just listed.
Speaker 2:So, to get started, install the Miley of Photos app. Let's say you have a computer, whether it's a laptop or desktop at home, and then you have a smartphone. Install Miley on both of those, get yourself an external drive and then, in Miley, you do what we call designating a vault. So a vault is any device that holds everything, all of your pictures. So that could be that external drive that you connect. So that could be that external drive that you connect. Designate that as a vault.
Speaker 2:Install Miley on your phone and on your computer. It'll immediately start sucking in those pictures off your phone and storing them on your vault, so that gives you another copy of them locally. That's completely detached from whatever cloud storage you might be using, whether it's Google Photos, iphoto, whatever. That's kind of step one For those other pictures you have. If you have external hard drives lying about, you can start importing those pictures into your library.
Speaker 2:Um, if you have memory cards, old CDs of pictures, start importing them and getting them saved to that vault and then you can also integrate in cloud storage through MyLeo, which MyLeo would then create another vault in the cloud if you want to. So that's another option for all that stuff in your basement. That's a bigger project. I have been working on some of this with my family as well. I've scanned in a bunch of stuff for my maternal grandmother. My dad has been working on scanning in all of his mom's pictures that he inherited when she passed, and he's now scanned in almost 25,000 images. Can you believe that? And this is all from like film days.
Speaker 2:My grandma took a lot of pictures and she had stuff that was handed to her. Some of this stuff is really really old. So he's been going through and scanning that and we're pulling this all into a family Milo library where we can go in take a look at these pictures, we can organize them, we can tag the faces. So between him and my mom and I we're able to recognize most of the people in these pictures and we're adding important context so future generations know who these people were. Because if it gets much past us definitely past my parents nobody's going to know who these people were, you know, unless it's from my lifetime or forward. So we're adding all this contact information and then we're able to share it with the wider family. So it is a part of a bigger project.
Speaker 2:And if somebody is not into doing that themselves because I know life is busy and unless that's your passion that can just feel like I don't know awful stress there are people out there that will help with this. So if you have the option to hire somebody, there are a whole group of people called professional photo managers. This is what they do. Some of them will help you just organize your digital files. Some of them will actually work with companies to digitize things older you know prints and things and some of them do them do it themselves. It just depends on who you work with and our company actually help connect you with one of these people If that's a solution that you want to pursue.
Speaker 1:What I love about what you just said is this happened to me today is my coworker was showing me a very old photo and it was all these people from I don't even know what the time period was, but they were holding a baby and the baby in the photo was my coworker, who was 54, her grandpa, and she didn't know anyone else in the photo other than that that baby was her grandpa. Recognition and the tagging of the people. That would be so awesome for that example, exactly Because her dad, so her dad's even she's 54, he's probably 70 something. He's trying to work on this family tree situation and this memoir and this book and going through old photos like that and then you're trying to figure out who people are.
Speaker 2:What an awesome solution right there and then you're trying to figure out who people are. What an awesome solution right there it is and it's really, it's tremendously fulfilling to do and it creates such a bond and connection with the family members who are working on it. And then when you're able to share those things out I know my dad's been texting pictures that he's been finding and scanning, sending them to me, sending them to my cousin, sending them to his cousins, and these are pictures of people that they've never seen of themselves, and then they're able to add additional context of oh, I remember this and this was also happening at that time and Miley lets you, with titles and captions and keywords, record all that information and even add the date. So when you scan something in, it's typically going to come into your computer at the date that you scanned it. Miley will let you change that date so you can put it where it actually belongs.
Speaker 2:And it's really cool, it actually organizes things on a calendar for you. So once you get those dates in there and it doesn't have to be an exact date we do what also is called fuzzy dates. So if you only know the decade or a timeframe or it looks like, okay, I can see on the back that was 1956 and it looks like it was Christmas. You can say winter 1956. You can be, you know, as specific or as general as you want for these dates and then it puts it all on a calendar for you so you can see your life and the life of your ancestors in pictures and just scroll. It's so cool.
Speaker 1:So does the MyLeo app have like a feature where you can have your whole family on there, so that everyone can be kind of working in the same workspace?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have family plans. There's two different versions of it that we have right now, so you can get an individual plan which is just for your personal use. Family plans let you have up to five people on the account, so you're sharing the account and we will actually walk you through setting up the permissions so everybody's able to access what they're supposed to access and you can say you know what? Aunt Betty, she can look at things, she can tag faces, but we don't want her to be able to delete anything. So you can go ahead and set up those kinds of permissions.
Speaker 2:And we walk you through all that setup. That's part of the package for the family plan that we offer, and then the next level up is for up to 10 family members and that comes with additional cloud storage as well. So there's a lot of different solutions that we have for different family size groups and what you're trying to accomplish. And yeah, it works amazing. So tell me okay. So let's say I'm like yeah, it works amazing.
