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[00:00:03] Aaron Nace: Hello, my name is Aaron Nace. I’m the founder of phlearn.com. Welcome to the Workflows Podcast.
[00:00:11] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Aaron, it’s been a long time since we talked the last time we talked. I, I can’t believe it’s been this long, but was when I had the last podcast at the, for the last company I worked at. So crazy that it’s been that long.
I can’t believe it. It shouldn’t be that long from here on, but, but so nice to have you on. It’s nice to see you again and to, and to chat. I’m excited for this.
[00:00:36] Aaron Nace: Yeah. So good to see you again and uh, yeah, I know time just keeps flying by, you know, here we are still, still doing it and loving every day, so it’s
[00:00:46] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yep.
[00:00:47] Aaron Nace: well. I.
[00:00:48] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: for sure. so we’re gonna, we’re gonna dive right into things here. Um, as listeners of the show already know, I’m typically speaking with, [00:01:00] with photographers that are, that are, um, actively. Shooting, you know, doing weddings, doing family sessions, whatever it might be. Um, while you might still shoot these days, you’re primarily educating, which is fantastic.
You’ve been
[00:01:12] Aaron Nace: Yep.
[00:01:13] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: so long, you’re extremely good at it. So I wanna approach this conversation from your experiences for different work workflow aspects, as somebody who is, not only doing it yourself. But also Ed, and, and teaching, but also like directly working with many photographers who have different workflow questions, different ways that they need to approach how they work with their photos.
So,the first thing that, I would love to hear from
[00:01:42] Aaron Nace: Yeah.
[00:01:42] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: of what is, your take on the photographers that photograph raw.
[00:01:48] Aaron Nace: Mm-hmm.
[00:01:49] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Versus the photographers that photograph jpeg. And
[00:01:52] Aaron Nace: Right.
[00:01:52] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: because one, I know just from the up to this conversation, this was a topic that was [00:02:00] important for
[00:02:00] Aaron Nace: Mm.
[00:02:01] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: also Imagen we support both of JPEG and raw shooters, and most of our AI profiles by far are raw. But
[00:02:12] Aaron Nace: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:12] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: for built-in profiles that are jpeg.
[00:02:14] Aaron Nace: Yeah.
[00:02:16] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, I wanna hear from you raw verse jpeg. What, why, how all the fun stuff.
[00:02:22] Aaron Nace: That’s a really good, it’s a really good question. You know, I feel, so, I, I really love photo editing. You know, I, I love photography. I love to take pictures. I. But I, I’ve found, you know, very early on that you know, the camera’s only gonna get you so far. And using post-production software, you can really draw out so much more of a photograph, um, and kind of like just bring it true to life, to maybe how you saw it in person.
Whether you’re highlights are a little bit too bright, or your shadows are a little bit too dark. The more information you can capture with your camera, the more information you can work with when you’re [00:03:00] editing that photo in post-production. And so for me, shooting in raw just kind of like gives me that ability to really dial in and, and get the most out of my editing.
I really, and I’ve. Talked about this in, in kind of like did the side by side comparisons in the past. But really the big thing for me in terms of raw is the color. let’s say you photograph something and your white balance is off and you’re shooting in baked jpeg, maybe you’re, you know, you photographed a, a wedding and you know, it’s, it’s inside and everything just kind of has like a yellowish tone to it.
You know, everything just kind of like, looks like the artificial light. With a raw image, it’s really easy to change your white balance and bring it back to a cooler tone, and it’s gonna look a lot more natural. With a jpeg you can change like the white balance, however, it, it doesn’t nearly come across as like a natural change.
It’s almost like, [00:04:00] like if you start off with an image that’s a little bit too yellow and then you try to make it cooler, it’s almost like you put a blue filter on the image, like the image doesn’t. Tend to look as natural, it tends to just start looking like you just, you know, kind of have like a, like a low opacity blue covering the image.
