Memory Keeping Strategies During Deployment With Emma Furlong
How do I keep photos and videos organized during deployment?
In this episode you will learn some helpful tools + strategies for organizing your memories during deployment - this includes photos and videos! Emma of Love and Reverie can help teach you how to keep your media libraries organized during a time like deployment, when most everything feels chaotic.
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Emma is a military spouse and mom of 2, ages 4 and 6. She is passionate passionate about documenting her family and creating family photo albums and films, keeping them connected whether they are together or apart. She is Owner of Love & Reverie. And her favorite thing to do is spend as much time as possible outside exploring with her kiddos!
Find her on social:
Learn more: loveandreverie.com
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The Heart of a Milspouse Podcast is hosted by Jayla Rae Ardelean, Late Career Army Milspouse + Mentor.
Grab your ✨free✨ deployment resource here: jaylarae.com/deploymentkit
Learn more: jaylarae.com
Let's chat! @mil.spouse
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Episode Transcription Below:
Jayla Rae Ardelean (00:02):
Hey there, Jayla Rae here and welcome back to The Heart of a Milspouse Podcast. Today I am joined by Emma for long. Emma is a military spouse and mom of two ages four and six. She is passionate about documenting her family and creating family photo albums and films, keeping them connected whether they are together or part she is the owner of Love and Reverie and her favorite thing to do is to spend as much time as possible outside exploring with the kiddos. Hi Emma. Thanks for being here.
Emma Furlong (00:34):
Uh thank you for having me here, Jayla.
Jayla Rae Ardelean (00:36):
Yeah. I'm, I'm excited to talk today about memory keeping, especially under the context of employment. As I'm sure everybody just sort of like shuttered, like how do I even go about doing that? <Laugh> aside from taking a bunch of photos <laugh> yeah, so I'd love to get into that today, but first I'd love to hear more about like your orientation to military life as it stands today. Are you both home? What what's happening in your world?
Emma Furlong (01:08):
<Laugh> well, my husband's a pilot, so him being home is never a given. So, and we are currently stationed at Dover air force base. He's been pretty busy lately to the point where we both had colds and were home for two weeks and it felt like heaven. Cause we finally got to like see each other for a little bit, even though we're all sick. But yeah, so we've been together since pilot training and lived in several bases and I guess it's just I think the pilot ads extra layer, cuz he doesn't have a nine to five. It really just depends on the schedule of the day. He doesn't even know when he shows up at work, what his hours are like,
Jayla Rae Ardelean (01:54):
Oh my gosh, that has to be so frustrating. I can't even
Emma Furlong (01:58):
<Laugh> you really got used to it. You really just have to get into a flow for yourself I guess. And then when he comes in, you're like, okay, this is is dad time. And then we go back to our time when he's not here.
Jayla Rae Ardelean (02:11):
Yeah. It sounds like there's a lot of com compartmentalizing as like a means of survival. <Laugh> not because you want to, but because that's the hands that has been dealt basically. Yeah. All right. Well, I would love to know first your personal experience with deployment and then we can kind of talk about the context of how love and re helps with deployments. And how like the memory keeping aspect, I'd love to know how you got started in, in this line of work as well. I'm sure out of frustration of not being able to organize anything. And so then you were just like, I'm gonna do it, but I would love to tell me if it's different. <Laugh>
Emma Furlong (02:53):
I started documenting photos. I fell in love with photography back in Alaska. We were gonna encourage Alaska and everything was just beautiful. And when you have just, you know, your regular phone camera, you're like this, doesn't do what we're seeing justice. So I ended up getting a nicer DSLR camera and started shooting and then I would share photos online or share them with my husband. And it just became really clear that he really liked to see the photos and what I'm up to when he is gone. Cause you know, in your mind when they're gone, you're like, oh, they're just off doing whatever, having fun, whatever, no responsibilities, no, you know, it just kind of feels that way a little bit, but reality they're working a lot of the time. He's like in alert, sitting in a hotel room, bored out of his mind.