Speaker 1:So tell me okay. So let's say, I'm like, oh, I'm listening to this podcast and I'm like Mylio was made for me. So I go to my app store and I type in Mylio, m-y-l-i-o, and it will pop right up, right, yep, you download the app. Then what happens?
Speaker 2:Do you pick your plan or the easier way to do this is going to be to start on your computer, so wherever your kind of main workspace is going to be, you can start from a phone.
Speaker 2:It's just going to be you're going to have a better experience if you start from the computer. So I would go to myleocom and there's going to be two options there on the homepage. One is to book a demo and the other one is, if you're going ready to purchase, you can go ahead and jump right in. I would recommend booking a demo because that one of our experts is going to get on a one-on-one call with you, see what it is you're trying to accomplish and guide you into the right plan for you. It also gives you a chance to see, you know, what Miley is capable of. They'll show you a library that has things already organized and what it can do for you From there. Once you decide you want to purchase, you'll get handed off to one of our other experts for onboarding and we will have another person who will walk through that initial setup with you. Whether it's just you for an individual plan, or if you're wanting to onboard up to five or 10 family members, we'll help you with setting up everyone in your account, Okay.
Speaker 1:I just seem so easy, so let's so you do this. And then how long does it take to go from photo chaos to organized so it's.
Speaker 2:It really is a winding path for a lot of people, and especially because we're constantly creating more pictures, right? So it's not like a here's the box. We're going to organize this box and we're done it with. As content creators especially, we're making new pictures, new content every single day, so it's never a. I don't like to give people the impression that it's a one and done. Um, it's a process.
Speaker 2:But to go from a point where everything is chaos to a point where you're like, okay, at least I know where to find stuff, I know my stuff is being backed up, that you you know, depending on how big your library is, a couple of weeks to a couple of months poking at it here and there. It's not like you have to give it 40 hours a week at that point I don't want to give people that impression. But from there, you know, you can go in, you can do your face tags, you can start doing more research and adding those additional details. If you want to start moving things around into different folders and things like that, you can spend a lot of time if you want, or just getting everything in the program.
Speaker 2:You have access to that calendar view that I mentioned, it also has a map view. So anything that has GPS location information shows up on a map. So if you find things based on when it was taken, that calendar is awesome. The map shows you based on where things were taken and then, once you start tagging people, the people view groups together, all of the people you've tagged, so you can just click on a certain person and be like there's all of their pictures and that doesn't require you to do a whole lot of manual stuff other than the face tagging, which is a lot of fun. I find it to be kind of like a game.
Speaker 1:So you coach? Do you coach photography? Oh my gosh, I can't speak. Do you coach photographers through MyLeo, or is that something that you do on the side?
Speaker 2:So I some of my clients do use MyLeo. I coach in a lot of other programs as well, so I've been doing the photography coaching long before I ever knew MyLeo existed. And my photography coaching really centers on workflow management for serious amateur photographers and professional photographers usually people who are running their own business and want to have their professional images organized and backed up and be able to again get to them when they need them. So there is a lot of overlap. Myleo is a great choice for some of these people. Some people already have a system and I help them with whatever system they already have built, so it just depends on what they need. And then I also coach on creative post-processing. So if somebody wants to help hone their creative style and how to make their creative style come alive using software, I can coach them on that as well. Yeah, that's nice, A hundred percent like full circle, yeah, 360.
Speaker 1:I think coach them on that as well. Yeah, that's nice. 100%. Like full circle, yeah 360, I think they call that Not 100%. So you had talked earlier about when you wanted to be a photographer, like you were scared of doing weddings, which I feel like. That is super stressful too, and people have such high expectations of everything like turning out perfect for that day because they're going to remember it forever and you don't want to be the person who doesn't make them happy.
Speaker 1:So tell me, how do you take photographs and make them tell a story when it's not just like? All right, everyone smile Because there's so much more things that you can photograph other than just people.
Speaker 2:So if I'm say, at a family event and I'm wanting to capture not just the people, you can do your posed, groups and things like that, but you also want to capture those interactions. So you see, you know maybe a granddaughter leaning her head on a grandmother's shoulder and like, capture that moment. Or you capture it in on the hands of the grandson helping the grandfather get up and move around. You know, things like that. Those little tiny interactions I think are super important. And then you can also tie in different things from the day.