So, for me, like raw versus jpeg, white balance is kind of the biggest one. Like, yes, you do have more information in your shadows mid to and highlights, so if you wanna recover that information, like it’s there. But white Balance is kind of like the. The main, main, main determining factor, um, why I prefer to shoot raw, but I do understand why a lot of people like to shoot in JPEG and if it works for their workflow, then, then that’s fantastic.
and you know, different people love photography for different reasons. You know, some people really don’t like the editing side of photography and that’s totally okay. They want to take the pictures as you know, they want to deliver ’em to the client as [00:05:00] quickly as possible, and they don’t wanna spend a bunch of time on the computer.
and, and that’s totally okay. It’s down to personal preference. So I think, you know, if you have a workflow that works for you and it’s working for your clients, then no real reason to change things up. you know, every, every artist is gonna approach photography, you know, as in, in a different way. You know, my.
The way that I always approached it was like I was creating conceptual images and I would do an entire day’s photo shoot for one photograph. You know, whereas if you’re shooting a wedding, you are the total opposite, right? You’re taking many, many, many photos and you wanna work as quickly as possible. So, I would say it’s all about the workflow that, that works for you and like what you would like to get out of the end product.
[00:05:46] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, I think, uh, a big factor of it is storage, which I know we’re gonna get to that topic as well.
[00:05:52] Aaron Nace: Hmm
[00:05:52] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: which will, it’ll be a good, know, full circle once we get there.
But, on the topic of, of White Balance, um, with RAW [00:06:00] versus jpeg, one thing that I. I love from my own, behi, like behind the camera.
Part of my workflow is, I have my cameras set to black and white
[00:06:10] Aaron Nace: Okay. Yeah.
[00:06:11] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: raw, in raw because one, I’m colorblind. So, I don’t see perfect color anyway,
[00:06:18] Aaron Nace: Yeah.
[00:06:19] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I also find that I can focus more on the subject
[00:06:22] Aaron Nace: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:23] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: light and textures and contrast way better in black and white. Than it can with, a color photo.
So when I’m looking through the, my EVF, when I’m looking on the LCD, it’s black and white. When it actually
[00:06:35] Aaron Nace: Cool.
[00:06:36] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: is important to Lightroom, it’s showing a black and white. But because it’s raw, the color data is there,
[00:06:43] Aaron Nace: It is there. Yeah.
[00:06:44] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: to monochrome, basically, um, straight outta camera. Now, if I did this in jpeg, just have black and white photos,
[00:06:51] Aaron Nace: Right. Yeah. No, no chance. Yeah.
[00:06:54] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Right. So from, from, for anybody who’s like me, who’s doing this, they can’t do this in [00:07:00] jpeg ’cause now they’ve, what they did is just basically, unless they just wanna shoot black and white and that’s
[00:07:05] Aaron Nace: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:07:06] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: so, um, that’s another Similar to color, to, you know, color balance, white balance, the fact of removing color in camera when in reality it’s still there.
Um, which is a beautiful capability.
[00:07:20] Aaron Nace: it is cool.
[00:07:21] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: you wanted a. Set your, your, if your camera had a ceia mode and you wanted to shoot in CP but still have everything retained, could do it. It’s just, I I love that. I love, I love that capability and I have the Nikon zf, so it’s, it’s literally a to go from color to black and white.
[00:07:39] Aaron Nace: That’s cool.
[00:07:40] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: yeah, they made it so, so easy on that
[00:07:42] Aaron Nace: Wow. Yeah, I, uh, I, I shot in black and white. I had a, a Fuji.like, you know, one of those smaller, I don’t know, XT one or something like that. and I love to do like architectural and street photography and I shot primarily in black and white with that camera and I loved it. It was a really great experience.
but like you said, [00:08:00] shooting in RAW gives you the ability to get that color information back at any time. And I think, you know, really like that’s, that’s what shooting in Raw really is all about is you. You capture as much information as possible as the camera can possibly capture, and then you can decide later what to do with that information.
So you don’t, you know, you don’t have to use all of that information. You don’t have to go in there and edit it, you know? but if you want to, it’s there. So it’s, um, for me that always made sense. It’s like, well, let me, if I’m out here, you know, putting in the work, and I, you know, I’m out here taking these pictures, like, let me just.
Let me use my camera to the greatest capability of this device, and then I can decide later what I want to actually do with this. But,
[00:08:46] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.
[00:08:47] Aaron Nace: you know, it’s, uh, again, it’s, it’s up to the individual shooter. I do get, you know, situations where a person might wanna shoot in jpeg, like if you’re shooting a [00:09:00] wedding or a sporting event or something like that.
And. Maybe frame rate is incredibly important to you. You need to shoot in the maximum frames per second, or you need to, you know, keep your file storage as minimal as possible, or like super quick delivery to your clients. Or, or maybe you’re just a really experienced photographer who can really nail the shots that you need to in jpeg and you’re confident with that.
you know, I think there’s arguments for it for sure. but it’s, it’s gonna be down to the individual for sure. And, um. You know, I, I think, you know, storage is one of those things that like, as time moves forward, it just gets cheaper and cheaper, like financially. And, you know, like, I mean, when we first started, like, you know, I had like a, maybe a 32 gigabyte memory card was like the biggest I could buy, you know what I mean?
And that was like 200 something dollars or something. I don’t know. And now you got terabyte, you know, SD cards, right? Like crazy stuff. So,
[00:09:58] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: it
[00:09:59] Aaron Nace: um, [00:10:00] yeah. And so I think, you know, storage is one of those things where like, yeah, you do have to pay attention to it, but as we move forward, storage becomes less and less and less of an issue in my personal opinion.
so I, uh, that argument for me personally is. you know, I would rather just capture the high quality stuff and, and not worry so much about the storage, but, but that’s, again, it’s down to every individual, you know, if, if, yeah, if you really want to save on storage and save money. And also, you know, if you’re doing cloud storage, if you wanna save money with your file storage, that makes a lot of sense too.
So, I don’t wanna say there’s a right and a wrong way because I, I really, really think it’s down to the individual.
[00:10:44] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: one more question about, RAW versus jpeg when it comes to editing with, let’s say Photoshop’s, ai. Removal features, their, their content fill features, things like that. Do you notice from your [00:11:00] experience, you notice any, not necessarily performance changes, ’cause of course if it’s a jpeg it, you know, it should faster, but, um, in theory,
[00:11:10] Aaron Nace: Hmm.
[00:11:10] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: but, from the quality standpoint of what AI can produce in Photoshop, for example. Is it better with all the data it can get from the raw file versus the jpeg?
[00:11:22] Aaron Nace: In my experience, no, it’s not any better. I, and I don’t know how this works from a. Technical standpoint, but I think basically, I think what the AI does is take like a snapshot of your image and. Like relatively low resolution snapshot of your image. And you know, that’s gonna be a jpeg It’s, that’s honestly like a super compressed version of whatever you’re sending.
And then it uses AI to analyze that data and then sends back a super compressed version and then like decompresses and enlarges it back on your screen. So, um, anything that you’re gonna be doing with AI is actually [00:12:00] gonna be like, way lower quality than what you’d be able to capture in your camera. and I would say that, you know, the benefits of editing in raw are like, let’s say your white balance is off or your exposure’s off.
You can fix all that first, and then if you need to do some object removal and things like that, then you’re gonna be doing the AI on top of that. But I would say get your image looking the best it possibly can in your raw editing software, whatever program you’re using, and then use the AI stuff on top of that.
[00:12:32] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Cool.
let’s, let’s talk about, storage and organization. and, and how you are, you are going about it with all the. Enhancements and changes that have come over the years. ’cause like you, we’ve gotten from memory cards to hard drives, to ray drives, to NAS drives, to SSDE
[00:12:56] Aaron Nace: Oh. Uh, Ray drives. He just brought up a [00:13:00] headache for me. It’s like, why?
[00:13:03] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: yeah. So, so, um, I heard a, a little birdie told me that you’ve gun cloud
[00:13:10] Aaron Nace: Yeah, completely.
[00:13:11] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: this.
[00:13:12] Aaron Nace: Yeah. Yeah. Years and years ago I went completely cloud-based. Well, I mean, it started out like, I mean, you just ran through the entire gamut and I’ve been through it all, but you know, I’ve been working with a fantastic team of people for many years and.
[00:13:26] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:26] Aaron Nace: You know, it’s like, I’m not a, I don’t do everything myself, you know, like I, I do part of the process, but, you know, I have people that I work with all over the world and, you know, the idea of sending them hard drives is like, not feasible at all.
So, yeah, I, I have everything on the cloud and I have done that for years and years and years, and I, you know, I, I really.well, I don’t know. I, I don’t know. I don’t know why [00:14:00] I, to me it really just works. I’m trying to think of like a reason, like, so maybe some, arguments against being cloud-based are like.