Emma Furlong (03:42):
So it really helps I think to be like, Hey, this is what we're doing, show some pictures. And that's kind of how I started documenting. And then I just became more and more passionate, especially when we had kids. We have kids. It's just like everything they do same is amazing. Especially when they're little babies, you must document every single moment of this child's life. Exactly. <Laugh> exactly. And the phones are like so good these days. Like the quality is so good, like compared to like when we first moved to Anchorage, like 10 years ago now to like now, like you can pull out your phone and have like this great makes it so much easier. And I guess is I kind of came across organizing when we were in transition moving around and I was thinking about like, I like doing photos, but at the same time, like it's like every time we move, I gotta start over, find a new client base.
Emma Furlong (04:41):
And I was like, I really want something to like help people, but I want to be like, can help anyone in the country, at least in the world really theoretically. And I, I actually had a dream about organizing people's photos and I looked it up and there's actually an association. It was like the photo managers and you can get certified and go through and they have all these trainings and it was just great. And I was like, this is great. You're blowing my mind. I had no idea this existed. <Laugh> it sounds serious, Emma. It, it is. I mean, there's such a, it's like such a broad topic, but it's also like, there's so many technical details, which is why most people don't their photos organized. Cuz the learning curve is a bit steep sometimes. Anyways, and so I started doing that and I started by tackling my own photos, which were a disaster.
Emma Furlong (05:34):
And so now it's really nice cuz the first step is you create a photo hub, right? You take all of your photos and you dump them into one place. And when you do this, don't delete them from all the places. Keep them there. You wanna keep the mess until it's organized and backed up just so in case anything goes wrong. And then you start organizing them by like some people prefer like categories like birthdays, whatever, but I really like the date method. So you just organize them by date slowly and you remove all the duplicates and then you have eventually have this nice organized library, which makes it really easy to share photos. And that's where you get started. But there's like the manual way. That's like super intensive to be like, okay, I'm gonna do this on my file system on my computer.
Emma Furlong (06:24):
And it's gonna take you forever <laugh> or there's other programs like Adobe bridge or that can help make it faster. Cause they have, yeah, that's kind of how I got started. And I guess for families and deployments, I currently like make a photo album manually and I like to make an annual movie of all the video clips and I trim 'em up. So it's like enjoyable to watch versus these like random clips that maybe go on too long or like were mistakes or, and then I put them on a hard drive so we can watch 'em on the TV. But the easy way to keep up with it is just to kind of have a routine, like a monthly routine, like take all your photos off your phone, don't into your hub and just kind of keep
Jayla Rae Ardelean (07:12):
Yeah, that's the, I think that's the hard part is people have all these like aspirational goals about what they're gonna do with all these photos. And then, you know, when it comes to that monthly check-in like you said, it's so easy to skip and to say, oh, well I'll do it next week or I'll do it next month. Which is unfortunate because something really important could have happened that month that you did document and now it it's messy. <Laugh> like, it's not organized. It's not where you need it. My favorite too is like having having conversations with people and then, and, and this is always in person, but when they find out that I have two Wiener dogs, they immediately wanna see pictures of the Wiener dogs. And I'm like going through my folders on my phone and I'm like, yeah, this isn't, this isn't organized. We're we're gonna be here for a while. <Laugh> if I'm like trying to flip through and find the best photo of these we to show you. So, and that's just on your phone that doesn't even include like your computer <laugh>
Emma Furlong (08:16):
On your phone. It, it, one of the simple things do is to make best of folders. So best of your dogs, best of you, best of your husband, best of your kids. And you know, you can replace the habit of like on board, let's go through Facebook and just go through your photos and be like, well, this is the best one. And like, so then you have these highlight of folders of the best of them. And that really helps. Like, and it's like, it's kind of simple. It's not like perfect organization, but it definitely keeps your favorite photos exactly where you want them. Yeah, no,
