iCloud is just like that gas station along the highway where $2 gets me a quick, accurate tire service on a rainy night. I’m thrilled that it’s there. I’ll pay a little extra for the convenience. And I’ll probably pay more attention to my tire pressure just because I don’t have to crawl around and fuss with the tire gauge thingy to get the proper pressure.

Just when you thought that Apple was running thin on new iPhone camera tricks, hey roll out - TA DAH - Macro Mode. Macro Mode merges image information from all 3 lenses to create one excellent photo. Even better, Macro Mode works with video captures too, including Slo-mo and Time-lapse.

My son recently flew off to London for a holiday. Color me envious. So I asked the logical question, me being a Boomer and all; had he bought a London Tourist Guide? Today, it’s all on your iPhone.

Want a sure-fire/first class/award-winning Mom experience for Mother’s Day? For you or for the Moms in your life?

Here’s what you do.

Back in the day, before Garmin suctioned GPS pods to every windshield, getting directions to obscure locations was often an exercise in oral history, not unlike The Moth but far less entertaining.

How do you keep your workplace/remodeling/physical therapy/window treatment/shopping reminder/dinged bumper pictures from cluttering up your Photos Library?

The whole idea of Apple Photos is to create a safe, secure library of pictures that can be called up and exported on demand, customized for their particular destination.

My first real gig as a freelance photographer was shooting sailboat races in the Pacific Northwest. I'd stand near the bow of a 16 foot long powerboat, taking pictures, as we sped alongside crazy fast racing dinghies plowing through turbulent seas.

Let's "face" it. Pictures of our friends, family, the people we miss, the people we met, and people we may never see again are the foundation of our Photos Libraries.

This is a year of years in so many ways. It's changed the way we live. Changed the way we see the world. And it's changed photography in the process.

For most of my career in photography and commercial printing, the game has always been to come close to the magic of the human eye.

One of the coolest features of Apple Photos is the People tab that uses face recognition to create personalized collections of our lives and the people we know. Family, friends, colleagues, that old boyfriend, a favorite teacher. Now, more than ever, we want to celebrate our community and remember those who have shared our journey for an hour or for decades.

Let Apple Photos do the de-cluttering for you. It turns out that if you hop over one tab from All Photos to Days, that clutter disappears! Same with Months and Years. Photos is smart enough to hide anything that doesn't seem "on brand" for your usual photo browsing.

As a lover of photos in general, and the caretaker of my own family picture library, it tears me apart whenever I hear someone caught in that terrible place. That one where their iPhone is crushedsoakedloststolendeadgone and it's the only place their honeymoonnewbornlatefatheroldfriend's photos exist.

With a few standard settings, iPhone photography is now the gold standard for point-and-shoot picture taking. But it's also fun to put your own spin on your creative work, and the iPhone Camera app makes that possible too.

If you have kids or if you are a big kid yourself, you know this Halloween is different. The parties, group games, parades, and trick-or-treating; all gone or scaled back as to be almost unrecognizable. It's enough to make you keep your camera (iPhone) in your pocket.

Please don't.

Every now and then I have to remind myself that photography is nothing more than painting with light. The scene we face is a rich palette of colors from brilliant to drab that we use to excite photo-sensitive camera pixels in one way or another and come up with some interpretation of the scene itself.

Photos are, at their best, an expression of how we see things. What we choose to show and what we don't. Like a picture frame, the cropping of a photo can make all the difference in what draws attention and how an image peaks our interest.

With the release of the iPhone 11 Pro last September, the 3 lens setup now offers some of the perspectives that zoom lenses do and it’s a lot of fun to use.

I'm not a fan of over-filtered photos that bring out gaudy colors or make otherwise nice images look like a neo Van Gogh. But I'm happy to have a little fun with them. One of the best is the Comic Book filter that's only available through the Messages app on the iPhone.