File, upload times, you know, I mean, I have like relatively fast internet at my house. I use Dropbox primarily for, for my cloud-based storage. So, it’s not something where I’m actually manually hitting upload on an any file really. Dropbox just takes care of literally everything for me. and I have, you know, decent internet at my house, so it just kind of like I do my work and then I just.
Leave the computer and it just takes care of it for me. and then we do have to pay for cloud storage, but, for me it’s, it, it’s totally worth it. And the benefits that I get are that I can access all of my files. At any time, anywhere in the world, from any device I can get to my phone, you know, if I’ve recorded some content and you know, I’m out on vacation and someone needs to get access to, you know, whether it’s a [00:15:00] video or a photo, whatever it is, I can just send them a link directly from my phone.
yeah, to me it’s, it seems like, it’s, it’s the best solution, especially if you’re working with a team of people. yeah, I. I’ve gone through the same thing, like you said, hard drives and hard drives and raid arrays and backups and backups and backups and, you know, and at one point, I, I went through a move, you know, I, I moved outta Chicago a few years ago and I had a studio and I had just like boxes and boxes of hard drives, and I just threw ’em all away.
I was like, what is all this? I mean, I went through the process of uploading everything online first, but then I’m much like, I’m not gonna take all these hard drives with me like this is. It’s a, you know, and, and again, like I’m, I’m treading lightly. There’s gonna be people who are listening to this, who are like, really want to keep their hard drives and I’m, you know, I’m not gonna tell you what to do, like, this is just what’s worked for me.
But I, I like being very mobile. I like minimal setups. I mean, there was a time when I had just like, [00:16:00] so much gear and so much extra, extra, extra, extra everything. you know, I mean, there was a time when I owned, uh, many, many cameras and I didn’t use any of them except for one, usually, you know what I mean?
Like, uh, there was a time when I owned many, many lenses and personally, I’m just like, I want to be light. I want to be nimble, and I don’t want, I just don’t wanna have more stuff in my life that I don’t really need, if that makes sense.
[00:16:29] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:29] Aaron Nace: so I’ve, I’ve sold so much of my. Equipment. And, if I, if I haven’t used something in like a year, I get rid of it, you know, no matter what it is.
Like, and that’s pervasive in my entire life. It’s clothing, shoes, you know, like if I open a drawer and I find something that’s like, I haven’t used this in year, I just get rid of it, you know, lenses, cameras, drones, lights, I mean, literally anything that I, any possession. I’m just like, I, I [00:17:00] don’t want more clutter in my life.
so hard drives for me were just like an extra thing that I was finding that I didn’t really need. and so I’ve been cloud-based now for, you know, at least seven years
[00:17:14] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Wow.
[00:17:16] Aaron Nace: it’s been working extremely well for me and I haven’t lost a single file. And, um, you know, I, yeah.
[00:17:23] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: so how does it work with, let’s say just looking at, um, Dropbox’s, standard tier,
[00:17:33] Aaron Nace: Sure.
[00:17:34] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: or let’s say their professional tier, which is three terabytes of storage,
[00:17:37] Aaron Nace: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:17:38] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: and let’s say you have. My, my Mac studio has two terabytes of storage. I’ve got applications, I’ve got all this stuff.
I’ve got all my photos, which is right now is on its own SSD drive, clone to the other SSD drives.
[00:17:56] Aaron Nace: Yeah.
[00:17:58] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: and [00:18:00] it’s, I I need to get the, I, let’s say I want to take the step and go to a Dropbox, right?
[00:18:05] Aaron Nace: Yeah.
[00:18:05] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: How does it work when. You are running out of storage internally, but your Dropbox, I mean, I, I could be wrong ’cause I’d have, I haven’t used Dropbox in years.
I,
[00:18:15] Aaron Nace: Yeah,
[00:18:16] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: but doesn’t it need the local storage in
[00:18:20] Aaron Nace: no.
[00:18:21] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: it to Dropbox? How is it, how does it work to make this happen?
[00:18:25] Aaron Nace: Oh yeah. Okay. So it’s super easy. So basically like with Dropbox. It’s, it’s like an application you install on your computer and then any folder can be like a Dropbox folder. So,
[00:18:36] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:36] Aaron Nace: uh, my, the workflow that I’d use and that I would recommend to anyone if they’re considering Dropbox as a cloud-based storage is I set my Dropbox folder as like my main project folder on my computer.