Jayla Rae Ardelean (08:44):
It's such a good tip. And I do, I mean, I do have some photo albums based on like trips or experiences where it's just really easy for me to flip through and add to a folder and it's like, believe is 2019 or, or whatever it is, you know, mm-hmm <affirmative> but the best of trick, thank you so much. I'm gonna, I'm gonna use that. I'm gonna implement that instead of scrolling on Instagram
Emma Furlong (09:07):
<Laugh> you can, you can also search. So in your light gallery, if you have iPhone, I have Samsung, it has a gallery, but iPhone or whatever. If you go up to the search where you look at your photos and if you to type dog, all the photos of dogs will come up. So if it's something generic, like tree, dog, whatever, you don't even have to tag 'em it'll come up. Yeah. And then you can just thousands of
Jayla Rae Ardelean (09:25):
Photos of dogs <laugh> yeah. Some of them not even my own <laugh>,
Emma Furlong (09:32):
I'm a dog lover too, but yeah. And then if you go through and make sure that you tag faces like your, your family members, then it makes it really easy. Then at that point, once you start tagging things like using the facial recognition, you maybe don't even need to organize it. Maybe that's enough for you. You can just type it in and they'll come up, you can search dates. So if you knew you did something on a certain date, like the search are super powerful that I don't think a lot of people necessarily utilize or realize.
Jayla Rae Ardelean (10:00):
Yeah. I don't wanna know how powerful it is actually, because it is a tagging system that I didn't put in place, like my iOS or Google put it in place. And so it kind of freaks me out sometimes, especially when you're searching faces and I do get those prompts where they want me to actually mm-hmm, <affirmative> like define a face and I'm like, no, <laugh> no thanks. <Laugh> but maybe I should, because here we are a midst of deployment and I don't
Emma Furlong (10:29):
Care. I think it really depends on like what system you're operating in and you can read through the privacy policies. Apple is a pretty good privacy policy. They don't really, Googles is a little more <laugh> but yeah, they, it just depends on your comfort level personally. I'm just like, if I have a smartphone somebody's tracking me, I can't really do anything about it. So it is
Jayla Rae Ardelean (10:50):
What it is so much. It is out of our control already when it comes to data. So I think that's why I freak out about it. Cause I'm like, I don't wanna hand them more. <Laugh> it's like my fault that I handed it to them, you know? <Laugh>
Emma Furlong (11:04):
I get that.
Jayla Rae Ardelean (11:05):
Yeah. But those are some really good tips. Thank you so much. And did you, I don't know if you said, but did you start incorporating some of this organization, like these tactics while your husband was deployed? Or did it take like at what time did you get serious about this?
Emma Furlong (11:25):
So I was serious before he deployed cuz I was like, I need, I was working on like the background process of like starting the business up. So I was definitely like organized before then, but there was some things we learned. When you share like a video you should share the link. Don't just send it because it comes to them pixelated and they can't actually see it very well. So if you want them to actually see the high quality video that you're seeing, you should definitely share the link. I think I haven't tried other apps, but like on my messaging system, which might be different than apple. I don't know. But like when I send something in my Samsung messages, like it's just lower quality. It can't like handle the like higher file sizes, but Facebook messenger does. So I'm sure like WhatsApp on there, like just kind of experimenting and seeing which one sends the files back.
Jayla Rae Ardelean (12:18):
Yeah. I have experimented with WhatsApp just in case anybody's out there. It definitely degrades the photos and videos. It shows up fine. But then if you save it to your camera roll, there's definitely there's yeah, it degrades it. Yes, for sure. It degrades the quality <laugh>
Emma Furlong (12:37):
If you go in and you like, instead of like in the messaging app, when you're like messaging, oh, I'm gonna send a photo. But if you actually go to your gallery and you click on the photo, you wanna send and you click options and you click share link, it will send the full resolution. Another option is like Google drive making like a full that you like put things in regularly. And so they can see all the stuff when he was deployed, I guess his first deployment was in January 20, 20 <laugh>, which was sorry.
