For retiree Judy Drayton, taking a lot of photos of the abundant wildlife around her home has become a near full-time passion. She’s lucky enough to live in Mandurah, Australia, a coastal city near Perth that’s famous for its many species of birds and animals.
Credit for all photos: Judy Drayton
Finding a photo manager that’s the right fit for you
Drayton recently began using Mylio after taking advantage of the free Mylio Create subscription offer she got with her new Seagate external photo hard drive. Mylio is a photo organization app that can store unlimited photos on unlimited devices, syncing seamlessly between your external hard drive, phone, laptop, and tablet.
Like many people who rely on Mylio, Drayton often has a lot of new photos to process. She needs to be able to sift through them quickly, and wants to be able to view and manage them on any of her devices. Secure photo backup and storage is important, as is privacy.
“I spend pretty much all my days out on the field taking photos,” Drayton said. “Mylio has been absolutely great.”
Let’s learn more about Drayton’s Mylio workflow.*
What do you photograph and what’s your workflow?
I’m an amateur wildlife photographer. I take a lot of photos of birds and have a photo collection of about 15,000. It’s simple for me to get around Mylio.
Similar photo applications I’ve looked into were overwhelming for me. I don’t do really extensive photo editing. I don’t want to spend all my time in front of a computer editing, I want to be out actually taking photos.
What’s your photo shooting routine?
I’m up very early in the morning because I love sunrises and shooting landscapes. Amazingly enough, I take those photos on my phone. I’m outside for five or six hours every day. A lot of it is just sitting in the bushes waiting for the birds to come to you.
What’s in your photo kit?
I use my phone along with a Nikon with a 150-600mm lens. I’m lugging around about 4.5 pounds of equipment every day for hours.
How do you use Mylio?
I upload all my photos into the Mylio app that I’ve installed on four devices: my laptop, my iPad, my phone, and my Seagate drive. It all syncs perfectly, and it’s so easy. I’m still finding my way around but it’s not difficult software by any means.
I love Mylio’s guided webinars. With the time difference to the U.S I can’t get online for the live webinars, but it’s great to register, get the link, and view those at my own leisure.
What do you like about Mylio?
It’s just a great, simple, easy program. I want to be able to crop, lighten, or darken photos and keep the image basically as I saw it out there without making too many changes. I can do everything I need with Mylio’s photo editing tools.
It’s so easy to go through my photos on Mylio. At the moment, for instance, we’re having huge storms so I can’t go outside. So I’m reviewing my photos quickly on Mylio and organizing them into folders. In one day, I can take 1,000 photos. Sometimes you just don’t have time to go through and delete photos. But in Mylio, it’s straightforward and fast to cull lots of images at once.
What are your photography goals?
I want to safely backup and organize my photo collection for personal use. There are quite a few people saying that I should start up my own portfolio for profit. I’m not sure I want to do that because it takes the enjoyment away and puts on a bit more pressure.
Try Mylio — with Seagate
To try Mylio for free, download the app now. If you also need an external drive to securely back up all your photos, you may want to consider Seagate. Their top-rated One Touch and Photo Drive products include a free one-year subscription to the Mylio Create plan. A $50 value, the Create plan allows you to upload 25,000 files, run the app on four devices, edit RAW images, and explore Mylio to see if it’s a good fit for you.
*This Q&A has been edited for clarity and brevity purposes.
Nina Pantic is a New York City-based journalist with nearly a decade of experience covering sports and news. She has a keen interest in videography and photography having produced videos and curated photos for both work and fun.