So literally everything. That I make everything that I import, everything that I create, every Photoshop document, every video, every photo, every single [00:19:00] thing that I make as a creator or I use goes in my Dropbox folder. So I use the Dropbox folder as kind of like, you know, you C drive or your my computer, or like your main hard drive.
Like that’s just. The Dropbox folder for me is the very top level of organization, and then literally everything is just inside of that folder. So let’s say, you know, I record a Photoshop tutorial, you know, I’ll have my Dropbox folder, and in that I’ll have like a 20, 25 folder. And in that I’ll have like a 2025, you know, free YouTube folder.
And then in that I’ll have like the name and the. Title of that tutorial, and then in that I’ll have like, you know, my camera recording, my screen recording, my audio recording the Photoshop document before and after thumbnails, everything like that. It’s in there. So all that is in there, but it’s all nested within that Photoshop.
Or sorry, that Dropbox folder at the very high end. So [00:20:00] literally, anytime I’m done making any content on my computer at all, it automatically gets uploaded to Dropbox. And when I wanna free up space on my computer, all I have to do is right click on that folder and say, make online only.
So it just, it gets rid of it on my computer, but it stays online.
It stays, it stays in Dropbox on the cloud. And if I want that information be pulled from the cloud back onto my computer, I just right click on any folder and say, you know, make available offline and it just pulls it right down from the cloud and puts it right on my computer.
[00:20:31] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Will it automatically, let’s say, You’re filling up your, your, your local storage. Will it automatically go to online only if it detects, or do you have to manually
[00:20:44] Aaron Nace: you.
[00:20:44] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: folders?
[00:20:45] Aaron Nace: You, you do it manually. Yeah. And it’ll tell you, it’ll just, you know, you’ll get a little, uh,
[00:20:49] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.
[00:20:50] Aaron Nace: like, you know, Dropbox icon. It says like, Hey, you’re running outta storage on your local device.
[00:20:54] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:55] Aaron Nace: because I, I’m like a very organized person [00:21:00] when it comes to my computers. Like, and so for me it’s, it’s actually quite simple ’cause I just, you know, everything is organized by year.
Everything is organized by project. Everything’s organized by date, so. You know, if it’s just for instance, like, you know, a project I did a month ago that I just, you know, I don’t need immediate access right now, I just go right click and say, make online only. It just removes those files from my local device and puts them in the cloud.
So, I do this, you know, kind of frequently, but I, you know, I, I don’t have, lemme just go to my settings for my Mac computer. I have what, like storage. Like, I had a MacBook Pro that had like a huge amount of storage. Uh, I bought like a one with a crazy amount of storage ’cause like, I’m a photographer, I need all this storage on my computer.
Um, and then I never wind up using it. So my current computer has one terabyte of storage, which is, and I, I produce a lot of content. You know, I produce mainly video [00:22:00] content, so, you know, I produce, you know, more than a. I couldn’t throw out a number, but I’m, I’m producing probably a terabyte worth of content a month, you know what I mean?
Like.
[00:22:11] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yep.
[00:22:12] Aaron Nace: Like, ’cause I, I teach v like I’m, it’s videos. I, it’s like, you know, nonstop video content. They’re big, you know, it’s just big files. And in that I teach raw photo editing, so I, like, I produce a lot of content. but I, I just don’t keep any of it on my computer. As soon as I’m done with the project, I just say, get it off my computer.
I don’t, I don’t need it here. I don’t, you know.
[00:22:32] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.
Do you think that a workflow like this, because, and I’m, and let me preface this because,
[00:22:38] Aaron Nace: Yeah.
[00:22:40] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Lightroom catalogs are notorious for corrupting when you throw ’em into a cloud platform.
[00:22:45] Aaron Nace: Lightroom catalogs are notorious for corrupting in general. Lightroom catalogs are horrible. Forget.
[00:22:52] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: so do you think that a workflow like this where you’re utilizing a Dropbox, type platform [00:23:00] would work better for people not using Lightroom Classic and using more of a, even a,Lightroom desktop on the local side? Or, or, um, or just Photoshop Bridge or anything like that? That, I don’t know, like, maybe, maybe even the, the lower volume photographers rather than the higher volume.