Jayla Rae Ardelean (13:07):
It's okay. Sorry.
Emma Furlong (13:08):
It was, I know it was six months and which for part of the, my man, I was like, okay, this is great. I got a babysitter. I had everything set up to support me. And then everything like obviously fell apart. But one of the things I intentionally did was like, I'm gonna take a photo, a video every single day and send it to him just so that he can see cuz the kids are so young men they're just growing so fast and they changed so much. And he really enjoyed seeing that. Another thing we did is he took a video of himself saying good morning and another one saying goodnight to each of the kids. So if there was no service or it was busy or time zones, like they could only see their dad before, you know, in morning and at night.
Jayla Rae Ardelean (13:54):
Yeah, that is so sweet. Oh my goodness. I can't even imagine being a little kid and seeing, just seeing a photo of your dad and like just having that connecting moment, even though they are so far away and it's so hard for them to conceptualize, what's actually happening. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I feel like bottom line, they know that they're not there, but they don't understand why or like what, what it is they're doing. Because if you just say like, oh they're off working. I mean immediately, how is a child not gonna go into a spiral of like, well, why would they choose that over me? Like, it's just so it's so heartbreaking. So I'm really loving these little, little tips of tricks to kind of continue connecting.
Emma Furlong (14:40):
Another one of my favorite apps is Marco polo. Just cuz you can be like, oh I wanna talk to daddy. I wanna tell someone something and then they can do it right then honestly my husband doesn't use it as much cuz he hates having more apps on his phone. He's very like I have to like be creative cuz he is very technology averse actually. <Laugh> but like a lot of my family is like my sisters and you know, just connecting with your family in general, cuz typically as military, your far away from your family of origin as well. And so <affirmative> my family really enjoys the Marco polo and some of my friends it's just another nice way to connect.
Jayla Rae Ardelean (15:17):
Yeah. I still haven't tried it. I've been told to try it over and over again and I haven't gotten into it. So maybe I'll consider it. I think, I mean for this deployment we've been using WhatsApp, which is pretty sufficient. I mean it has, you know, the video calling, it has the text, it has the voice messages. But yeah, there's something about the interface that like it, like Marco polo would do some of the same things, but I'm imagining that the interface is completely different. So maybe it's more conducive to some people and, and for others, something like WhatsApp is sufficient.
Emma Furlong (15:58):
I think it really just depends on whatever you're comfortable with. Like I'm still using Facebook messenger because when we've joined the military, like it was the only thing that had like the wifi calling, like when we started. So like we were just, and it's like, I've never were like, felt like, oh I should go learn a new app and change it. And yeah, that's really what you're comfortable with. There's just, there's a lot of great options.
Jayla Rae Ardelean (16:22):
My husband's not on social media. <Laugh> I mean, I think you can consider WhatsApp to be like moving in a social media direction. And it is owned by the same people at this point. But yeah, he's very intentionally not on social media, so we've had to go, we've had to get creative sometimes. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> when it comes to when it comes to sharing memories, honestly, cuz he's not seeing the stuff that I post and he never has in our relationship, but sometimes I'll save something off of an Instagram story or even a post and I'll just like, I'll send it to him. And it feels very strange because it, it went live on social media first, but it feels important and prominent enough to share with him too. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, it's like it wasn't like a fleeting piece of information. It actually, you know, quite important.
Jayla Rae Ardelean (17:17):
But that's, so that's always been a really strange <laugh> aspect of our relationship that he knows that I am on social media, like for work for my job. And then also as a military spouse in building this community. And a lot of what I talk about is really hard for him to conceptualize because mm-hmm <affirmative>, he hasn't, he hasn't been on Facebook since I can't, I don't even know what year he left Facebook at least 10 years ago, which is like when it's, I mean, I got on Facebook 12 years ago, so like do the math like <laugh> and he is never been on anything since then.
