We're just going to give it a minute here and see who might join us tonight on my live show. If you would like, you can say hello in the chat area or the comments. Tell me where you're from. I'd love to know. And we'll just kind of chill out here with this music. Interestingly, this music is, I think, a AI generated.
It is. I wish I could show you what I'm looking at. It says AI generated, and I just thought it'd be helpful to have a little background music while we just wait until it's 6:30 to start our show tonight. Now, let me click over on the chat. Just make sure I'm not missing anything there. We're all.
I guess it is 6:30. It is amazing how fast a minute flies by. So if you're just joining us, feel free to say hello in the chat. And let me know where you're watching from. It would be great. We're in Wisconsin and it's going to be -16 without the wind chill tomorrow. Let me just turn off the music and then we will get started.
There we go. Okay. Have you ever taken photos of a sign? Not like, you know, a sign, a parking sign. I mean, I know we take pictures of signs, like in buildings and, you know, parking lots and things like that. But I'm talking about a moment that you felt it was a sign for something in your life. And you take a photo of it.
Sometimes you're lucky and you get the photo and sometimes you don't. Well, I know from working with people's photo collections that we take photos of a lot of things that aren't necessarily family photos. And tonight I'm going to dive into that a little bit and talk more about, you know, the photos at nest that are more personal, personal to us and maybe, you know, won't be of interest to our future generations, but still important.
And before I kind of launch into the program, I'm going to say hello to James from Albuquerque. I'm hoping you stay with sometimes I. The internet might be difficult or you have something else going on. It's recorded so you can come back and catch what you might miss. And hello to this person from Tennessee and Shrum.
I'm so glad you're here. And this is the goal of Live with Mollie is to, you know, get inspiration. Maybe some answers to questions and just see what's going on in the photo organization and preservation world. So I'm glad you guys are here. And I'm going to just start off by saying welcome to Life with Mollie. I am Mollie Bartelt and I own Pixologie, where we have organized millions of photos over the years.
We started back in 2013, so I've seen a lot, and I've had to learn a lot along the way and I want to share it with people. So tonight on our program, you can certainly put questions in the chat area and I will answer them at a certain point. And if you have a comment or you want to share something, I'm always open to that as well.
If you're watching the recording, throw it in the comments. And if you're on Spotify listening, I highly encourage you to go over to YouTube and watch it there, because I do share visuals to help with telling the story of saving our photos.
So I'm going to start off with a couple announcements, and I'm going to share my screen here.
The first one that I want to mention is we have our cruise coming up. It's just weeks away, and I think there's still time to join. Krista, Cool Tech, and I are hosting a photo journey at cruise, and we're going to have classes and workshops, you know, in an informal way to make it fun. And I will mention that we have a prep session next week to help people prepare for going to sea and working on your pictures.
It seems like it might be difficult, but we've got fun things planned. So that's the cruise that's coming up. The other thing that's big news for us here at Pixologie is—whoops—I just started at the wrong place. We're going to go back here and I'm going to get to the right place because I have to kind of cycle through a whole bunch of slides.
So the big news that we have here at Pixologie is I am launching a new program. The classes are live starting on Monday night, and we have a workshop tomorrow night and Saturday. Okay. And the workshops I think are the key to getting things done with your photos. You know, I can teach a lot, and you can watch videos on YouTube for hours, but the real work happens for a lot of people when you're in a group setting, doing it together and you have it scheduled.
So we have this information. I'm going to post it in the chat and you can go check it out. There is a fee for it, but this program goes for a whole year of support. All right. And you can look in the show notes or the comments to get the links for it.
All right. And I highly encourage you to think about it. Like, I know people have been working on their photos on and off for decades in some cases. So the time is now while you can, you know, have a plan and have a support and structure to do it. So I want to throw that out there for you to consider.
And I think the only other thing that I wanted to say in terms of announcements is this Live with Mollie time. It is a good time to just sit and delete photos off of your phone. You know, just do something while I'm chatting. That's what happens in our workshops. A lot of times people are working and I'm answering questions and they're kind of picking things up that may be useful or not, but they learn from other people's questions.