Because if
[00:23:20] Aaron Nace: Yeah.
[00:23:21] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: now you need to down and you need to access, you have to download them all. Like
[00:23:25] Aaron Nace: Right. Yeah.
[00:23:25] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: think there’s a, that this workflow suits a, a certain type of photographer versus another? Mm-hmm.
[00:23:30] Aaron Nace: think it’s more of about a mindset, right? Like I think that like if we’re being truly honest with ourself, like do you need instant access to that photo shoot that you did six months ago?
[00:23:45] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: No, but the, the ones, the ones that you’re, that you just shot, right? You, that you would
[00:23:50] Aaron Nace: Yeah.
[00:23:51] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: have locally until you don’t need it anymore, but,
[00:23:53] Aaron Nace: Yeah. Which is usually what, like a month,
[00:23:56] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably.
[00:23:57] Aaron Nace: two months? I, I don’t know. You [00:24:00] know, un like un until you’re ready, like. You know, I, I’m a pretty organized person, so like when I, when I do a photo shoot, I have all of my raw images go into a folder. I have all my PSDs go into a folder. I have all my JPEGs go into a folder, whatever.
I export it out, right? And then, you know, when I’m, when I publish that project and I’m done with it, it’s like I don’t really need this on my computer anymore. let’s say a month from now, I’m like. Uh, well, I want to go look at that PSD again, or I want to go look at those JPEGs again. I just go right click on that folder and say, you know, make available offline.
And then, you know, in 20 minutes they’re back on my computer again. You know, it’s just, or if I wanted to get literally all the raw files back from that photo shoot on my computer again, I would just right click on the raw folder and say, make available offline. And then a couple hours later they’d be on my computer.
So. You know, it’s like for me, I, I don’t know. I’m [00:25:00] a, I I don’t think I’m a traditional, like, like I don’t think my workflow is very traditional.
I think like there is a. It, I’ll just share like a brief personal story with you. So like, a few years ago, I, I was living in Chicago and I had a photo studio and I worked with a bunch of people and like, we had a big space and a lot of stuff.
And just like, you know, many computers, many cameras, many hard drives, many chairs, many desks, many computers, many, many everything. And, uh, I. I, I moved internationally and when I did that, I literally got rid of everything. I got rid of almost everything that I owned, period. Like I, like I went from, you know, having a lot of stuff to having literally almost nothing, having almost no possessions.
and when I did that, I just realized how, how much stuff I kept in my life that really. Had served its purpose already, like it was it, it [00:26:00] was not necessary to keep in my life. Like I, you know, I was throwing away audio visual cables. To like the red, yellow, and white cables from a VCR and stuff like that, you know?
And I’m like, why did I have this? Like, literally, I couldn’t give it away. No one wanted it. It was basically trash. It was like when I had to get rid of it, it was trash. I, no one wanted it. I couldn’t sell it. So then I made the realization like I am holding onto actual trash like I am. I’m organized and holding onto and keeping in my house.
Trash. it served a purpose once, but that pur it no longer serves a purpose for me and sometimes for anyone else, and it, that just kind of changed my outlook on, on everything. It’s like, why, why hold onto this stuff that like in the idea that maybe someday I’m gonna need it again? And here’s the thing with online storage, if you do maybe someday want or need it [00:27:00] again, you.
You can get it back, but it might not be instant ’cause you have a hard drive right there. Uh, it might just be you have to wait, you know, six hours or overnight for it to download back on your computer. But also, let’s be honest, like how many times have you put something on a hard drive and then five years later you go to plug in that hard drive and you lost the power cord for the hard drive or the hard drive doesn’t even work anymore.
Or you put it on the wrong hard drive and you can’t find the right hard drive for it anyway. You know, that was, that was never a foolproof plan either. I, I feel like I’ve lost more important files from putting them on hard drives and then try to retrieve them on hard drives than I have from anything that I’ve done on the cloud personally.
[00:27:44] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.
[00:27:45] Aaron Nace: Um. Yeah. So I don’t know. I got into a little bit of a rant there. I’m realizing by the tone of my voice. Sorry about that. but yeah, I just, I don’t feel the need to like, have everything that I’ve ever created at my fingertips because [00:28:00] I, there’s like, I, I think, you know, I really tapped into like a hoarding mentality that I think I had with just like keeping so much stuff around.
