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Hate Instagram? Here are nine way better places to share photos

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Everybody hates Instagram.

Well, not everybody, but it sure sounded like that this week. You certainly heard two Kardashian sisters, a Change.org petition and high-profile bloggers raising their voices in opposition to Instagram’s shifting to a virtual all-video platform.

It’s all part of the effort for Instagram and sister app Facebook to try and catch onto the success of TikTok, the China based app that has made a huge dent in not just Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, but Google as well.

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How to shoot and produce a video series (almost) entirely on phone cameras

I recently returned from tiny Mendocino, California, a coastal town up the road from San Francisco, producing an episode of my PhotowalksTV travel series, and my inbox has been overflooded with questions about the process.

Do I really produce a travel photography series with just mobile cameras? (Mostly.) And how do I go about it? Thanks for asking. Let me tell you about it.

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Don’t leave your gear in your car: More smash & grabs in San Francisco

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I was in San Francisco this week to make an appearance on KRON4 TV, plugging PhotowalksTV (thank you Ken Maccarone!) and in-between, naturally, cruised all over the city photographing the magic.

I didn’t get robbed of camera gear this time, but it did happen near me, in real-time, to two people, as I stood in Alamo Square, photographing the “Painted Ladies,” the row of Victorian homes made famous in the opening credits to the old “Full House” TV show.

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The importance of teaming up with other photographers in your photo walks

Amy Joseph, who has a small gallery in tiny Pismo Beach, California, agreed to go on a photoshoot with me of her amazingly photogenic coastal town and led the way.

No, we weren’t going to photograph the Pier (everyone does that) and when I suggested doing the sunset from the top of the nearby hotel, she said no. “All we would get is a shot of the parking lot,” she said.

Instead, we walked left from the pier, about a mile, and ended up at a butterfly preserve that happened to have really nice trees. A spot she knew, but I didn’t. From this vantage point, we would photograph the sunset that way, through the branches.

And yes, the shot was amazing.

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How to clean up San Francisco from camera thefts

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If you missed the explosive report by KGO-TV reporter Dan Noyes on the theft epidemic in San Francisco, I want to both share his stories, and offer some common-sense solutions to a problem that’s gotten way out of hand.

You know that thieves in San Francisco (and elsewhere) are smashing the windows of cars to rob stuff, sensing that the police won’t chase or arrest them. Photographers have been followed by thieves, had their gear taken, which got quickly resold on the streets. They easily move laptops in broad daylight, and even though they’ve been recorded on video doing so, the city continues to allow it to happen, with few arrests.

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Amazon, Google, SmugMug, Apple: what’s the best home for your photos?

When last we met, I pointed out the perils of using Apple’s iCloud Photos for photo backup for one simple reason: if you delete an image off your iPhone, Apple will in turn also delete it from iCloud*.

This time I’d like to go over the best alternative photo backup options for you in more detail, because like it or not, in today’s world, just like paying for food, shelter and taxes, if you snap photos on your smartphone or camera, you will be paying for online storage. And paying more in the coming years as well, as you snap more images.

There’s no such thing as free backup anymore.

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Don’t use iCloud to backup your photos

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My friend Bill just returned from a family vacation in Costa Rica and shot lots of photos and video on his iPhone, including some killer shots of breakfasts with local monkeys.

No surprise that once he got home, he checked his iPhone storage and found that it was 98% full. Just a few more snaps, and he’d be totally out of room.

His solution? “I’ll just put them all on iCloud, and then delete them off my iPhone,” he told me.

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San Francisco’s top 10 photo hits you don’t want to miss

San Francisco isn’t the most visited U.S. city. In fact it’s no. 5, after New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Orlando, attracting 3.3 million visitors yearly, per the World Atlas.

But it happens to be the most photogenic, IMHO, with more photo eye candy per square mile than its competitors.

Think about it—the New York Empire State Building or the Golden Gate Bridge? Disney World or Cable Cars?

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Where NOT to bring your camera in San Francisco

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As you know, there has sadly been a raft of camera thefts in San Francisco of late, putting a spotlight on places you might want to think twice about hauling expensive camera gear with you the next time you visit.

The news reports on the thefts usually aren’t very specific about the exact location of the heists, so I thought I’d simply point them out here, in a little more detail, before you, like me, get victim to camera theft in the city.

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