So there is no question that you can ask that won't be helpful to someone else at some point.
And with that being said, I'm going to just say hi to Jill, who joined us from Indiana. Good to see you here tonight. And James did mention here that he takes photos, I'm assuming, of signs, mostly all drive-in theaters.
They have a lot of them. Oh, if they were digital, where can I find them? So if you're taking photos of drive-in theaters, we're going to talk about that a little bit later. And I'm going to come back to that.
Okay. All right. I need to tell you guys this. Last year—and I might have mentioned this last week—it's been a bit of a tumultuous time because my kids are now in other states from me for the first time in my life since December.
My daughter is out in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and my son is in boot camp in Cape May, New Jersey, Coast Guard boot camp. And it's been hard for me to be an empty nester. Chokes me up sometimes.
This past weekend, I was able to be out in Sioux Falls with my daughter, which really was a nice opportunity because she needed some help. She's a little lonely out there. She's 24, and, you know, it's just still trying to make her group of friends.
So I was visiting with her, spent three days—great. And I worry about her. And my son's out in Cape May, like halfway through boot camp, and he's having a hard time because it's boot camp.
So I'm on my way home Monday. I really was troubled. I left early, like before sunrise, because my daughter was working that day. And on the drive home, I got to see this.
As the sun was rising, there was a rainbow-like ring on the left-hand side of the sun. It's next to the semi-truck. And I was like, oh my gosh, a rainbow now.
It was frigid cold. And for the next three hours it was there. All right. Now, you can tell I took this picture through the windshield. I did that a few times, which I'm just telling you, do not take pictures through the windshield—it is not safe when you're driving.
But I was so moved by this. I really thought it was a sign, like the heaven opened up and God was saying everything's going to be okay.
And I took pictures over the next three hours it was with me. So you can imagine my phone had over 45 pictures of the sun, is what I was calling it.
It was amazing. And I did pull over a couple times into a rest area and I took more pictures. So clearly, of my 45-plus pictures, I'm going to delete the majority of these.
Maybe I'll keep a picture of the first one and the last one that I took at a rest stop. It really was something to see this.
And, you know, I texted my mother-in-law and I'm like, I know things are going to be okay. My kids are going to get through this. They're adults and life will be okay.
And then when I got home later in the day, I saw news. Oh—but before I tell you that, I have to tell you about this picture.
So this rainbow is—I called it a sun bowl. Well, I thought it was really significant because rainbows have always been around at important times in my life.
And what's really interesting is back when we started Pixologie, my friend Anne and I were here in this photo cutting the ribbon. The ribbon cutting ceremony, and a pastor gave a blessing.
And he said that God uses visual aids to remember. All right. So the rainbow was to remember an everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures.
And he mentioned that remembering is so important. I guess in the Bible the word remember is used over 160 times.
And so he said apparently it's important for us to remember things. And what better way to remember than with your family photos?
So I was like, is a sun bowl a rainbow with the sun? And I was just touched by it and the pictures mean a lot to me.
So when I got home later that day, I learned it wasn't a sun bowl at all. It was a sun dog, which made no sense to me.
But apparently a lot of people in Wisconsin saw this that morning. So I'm like, well, what is it? Why is it called a sun dog anyway?
And this is how you get distracted and down a rabbit hole. But I looked up what a sun dog is, and apparently they form with ice crystals, not raindrops.
And that's why they're not a rainbow or a sun bowl. It's a sun dog.
And apparently in long time past mythology, there is a legend that suggests these bright lights on the sides were like dogs accompanying the sun.
And it's true—they followed the sun as it rose. And so the bright spots appear to follow the sun like a dog following its master.
I think it's kind of a stretch, but it's called a sun dog.
And I've just really found it amazing to be on my journey home. And it's a seven-hour drive. And to have it there for three hours—it really meant a lot to me.
So when you think about the pictures that you take of signs, whether it is a physical sign, like I think James was referring to, or it's a sign of something else—whether it's faith or, you know, a peaceful moment—those things are personal to you.
And I like to just kind of think about how you save these.
Usually, you know, your family probably isn't going to care about these as much as you in the future. And I like to put the background of saving photos up here so that you can see where it might fit.