Emma Furlong (17:53):
So I can definitely relate. My husband's kind of the same way. Like I think he just has a Facebook account because like he had one 10 years ago and the idea of closing it is almost like too much, cuz like <laugh> he is just like having to do that. And I don't even know if he has the Facebook app on his phone. I think he just has the messenger one. I think doing things like shared albums can be helpful too, cuz both either Android or iPhone both have like shared albums. You could even do Amazon cuz they have free unlimited photo storage and like doing a shared album is maybe a way too to even connect with more family. It really just depends. I have like separate groups cuz like, you know, there's things you wanna share with your husband that you don't necessarily share with all of your friends or, you know, so like you just kind of keep it separate, which does feel like redundant posting of sometimes. But
Jayla Rae Ardelean (18:43):
So that's a really good tip. I think tonight actually I'm gonna start a shared album <laugh> with him and we'll see how it goes. We'll see if he remembers to actually add stuff to
Emma Furlong (18:54):
It. You can, you can just send him the link. Like once you've updated something, send him the link. And so then he'll be like, oh, okay, I'm gonna look in there. And I think it's nice too, because like for me I sometimes feel like, am I bothering him too much? I know he is working like so like, is this like separate space? That's like, oh I just put 40 photos in there today, but that's okay. I'll just send it one like message at the end of the day's. So I'm not blowing up his
Jayla Rae Ardelean (19:19):
Phone. Yeah, no that's such a good point. I mean it's, it is hard to not feel like you're bothering them sometimes even if you don't have the expectation that they'll right away, mm-hmm <affirmative> like, you know, for sure. I may not hear back from them for like 12 hours. I don't know <laugh> but I'm just gonna send it cuz it's in the moment and it feels good to me to like send it mm-hmm <affirmative> at this time. But yeah, it's so it's hard not to feel like you're bothering them sometimes for sure.
Emma Furlong (19:51):
Totally get that like, but yeah, kind of separating it. I feel like my husband knows that like it's on messenger or whatever. It's probably, you know, not that important, but like if I give him a phone call, like I only over call him when it's important or if it's in like the actual messaging when or like Samsung phones and yeah, it's probably more important cuz I kind to separate the two apps for what they're used for.
Jayla Rae Ardelean (20:15):
Yeah. That's <laugh> again, that's so interesting cuz I don't even have that opportunity with him. It's just like WhatsApp and that's it. So it's never clear what is an emergency or what is not an emergency? I can't remember who it was that I was talking to, but was in a work call and I work from home, so I was on a zoom call and I'm like, you know my phone's right next to me, I'm looking at it and I'm like, okay, two messages from Jeremy and I was like, that's normal that's okay. And then suddenly it was nine messages and I was like, oh my gosh. And I couldn't open it because I knew that if I did, I would get like sucked into that wormhole. But I, part of me was like, it must be an emergency. Why would he send me nine messages? And as it turns out, he was just processing something really slowly and sending one us after another <laugh> I was like, maybe I should snooze notifications during work hours. You're very distracting. <Laugh>
Emma Furlong (21:17):
I guess as far as documenting like while deployment, like it started out just photos and video clips. And then over this last year I've really gotten into video editing. So now they've turned into cute little movies. But it really depends on, you know, like it can be addicting to like do things with your photos in video. So he really appreciates like the cute little movies and I just, I, I feel like it also makes him feel so much closer to the kids and I also make sure I get myself in the brain too, cuz he does appreciate that. He's like, oh nice to see you too. Instead of just the kids, you know?
Jayla Rae Ardelean (21:53):
Sure. You exist in person <laugh> you're not just behind the camera. Exactly.
Jayla Rae Ardelean (21:59):
Oh, that's so sweet. Well I, we chatted about this for a second offline, but I was commenting on how, as a stepmom who you, you know, does not live with my step kids. They live with their mom. I often receive kind of like a photo dump from her. And by dump, I just mean, you know, maybe like five photos or something, cuz something really cool happened that day and she wants to share it with me and I have no idea what to do with them. I think it's because they've been transferred between one person. Like I didn't take the photos. So then I'm like, wait, did she also send these to him? And should I send them to him? Like <laugh> oh, okay. It becomes, it becomes like this, you know, I don't know, just becomes like this weird channel of sharing I guess. But there have been times where she sends me photo of the kids and I'm like, oh, I really want him to remember that. After this year is over after this deployment is over. So I think I know what you would suggest <laugh> but I'm gonna ask you anyway. <Laugh> well, there's a suggest if you there's a
Emma Furlong (23:08):
Couple different options, you could potentially add her to the shared album or give her her own shared album or you could just add 'em to the shared album cuz if he has 'em on his phone, he might be like, oh, okay. I already have these and you can delete 'em or whatever. And then that can just be the space for them. Yeah. yeah. And then there's other things you can do too. Like you can, can print a little book or you know, just do something cute with them cuz he might not get us. I don't know how often he sees his step kids like compared to you. And like he might really appreciate something like more tangible with them. Like you kind of like share them with him, but you also like go through and they like, you know, I'm gonna make you a little book of your kids. And well,
Jayla Rae Ardelean (23:47):
I used to do, I used to do photo albums each year at Christmas time. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, I'm realizing now that last year I think was the first year that I didn't do it. And I mean, are we shocked? Like what did we want to actually remember and record from 2020 that traumatic AF <laugh> and I just didn't have the energy. I just did not have the energy to, you know, submit and organize the photos in a nice way and then submit it in time for the photo book to come back in time for Christmas. So I ended up just opting out and now I'm realizing, oh my gosh, it is just verse six. Like if I want to continue this tradition, I need to get my act together. <Laugh> I need to get this together quickly. <Laugh>
Emma Furlong (24:36):
I think that like, I think ever, like I still have a backlog of like photos I wanna print. And I think especially if you're new to organizing, you definitely have a backlog of albums or that you ideally like to have. Right. I think it's important to just kind of keep working on him, but also like don't just use Christmas use birthdays father's days or anniversaries. Like for me it helps me with projects to have a deadline and I particularly love to make like personalized gifts for people. So it like really helps. So you'd be like, okay, this person's birthday's coming up. I'm gonna finish this project by then. Like don't, you know, use the whole year, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. And then a lot of book companies like typical sale days, Christmas black Friday, I mean there's mother's day father's day. A lot of book printers will have like 50% off buy one, get one free you, you can create those books in their systems and just leave them there until the sale comes and then order them like you don't have to like, just cuz it's finished. You can just be like, so you can like theoretically over six months finish like three or four books and then be like, oh there's this huge buy one, get one free I'm there we go. All done.
Jayla Rae Ardelean (25:45):
Nice. <laugh> that is taking advantage of the system. I love that. <Laugh> yeah. All right. Awesome. Well, it's been really good to talk to you today, Emma. Where can people connect and find you online?
Emma Furlong (25:59):
I guess I'm on Instagram and Facebook and then you can also reach me through my website at love rry.com and yeah, I'm available in all though.
Jayla Rae Ardelean (26:09):
Yay. And I will include all of your information in the show notes as well. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for coming on today and I guess I'll get to work. I'll get to work organizing my photos. <Laugh>
Emma Furlong (26:24):
Well, those thank you so much for having me. It was nice to get out with you and see your face. I've been watching you on Instagram and I love what you share. Very
Jayla Rae Ardelean (26:32):
Helpful. Oh thank you. I know it's so weird to meet in real life, but we're still not in real life cuz we're on zoom.
Emma Furlong (26:38):
<Laugh> Exactly.
Jayla Rae Ardelean (26:39):
It's such a weird thing, but it's it's realer than Instagram. <Laugh> that's true. That's true. It's back and forth. So yeah, it was good to be with you today and, and I'll let you know what I come up with in the next couple weeks. <Laugh>
Emma Furlong (26:53):
Okay. Thank you.