And now I’m like. You know, if I’m not using it right now, just get it, get it away. Like I don’t, I don’t want it around me. You know what I mean?
[00:28:20] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: let me ask you this.
[00:28:21] Aaron Nace: I’m a weirdo though. Everyone else that listening is like, no, Aaron, you suck. You’re so wrong. We need it.
[00:28:27] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I’m sure there’s a lot of people that are, feel the same exact way as as you do. I mean, look, I, I also like to minimize, and I will admit I have way too much stuff for my comfort level, but, including a VCR with that cable,
[00:28:43] Aaron Nace: Yeah.
[00:28:45] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: so often I have family who’s like digitized this VVHS tape for us and I’m like, so I can’t get rid of it.
[00:28:50] Aaron Nace: Right, right.
[00:28:51] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: you know, so I’m right there with you.
[00:28:53] Aaron Nace: Yeah, you’re right there. Exactly. Exactly. And then if you did get rid of it, you’d just be like, no, I can’t do that anymore. I got [00:29:00] rid of it. Go find, hire an online service to digitize it for you. I’m, I’m not in that business anymore.
[00:29:05] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. let me ask you this as we, as we, as we wrap this up.
you, you, you’re, you’re using Dropbox.
[00:29:11] Aaron Nace: Yeah.
[00:29:12] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Um, is there a reason. Maybe the reason was just the timing was right and they didn’t have a competition so much at the, at that point. But was there a reason you went with Dropbox over a Google Drive, which does similar things
[00:29:26] Aaron Nace: Yeah.
[00:29:28] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: something else that might be out there competing with it versus another, Adobe’s own built in, that’s in Lightroom desktop now that has
[00:29:38] Aaron Nace: Mm-hmm.
[00:29:38] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: online offline capabilities too.
Is there a reason why Dropbox versus
[00:29:42] Aaron Nace: Yeah, I’ve used almost all of them. to, uh, answer your question, Dropbox is very, like, cost effective in terms of what’s on there. So like, I’m looking at my Dropbox now and I have, 36 terabytes of information on my Dropbox, and I pay a hundred [00:30:00] dollars a month,
[00:30:00] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Wow. That’s a lot of, that’s a lot of storage.
[00:30:04] Aaron Nace: 36 terabytes.
[00:30:05] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: that would be a lot of hard drives and or raids.
[00:30:10] Aaron Nace: Yeah.
[00:30:11] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: again or whatever drives
[00:30:13] Aaron Nace: You know?
[00:30:14] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: your, in your office.
[00:30:15] Aaron Nace: Yeah. I, I wanna do a screen shares 36 terabytes, and I don’t think about it ever. I don’t,
[00:30:22] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:22] Aaron Nace: other thing too is like, again, I’m like, I’m not terribly attached to physical belongings. And also things happen and like. You know what happens if I’m on a trip and, you know, I’m on a boat and my backpack falls out of the boat and my computer’s in my backpack, and all of a sudden my computer’s at the bottom of the ocean.
[00:30:45] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.
[00:30:46] Aaron Nace: know,
[00:30:47] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah,
[00:30:48] Aaron Nace: it’s not that big of a deal. It sucks to lose a computer, but guess what? I didn’t lose a single file,
[00:30:54] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.
[00:30:55] Aaron Nace: you know? Or my phone gets broken or lost or stolen. I didn’t [00:31:00] lose a single file. You know, and to me that’s like, you can buy a new computer anytime, you know, it sucks to have to pay for a new physical device, but like, you know, those photos of a wedding, you can’t get that back.
You know what I mean? If you have it only on a physical device, device, you can’t get that back. There’s, there’s no getting that back. But you can go out and buy a new computer any day of the week. Um, and yeah, I feel like, the. The Dropbox plan works for me because it just, it syncs to everything on my computer.
So again, I have my main, like my main hierarchy folder on my computer. Like everything that I create goes in my, my Dropbox folder. I. So when I’m done making any content, it just automatically uploads to the internet. I don’t think about it at all. I don’t hit upload on it. I do nothing. And then everyone in my team has access to the folders that I give them access to.