Speaker 2:So if it's a big family event, there's going to be, you know, food and different things going on. Trying to capture the vibe of the event. I think is a be you know food and different things going on, trying to capture the vibe of the event. I think is a really good way to do that. But really those, those small family interactions that are unscripted, unposed, I think are the most meaningful. They might be the pictures that initially people look at and go like I don't like the way I look in that picture. I look really awkward, but that's the one that 10, 15 years from now they're going to look at and be like oh my gosh, that's the most special picture. I'm so glad you grabbed that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because people always say like I wish I was as fat as the first time I was fat. I wish I was as brown haired as the first time. I thought I had brown hair before I colored it blonde, like. We always go back and think like, oh, it wasn't as bad as we thought that it was, especially as we get older, right. Then you're like oh, hey, actually I did look good back then. Photojournalism has gotten so big. My sister just got married a few months ago. The things that they take photos of you're kind of like eh, I don't really know if I'm ever going to look at that. But then when you're going through the photo album it's like oh my gosh, that turned out so good. Like who would have thought you would want a picture of I don't know the background, yeah, the veil blowing in their faces and them cracking up laughing because stuff wasn't going right.
Speaker 2:Those seem like kind of the bloopers, but those are the moments that you look back on and go wow.
Speaker 1:Because it's so candid, right, it's not so fake and staged? Yeah, because I see a lot of pictures of people and they look so happy. But then you always hear people say, like you can fake it till you make it right. You never really know what those people are going through. But sometimes, like you said, if you're photographing like a family event like, let's say, it's somebody's your grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary it kind of is like a wedding where you want to get those little details of the cake and just like people interacting and dancing and different people that you might not see all the time. So that's what the weather was like that day so many people talk about.
Speaker 1:Oh, remember when we got married and it was raining out or whatever, or it ended up being like the worst thunderstorm ever, or I got married in May and it snowed. You know, all those things happen and sometimes we forget about that. And then when you go and you're looking through your pictures, it just helps you remember all the small details. Absolutely. Is there anything else that you want to tell us?
Speaker 2:Let's see Just that. Photos are so important and don't take them for granted both the capturing of them and making sure that they're safe and secure. Take a look at where your stuff is being backed up. Make sure you've got enough storage. If you need help with some of that stuff, think about contacting MyLeo. It's a great solution and we'll do whatever we can to help.
Speaker 1:And it's 100% free to go to myliocom, m-y-l-i-ocom and just check out their website and see what they have to offer. It never, ever hurts, just to look right.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and you can book that demo for free and you get to talk to a person and they will show you what's possible and go through whatever your scenario is, to see if we can solve that problem.
Speaker 1:So I'm naive about this stuff. So let's say that I lose my phone. It falls into the lake, never to be found again. So then I get a new phone or a new computer, or I have my computer. I have like a login so that I can always. It will just be there. It's not on the actual device, it's in the cloud, as they say.
Speaker 2:So Miley is an application and it reads your pictures from where they live. So ideally it's going to be on, like, say, that hard drive vault that you have in your house. What's going to happen you get a new phone is you go to the app store, install the Miley app, log in with your account. It's going to talk to your computer in that hard drive and it's going to pull your pictures right back in.
Speaker 1:So if there was a fire in your house and you lost your backup drive and your computer and your phone, then what happens?
Speaker 2:That's where having offsite storage is really critical. So, whether you use our cloud, we've got a service called MyLeo Drive Plus that you can add on to your subscription or you can bring your own cloud. We work with Google Drive, microsoft OneDrive or any S3 cloud service. So that's like your Amazon AWS, backblaze, b2, I believe, wasabi there's a bunch of them out there Anything that uses that S3 protocol for cloud storage. You can bring that and you can connect that to your Miley Photos account and create that offsite backup. So that's the bring that and you can connect that to your Miley of Photos account and create that offsite backup. So that's the part that protects you.
Speaker 2:The other thing people, if they don't want to use the cloud which there are a lot of people out there who are very privacy focused and that's not something that they're interested in you can have a computer set up at a family member's house with another hard drive connected. As long as that internet connection is on and that program is running on that computer, that can also create an offsite backup for you. So, having something that's not in your main residence it could be your office If you've got a desk at work and you can connect a hard drive there and have that plugged in and have that running in the background. That can be also your offsite backup.
Speaker 1:Well, that's good to know. That makes it easier, and if you do the family plan, then multiple people will have access to it and then you don't have to worry at all. Exactly, yeah, all right, angela. Well, I don't know if I have any more questions for you, unless you have some for me.
Speaker 2:No, I think that pretty much covers it. I want to thank you for having me and I hope people find this interesting and helpful.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and if they have further questions, could they reach out to you? Or would they just go to like support on the website?
Speaker 2:So they can go to myleocom, but if they want to find me, the best place to do that is going to be at communitymyleocom, so it's our separate community from the homepage of the website. I'm the one that answers 95% of the questions there. The live events you find are going to be the ones that I typically host, so you can direct message me there. You can comment on something that I've posted and I will help you out.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Angela. Thank you.