All right. We have organize and digitize and preserve. Now, when you have a digital picture, you don't have to digitize it. And if you save it in a folder chronologically, you know, my picture will end up in my January photos.
But sometimes those pictures that you take for personal reasons, maybe you want to put them in a folder or an album separate from your family photos.
That's up to you. Sometimes I tend to add a tag. And I want to just point out in the preserve area that tags is one of the tasks.
Adding tags to a picture is one of the tasks that you can use to get a grouping of pictures together.
So you add a tag and over time you start to have a collection of pictures.
I'll give you an example. Flowers is one of my tags, and you can see I have flowers that I took in May 2021, June 2019, and more if we were to scroll down.
These pictures are in my albums elsewhere, but I've tagged them so that when I click on the word flowers, everything comes up.
And I'm the only one who's going to care about these flower pictures in the future.
Unless they're so good my upcoming generations want to try to sell them—but I don't think that's going to happen.
I think like my dad took pictures of horses. Well, we know what was important to him when he was alive. But they're just not family-worthy saving.
So a tag is one way that you personally can bring a collection together.
Another example is I do have a tag for church pictures. And these are photos that are of my family.
So they're in their folders or albums chronologically, but I tagged them with the word church because sometimes it's nice to just click on a tag and scroll back and look through your pictures.
And kind of get a sense of what you did or what was important.
So the church photos—I have them going back to the early 2000s.
Now, if you are taking photos of signs—let's just say that's something that's really meaningful to you—then you could have a folder or an album of signs, like old drive-ins.
I know sometimes I've had a client who's really interested in old farms. So he had photos of some of the farms, but he also researched and found pictures online that he could download and save to that same farm album.
So I hope, James, that might help you think about if having photos of old drive-in signs is of interest.
If you would enjoy looking at a variety of them, you could get them into a folder on your computer or wherever you're saving your pictures.
So the idea is to save your photos in a way that you can find them. And especially the ones of signs, whether they're metaphorical or physical, would be a good use for a tag.
James is asking, can you have multiple tags? For sure.
So for instance, if we just look at this example of the kids in their confirmation gowns, I have tagged confirmation and church.
And the reason is because sometimes I've wanted to just look at confirmation photos.
So when I go to the confirmation tag, I see my kids' confirmations. I see my husband's confirmation. I was not confirmed, so I don't have any.
But yes, a picture can have as many tags as you want. I've never seen a situation where you didn't have enough room for tags.
So that's a good question.
And that is a little bit about saving pictures that are personal to you, but maybe not necessarily to your family.
There are like ten different ways to save things. You just have to find something that works for you and then be consistent in doing it.
All right. So with that, I am going to dive into some questions that my viewers had shared with me before.
All right. So with that, I am going to dive into some questions that my viewers had shared with me before. So let me just share my screen here again and get those questions up.
This next question that has come across my radar on my channel was related to a gentleman who had parents who used a PC, and he was a Mac user.
So that is a little bit challenging. And so he found my video online and was able to save his pictures to the PC. The video is just on getting your iPhone photos down from iCloud to your PC.
And he wrote, you know, thank you for the video. I'm on a Mac, but my parents are on Windows.
I want to just tell you this is the prime reason why I have to cover both Mac and PC topics. It's inevitable that someone who is using an iPhone is using a PC. That's the largest combination of devices that I see—an iPhone with a PC.
And then you have Mac users who have a family member that has an Android phone. The devices and the operating systems crisscross so much that I just have to be able to answer all those questions, because otherwise we're going to probably miss something and not be able to help in a well-rounded way.
So that is why I am going to talk a tiny bit right now about a Mac program called QuickTime.
I was speaking to a client today on the phone, and he was wondering about editing videotape that had been transferred from a VHS file.
So I'm going to minimize this, and I want to bring this video over here.
So here is this. It says Pixel Log Bar 12. This is a video that I had transferred the year that it was made—or videotaped on. One of the original VHS recorders, I think, was 1986.
All right. It's a horrible-quality video, and that's because VHS tapes have degraded. I mean, their lifetime expired like ten years ago.