So I have someone who helps me editing [00:32:00] my videos. I have someone who helps me publish my videos, who helps me write descriptions, who helps. You know, like managed content, all those people have access to all these files all the time. So I’m not sending anyone any files ever. They just literally as soon as I’m done making the video, my editor who lives in Europe is editing that video like within minutes.
So, you know, for me, and I don’t. I, I don’t have to do anything. So, yeah, for me it works pretty well. But, again, I, I just wanna say that’s me. I’ve gone through, you know, I’m not the standard use case here. Uh, you know, like everyone is gonna have a workflow that works for them. So, you know, if I’m saying all this stuff and you’re thinking, wow, that is incredibly cringe.
You are not my type of person, Aaron, that’s totally okay. If you have a workflow that works for you, like go for it. Like I am.
[00:32:51] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.
[00:32:51] Aaron Nace: I, I’ve gone through the experience of literally getting rid of everything I’ve owned in my life, and I don’t think most people have. And it was a seriously [00:33:00] traumatic and difficult experience in so many ways.
But on the opposite, on the other side of it, I’m like, okay, I’m, I’m good not having stuff like that’s, that’s the lesson that I got. But, if you talked to me five years ago, I don’t think I would’ve been in that same place.
[00:33:16] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Cool. I think a big takeaway here for, for anybody listening is to look at your options for, for cloud-based storage and see what might work in, in your workflow. Maybe it’s not right for you, maybe it is, but can’t hurt to look into it when you have the downtime. If you’re, if you’re in the middle of your busy season and you don’t have the time, don’t do it now, but. Make a note for yourself. Add a reminder on your phone to when, when there’s downtime, see what, see what, see what the options are. I know that after this conversation, I’m gonna be looking into is best for me. I’m already using Google Drive now, but
[00:33:54] Aaron Nace: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:56] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: photo storage in that way. Um, I’m using it for other different [00:34:00] types of storage. but maybe I could use it ’cause I’m already paying for it. Maybe I could use it for, for the photo storage or maybe there’s another option. There’s so many out there,
[00:34:07] Aaron Nace: There are a lot out there. Yeah. And find what works best for you. And you know, for me, Dropbox has been my go-to now for, for years. I’m not paid by them. By the way. It sounds like I’m being paid by Dropbox to say it like this. And I’m like, I should be paid by Dropbox. ’cause I, I say their name all the time, but you know, I used their service like many, many, many years ago.
When it was like early days, you know what I mean? And then I came back to it after using Google Drive, after using Amazon S3, after using Glacier drives, after using like all these other online, I’ve used, you know, Adobe’s, like Lightroom and cloud storage and all that. I’ve, I’ve used every option that I could think of and I, it came back to this is just.
So easy because there’s no uploading at all. Everything that I do just automatically uploads and the cost, I mean, I pay a hundred dollars a month for 36 terabytes.
[00:34:59] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: The one that [00:35:00] I’m, that I plan on looking into after this, um, is one I’ve been like, I constantly get ads for, and I see it come up in Reddit a lot as well.is Proton Drive, which
[00:35:10] Aaron Nace: Okay.
[00:35:10] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: proton out of Switzerland. I’ve always been curious about it, so I might give it a try and see, see how it works.
so yeah, uh, it’s, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate all the insight.
[00:35:21] Aaron Nace: it’s like a Google Drive ad, basically, or a, a Dropbox ad.
[00:35:25] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. This episode is not
[00:35:27] Aaron Nace: Yeah.
[00:35:28] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: yeah, it’s been fantastic. So, so Aaron, um, for those who are not familiar with, with, with you, with the education you provide, where can listeners, learn more about you? Uh, see what you do, see what kinda education you offer and, and all that fun stuff.
[00:35:44] Aaron Nace: Yeah, so primarily I teach Photoshop, Lightroom photo editing and photography, and you can get all that on YouTube totally for free. Uh, my channel name is called Learn pH Learn. And, uh, we released new videos every single [00:36:00] week. And, uh, we also have a subscription website, uh, that’s learn.com. It’s called Learn Pro.
And we release full length, like advanced intermediate content, uh, teaching, photo editing, photography, Photoshop, and Lightroom there as well.
[00:36:15] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Amazing. Thank you again for joining me and, and for all, all the, all the good nuggets.
[00:36:21] Aaron Nace: Thanks, Scott, it was good talking to you.
