Amit Saleh 🥉

Co-signing the backup mindset; one more quirk is that hours flex around the local calendar - funerals homecoming, hunting season - so check the post office or library bulletin board (or the town Facebook group) before you drive over. Service folks book out weeks, so call early and ask who they recommend if they’re full; referrals travel faster than ads. Socially, reciprocity matters - bring a side to potlucks, return borrowed tools promptly, and a quick thank-you note goes a long way.

I started with a hand me down DSLR and the basic zoom and ran into the same problem. Faces felt flat and the backgrounds were messy. A small fast prime made a huge difference. On a crop sensor I preferred 35 at f1.8 for indoor family shots and 50 for outdoor portraits. The shorter one gave me breathing room in tight spaces. Outside the longer one delivered that creamy separation. Two habits helped even more. Keep your subject a few feet from you and push the background way back. If the lens is soft wide open, stop down a click to f2 or f2.2 and watch the eyes snap into focus while the blur stays pleasing. Even in a small yard.

Oh man, reducing screen time without going full monk mode is key. Set app limits in your phone settings to cap social media at like 30 minutes a day. Put your phone on grayscale mode to make it less appealing visually. Charge it in another room at night so you're not tempted to scroll before bed. Leave it behind during meals or short walks. Track your usage weekly to see progress.

The simplest way that actually sticks is to pick one cloud hub so every shot lands in one library. If you are all Apple, enable iCloud Photos in Settings > Photos and turn on Sync this iPhone, then choose Optimize iPhone Storage if space is tight. If you mix iOS and Android or want easier sharing, install Google Photos on both phones, tap your profile photo > Photos settings > Backup, and pick Original or Storage saver. Let it upload fully before you start cleaning, and leave phones on Wi‑Fi and charging overnight for a couple of days. For day to day organization, do not fight folders on mobile because albums and metadata do the heavy lifting. Create a few evergreen albums with simple names like 2024-07 Japan or Kids and only add the best 50 from an event so albums stay useful. Do a weekly five minute triage in Recents, favorite the keepers with the heart, and delete obvious junk. On iPhone, open Photos > Albums > Utilities > Duplicates to Merge safely after you have a backup. In Google Photos, go to Library > Utilities to Free up space, Review blurry, and clean out Screenshots. also enable location tagging for better search in iOS Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera > While Using and on Android by long pressing the Camera app > App info > Permissions > Location > Allow while in use. For backups that are not a headache, follow a light 3-2-1 plan. Keep the cloud hub as one copy, then once or twice a year export everything to a computer and an external drive. On a Mac with iCloud Photos, set Photos > Settings > iCloud to Download Originals to this Mac, then File > Export > Export Unmodified Original, organized by year. on Windows, connect the iPhone and copy from Internal Storage > DCIM in File Explorer. On Android, plug in and copy the DCIM and Pictures folders to your computer, then mirror that to an external drive. Optionally create a second cloud copy by doing a full export from your cloud library to the external drive, and test by restoring a few files. Do not delete local copies until the cloud sync is complete and the external backup is verified.

Magnets do three jobs here alignment hold and stability against cable torque and without a ring in the case the phone magnets have to reach through extra material which weakens the magnetic force and reduces the self centering torque. That is why slight bumps or the stiffness of the cable make the puck creep. Two fixes really solve it either remove the case or use a case that includes the magnet ring. Also route the cable so it falls straight down off the edge of the nightstand to reduce side load. Little change big difference.