Practicing some indoor strobe stuff with Lucas. He’s a pretty hard sucker to focus on but he’s got to have the best underwear ever!!!

It seems to be baby season around here and we were happy to take some snapshots of Alice and her family. A little bit of greenery and a dash of beach sand made a great backdrop. Little Carisa was a little Dynamo…running around like crazy. So cute! Thanks to Alice, Davis and little Carisa for the fun time. Some highlights of our session below.

Gear heads: these were all shot with my 85mm f/1.8. Can you say Bread n’ Butter lens!

And here’s one for the family room:

Here’s some tech info for those interested. If you are scared of heavy acronym use, then stay away!

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Email is such an important facet of everyone’s lives these days and in many cases it gets to be a burden to many. It was for me but I think I’ve set up a pretty neat system that allows me to tame the beast a bit so I thought I’d share it with you. This post deals with setting up multiple emails (personal and business) on multiple computers and portable devices (iPhone), keeping it all synchronized for efficiency and having it all backed up at the same time. All without spending for any unnecessary or additional software and/or services. If this sounds good to you, then read on.

IMAP on Apple Mail

I like using a real application to access my mail. Even though there are many advanced webmail interfaces, they just don’t feel the same. Desktop apps are so much more functional. So, my weapon of choice is Apple Mail. For those with email addresses using your own web host, use IMAP. If you’re like me and hate doing things over and over again, it’s the only way to go. It basically keeps all the mail on the server and you just access it remotely. If you need an explanaition of IMAP vs POP, please read this. I use 3 Apple computers (2 desktops and a laptop) and an iPhone and using IMAP keeps them all synchronized ALL the time. So if you get a new email and you read it on your iPhone, it’s also read on your computers and vice versa. If you file it away on your iPhone, it’s filed away on your desktop and so on. You do NOT need to use Microsoft Exchange to do this. I could go more into this, but trust me IMAP works like a charm. If you want more info on how to set up IMAP on Apple Mail, here is a great article.

Figure 1. This is my Apple Mail. Notice the Inbox up on the top left containing my 3 IMAP accounts.

iPhone and Spam

One of the hiccups of the iPhone is that it doesn’t have the same good Junk mail filter as Apple Mail. Using IMAP mail pretty much takes care of this. When SPAM gets throught my web server’s junk filter, Apple Mail usually does a good job of catching it and files it in the Junk folder. Since we are using IMAP, that junk mail is filed away on the server. How does this benefit the iPhone? As long as I keep my desktop on all the time and the Mail application, too, it is doing the cleaning for the iPhone. It may appear temporarily on the iPhone Inbox, but next time it checks for mail, it magically disappears since the Mail application filed it away. Magic!

Gmail and IMAP

I know you’re getting sick of reading about IMAP. But it’s really done a great job of keeping my email simple. I use Gmail for my personal mail and I love it. But I only use the web interface for emergencies and like to use Apple Mail for all my email, inlcuding Gmail. Unfortunately, Gmail does not provide IMAP for its users. So I use a work around that let’s me use IMAP with my Gmail account so that I get all the benefits of both Gmail and IMAP. Basically, I forward all my email using Gmail’s forwarding feature to an email account (something like gmailacct@mydomain.com) that I created on my webhost. That takes care of all the syncing of the Inbox and folders. But, of course, I don’t want my responses coming from gmailacct@mydomain.com, so I use Gmail’s outgoing server on both desktops and iPhone. Long story short, Gmail email forwards to my “fake Gmail” on my host, Gmail keeps a copy on its own server, I get synced email folders and files with the fake gmail. And when I send mail, it appears to come from my real Gmail account. Some may see this as redundant…having the same email in two places. But this is good for me. I basically use Gmail as my backup (more on this later) that I can access in emergencies. I got this idea here, check it out.

Figure 2. Gmail’s forwarding allows me to use IMAP for my Gmail personal account. I forward and Archive Gmail’s copy so that the Gmail Inbox is clean.

Backup

One negative of keeping things synchronized is that if you mess up in one place, they are all messed up. But I’m really only talking about deletions. When using IMAP, if you delete an email, it goes in the Trash. If you happen empty that trash, it’s gone forever. I’ve had this happen by mistake and couldn’t recover it…really sucks. Anyway, I created an “extra” Gmail account that acts as a backup collection for both my work emails. My web host (Dreamhost) allows me to forward my email in addition to using IMAP, so I also forward all my emails to that extra Gmail account. Since Gmail allows an insane amount of storage space, it’s ALL in there and I don’t anticipate having to access it unless an emergency presents itself.

Inbox and Folders

Keep your Inbox empty. I’ve been doing that for a few months now and it’s worked wonders. I used to use emails in my inbox as a task list, but then they would all just accumulate and looked like a mess. Besides the Inbox, Sent, Junk and Trash, I use 2 additional folders: Archive and To Respond. Everything goes into Archive and those that for some reason I need to respond to later, goes into the To Respond folder. I check that folder a lot. If you have multiple email accounts in Mail, then you should use Smart Folders. It saves me tons of time. For example, I have 3 email accounts in Mail and they all have a To Respond folder. I, then, create a Smart Folder that displays the contents of all 3 To Respond folders. Nice and quick! More info on organizing email, check this out.

Figure 3.I love Smart Folders! I don’t use any Local folders because you cannot sync them easily. Just Smart Folders referencing IMAP folders (on the server) which are located on the bottom left of the Apple Mail panel.

Webmail

For those times that you are away from your computer and do not want to type with your thumbs, webmail is the way to go. Check your web host and see how you can access your email via a browser. And since you are using IMAP, it’s all there for you! If you are a Gmail user, then there is another way to send your emails via their Gmail interface. Only problem is that this sent email is not synchronized to your IMAP server and just resides in Gmail. But it’s good for emergencies.

Summary

So whatever email tools you choose, make sure you are making it easy on yourself and keep things easy and synchronized. Keep those clicks to a minimum, you’ll be happier. There is no perfect system but I think, overall, mine works pretty great. Hope this helps someone out there. I could probably write a hundred paragraphs on email, but hopefully, you get the gist. If anyone has questions, leave a comment or send me an email. Cheers.

On Sunday, I made my first visit ever onto the UCLA campus. So weird because I know so many people who went there and I’ve been all around outside of it, but saw it for the first time when we met up with Julie and Danny. They both attended UCLA, but at different times, just missing each other. Cool how things work out! The campus is gorgeous and you wouldn’t think it’s right in the middle of crazy Los Angeles. College campuses are SOOO cool for sessions! They were so fun to be with, always laughing and smiling. Can’t wait for their wedding next July! Here are some highlights of them frollicking around the campus:

For Dustin ;) :

Last week I took Lucas to his first baseball game at Dodger Stadium. Of course, he was decked out in his coolest duds. On a side note, do you know how hard it is to find kids clothes in black? They just don’t make’em. Thanks to Gramma for the cool outfit. Here’s a shot of him before the game and a video clip of him at the game. He was complaining that his Uncle Tim was using the camera instead of his Dada. I guess you could say he was a little angry at Uncle Tim!

Video is in Flash format (YouTube). Click it to play: