Start up disk full - hard drive shows all as "other" ???

Hi, I have a macbookair 120GB and I have been receiving the startup disk is full warning. When I first looked at my hard drive it showed 40GB in photos, 40GB in other and the rest in apps audio etc. Today when I looked at it I had 120GB in "other". Last night I deleted a bunch of photos in my dropbox which freed up 6GB which is now gone. What is going on???? I got an external harddrive to put my pictures on that should be arriving today. (Never done it before hopefully it's pretty instinctual). Any advice? I don't have any big programs or movies or anything.

About "Other"
For more on this and very helpful tips:
  http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html
http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html http://pondini.org/OSX/LionStorage.html
1. Empty Trash.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10677
2. Repair Disk
    Steps 1 through 7
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5836
3. Disk space / Time Machine ?/ Local Snapshots
   http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4878
4. Re-index Macintosh HD
   System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy
   http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409

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