So all of that magnetic stuff on the tape is falling off. So this transfer was not good.
I did send it out to another higher-quality company for transferring to see if I could get it any better. And usually it's not because of the transfer process; it's because the video is in such bad shape.
Well, anyway, when I opened the program—so I double-clicked on the video—and on a Mac that automatically launches QuickTime Player.
All right. So you can see it up at the top here. It says QuickTime Player.
So you can play it. And I'm just going to go a tiny bit here and hit play.
That's me on crutches, and that's my cousins. My grandmother is on this. My mom is on it. The voices and hearing it is so wonderful.
I know it's not a good-quality tape, but it's better than nothing.
Well, anyway, often when you have a VHS tape transferred, you don't want all of it, right?
There is a soccer game. You need like five minutes of the best moments—if you can find your kids on it—or you just need a small section of it.
QuickTime Player is so easy to use.
So I know on this video it splits off to another event that my family was not at. It was my cousin's family.
So I'm using the little bar here to move it along.
And I think right around here is where our part ends.
And with QuickTime, you can just—it's Command-Y—and you split it.
It's a little hard to see here, but there's a little split here. And I'm going to just delete that off.
Now, the moment I clip it and cut it, it's an untitled copy of the original video.
So the original video is still safe in my Downloads folder.
And then I'm going to just click and export at 480. And that really refers to the quality. It was transferred that way. QuickTime doesn't make it any bigger.
If you wanted to make it bigger, it won't improve the quality at all. It would just make a bigger file for you. You would do that in iMovie.
So I can just export it and then save it on my desktop. And I would just call this Part 1.
And sometimes people have different parts that they want to save on their computer.
So now this is still untitled. If I go and show you my desktop folder, you can see I have Part 1 saved there. I still have the original video in my Downloads folder, and I'm still working with the untitled one here.
So what's really cool is you can undo the delete, and then that brings back my clip. And maybe now I'll delete the first part and then save this section as Part 2.
So now instead of having one long video, I have two parts.
And you can just re-edit a video like that. QuickTime is super easy for that.
And it's funny that Apple has QuickTime Player because it has not changed in four years.
I couldn't remember if I had a video on this on YouTube, and I actually did find it.
QuickTime has not changed in four years, so that video works. And I put that link in the chat.
Apple's movie editor—iMovie—has not changed in four years.
So it's crazy when you think about all the updates that happen to your phone and your iPad and your Mac. Things keep changing, but something like QuickTime and iMovie haven't.
And people are really looking for better solutions to edit video.
And I'm so afraid that it's going the way of having to edit videos on phones.
It really seems like they want people to be editing video on phones.
There's a lot of video editors for phones, but I don't know—I'm over 50—and editing on a little screen does not work for me.
So for Mac users, we have QuickTime and iMovie.
If you're a PC user and you want to edit a family video that's been transferred, Clipchamp is the program that you would use for that.
So hopefully that answers the question. I was talking to Larry today. I don't know if he's on now. I said I would kind of demonstrate that tonight.
Okay. Let's go back to the other questions.
And for sure, if you have a question, just throw it in the chat. I'll happily answer it here.
So we're going to go to another Apple thing.
And I really sometimes feel like a lot of people are using Apple products more. So if you have an Android, you should probably let me know and then I'll be sure to do more that way.
So let me just show you this little screen here.
Another person mentioned that Apple wants to do it all for you magically.
So your photos on your iPhone even sometimes end up in iCloud unbeknownst to you. Or maybe you know it, but you don't understand exactly how it works.
And again, someone was watching this video about downloading them, and he wrote, I'm old-fashioned and I want to keep it on my external hard drive.
I definitely agree we should keep our pictures on an external hard drive—a copy of them for sure.
It's fine to have them on your phone and in iCloud and other sources, but you want to have a copy on an external hard drive.
Someone else commented—it's not new-fashioned or old-fashioned.
Mark McVay wrote, it's not new-fashioned or old-fashioned, and he mentioned that Apple just wants money for storing our photos.
I'm sure there's some altruistic thought that Apple is trying to help people save their photos in the best way, but one of these days I would like to talk to those people there.
