Breakfast with Smitten Films-Making the Most of Your Memories
Father’s Day is around the corner. Every year I feel so challenged with what to get Doug as he truly doesn’t like getting physical presents. Luckily, last year I discovered the perfect, meaningful Father’s Day gift from me and the girls!
What is this mystery gift? A video from Smitten Films created from all of our family photos and videos from the past year. Doug was so moved by last year’s video and we have watched it on repeat all year. I already have another one in the works for this Father’s Day.
I love what Smitten does so much that last week I hosted a breakfast with founder Lisa Ridd where she spoke about how to best capture, store and enjoy digital footage. As I quickly learned most of my friends are like me with tens of thousands of photos and videos just sitting on their phones!
Our talk with Lisa was so valuable to all of us. With kids it is so easy to take tons and tons of footage, never do anything with it and let it create “dust” on your phone. Some of my favorite tips from Lisa included:
Photos are great but video is better
When your kids are all grown up you will truly cherish videos of them when they were little. Photos just can’t capture their sweet little baby coos and childlike voices.
Turn your phone horizontally when shooting
Get a Pop Socket or ring stand ( I love this one!) and turn your phone horizontally when shooting. People take in information from left to right, not up and down so horizontal is a more natural way for us to look at images.
Shoot the everyday
Staged, formal photos have their place on walls and holiday cards. Make sure you are shooting the everyday moments of your life. The sound of your baby cooing. Your kids excitement when they first get to the park. Your daily walk to school. These are the memories that make up our lives.
Get the beginning then put it away
In order to not live your life with your phone in hand t capture the beginning of a moment and then put your phone away. If kids are doing something cute they will usually only do it briefly.
Back it up
Make sure you have both a cloud based ( like iCloud or dropbox) and physical backup ( like this hard drive) system. Know that physical hard drives do not have eternal lifespans and need to be updated and replaced every 5 years.
Clean out your phone like you clean out your closet
If you are like me and have 30,000 photos on your phone take some time each week to clean them out. Delete duplicates, random shots you took for reference, blurry photos. A clean photo library will help your devices run more smoothly.
Do something with your footage
Whether it’s an annual photo album or a video like the ones Smitten makes do something with your footage. I am now going back and having Lisa make first year videos for both girls and am so happy about it!
It wouldn't’ be a breakfast without, well, breakfast! As Lisa spoke guests noshed on a plant based spread created by my dear friend Chef Carlin Greenstein. The delicious menu for the morning included:
Apple Fennel Spritz
Seasonal market greens with pickled red onion, dates, toasted pistachios + preserved lemon vinaigrette
Vegan smoked salmon ( made from carrots!), chive (almond) cream cheese, sliced tomato and diced red onion on open faced gluten free toast
House made granola, coconut yogurt + strawberry rhubarb compote
