If you’re reading this article then I assume you’re, at least, a little interested in technology. If you’re a little interested in technology, then I assume you own a digital camera. You do — right?
If you answered no to that question and you’re not shooting film because your a professional photographer, then I have just one question for you – why? Whatever your reason, I can give you two simple reasons to change. No, I’m not going to say because everyone else is. An even more compelling reason is that the film manufactures are starting to drop production of some films & paper and camera manufactures are starting to drop development and production of new film cameras. Face it, film is on it’s way out (at least for the average guy), it’s only a matter of time.
If that’s not enough to convince you then the convenience of digital should be. Not only can you take many more photos with a digital camera (and a large media card) but you can pick and choose which are printed and make improvements to those selections, such as red-eye reduction, etc. before the printing takes place.
If you’re already a digital user, or are a film user that I have persuaded to come to the digital side, what do you do with all of those photos that are just crying to be shared. Printing your photos and placing them in a photo album is great, but who really sees them? If you’re like me, you may not even live in the same town, state or country as your family or others that may like to see these photos. That said, most of us now have internet access, and more and more have broadband access which makes sharing our photos online a much better solution than putting them into a printed photo album alone.
If you research photo sharing services on the internet, you’ll soon be overwhelmed with options and will find a wide assortment of services, some free and some not. I have tried just about every service that’s out there, and in my experience, there is none better than SmugMug.
My main reason for choosing these guys is the simplicity of their service. Not only is the site easy to use and fantastically intuitive, it’s also totally customizable for those of you that want (or need) to integrate the pages into an existing site. Another great thing about the folks over at SmugMug is that they’re a very cheeky group – and I mean that in the nicest way. Read through their site and you’ll quickly see what I mean.
Two thumbs up for SmugMug – if you need an online storage site for your photos and a place to create online photo albums that you can share, there’s no better place to be.
~GT~