Anyway, I love the comment that he's asking or mentioning—it's not new-fashioned or old-fashioned.
And I wrote, I fear the day when external hard drives will be considered old-fashioned. I think the day is coming. Not yet. But apps and cloud storage really seem to be the trend.
Now, speaking of old-fashioned, something that is old-fashioned is discs—CDs and DVDs.
And I just posted a video on getting photos off of discs. This is something you want to do sooner rather than later for a variety of reasons.
And I put a link in. If you wanted to watch this video, it's not public yet, but you guys can watch it if you like.
They are old-fashioned. And when someone asks me to save photos to a disc, I have to have the conversation.
It goes like this: they're dead. It's a dying media.
And they're like, okay, okay—USB drive now, or iCloud link.
It's just—I'm just the messenger.
All right. Let me see if I think I had one other thing to touch on.
Oh—so I got an email from Kathy today actually, or yesterday maybe.
She just got a download that we had shared, and she's purchased an Epson FastFoto scanner and she's starting to organize her many, many photos.
Totally commendable, and the info should be helpful.
And she's trying to keep a good attitude as she starts this project.
I love that line. I actually haven't heard it phrased like that before.
I know that people are frustrated and overwhelmed with their pictures, and keeping a good attitude is really important because that means you'll continue on with it.
So I have a few thoughts on this.
And the first one is you've got to put good music on—really good music.
And a couple years ago—three or four years ago—I made a playlist on Spotify called Photos and Memories.
These are songs that have the words photos or photographs or memories, or they deal with the topic.
Now, I grew up in the 70s and 80s and 90s, so some of this is like a Generation X music list.
And I love listening to this while organizing pictures.
Sometimes they make me cry. Sometimes they just get me going.
So even if it's not this list—which there's a link for you—find good music to help you motivate and get a plan to pace yourself.
Because photo organizing doesn't come together in a day or a weekend.
I've had people who are literally working on their photo collections for going on five years now with me helping.
And life does get in the way.
So just know it's a marathon, not a sprint, to finish your pictures.
All right. Those were the topics that I wanted to talk about tonight.
I am going to talk about the new iPhone update that is coming—or is here.
I've heard a little bit about the iPhone being updated, and I very strongly have recommended that people keep their iPhones and their iPads updated to the latest version.
I just think it's a really good practice so that when I'm talking about a feature on a device, we're on the same page.
And I heard all about the new iPhone update.
I'm going to share my screen here because this is kind of interesting—it was not a real good update.
So iOS for the iPhone came out, I think, in September last year.
I remember my son getting it, and I knew there was a different look to the icons.
Then I got busy. We had the holidays.
And now they have this new version that came out a few days ago, and people are really bashing it.
You can see the headlines here. It's not looking good. Everything wrong. It's a massive flop.
And I have not updated yet.
So I went to my phone today and realized I'm still on iOS 18, which came out last August.
So I realize I missed the last update, and now I'm going to do it.
And next week's program, we're going to talk about another update—another headache.
I'm going to talk about the new iPhone update and any other topics that come across my radar.
So yeah, if you've got a question, you can pitch it my way, and I'll talk about it.
Speaking of that, James has a new comment here.
He tries to do scanning with a friend because music makes you go to sleep.
Yes—scanning with a friend is a really good idea.
Just in general, if you can work on your pictures with someone else and you're both focused, that really is a great way to do it.
We have our workshops here.
We have a handful of people—maybe up to 12. We had 19 for one workshop.
And we're just all working and answering questions.
And it really helps you keep on task, but maybe pick up a few things and not fall asleep or get distracted and go do the dishes.
And then you don't come back to your photos.
All right.
If there are no other questions for this evening, then I'm going to wrap up.
I really appreciate you joining tonight.
And I would just invite you to share a video of mine from YouTube with other people, because I'm really on a mission to help people know that there's help out there to save their pictures.
There are other professional photo organizers and photo estate planners out there like me.
And I'm just afraid that technology is going to whiz by and we're going to lose some of our opportunities to save photos.
All right, you guys. Thank you so much for joining this evening.
We'll see you next week. Take care. Good night.
