And I’m not talking about passing your camera around so friends can view your favorite pics on your 2-inch LCD screen. When was the last time you actually took the time to print your most cherished shots or at the very least email them to family members?
Printing pictures has become as easy as sitting your camera on top of a printer and pressing a button. It’s a simple task, but you might be surprised by the number of shutterbugs who allow their shots to sit in their cameras for months on end.
With summer fast approaching and snap happy parents prepping to capture keepers of their children’s first trip to the beach or a memorable family reunion at the park I thought it would be a good time to encourage hobby photographers to start sharing their prized winning pics with other people in their lives.
The evolution of digital photography has made sharing pictures much easier than looking through negatives, coordinating picture numbers and ordering copies. These days sharing pictures is as easy as clicking a mouse.
One photo sharing option is email. You can email photos to your loved ones but you run the risk of them being too large to travel from your email system into someone else’s, especially since all email systems set size limits on attachments. A better option is to sign up with a photo sharing site. It’s easy and effective—-all you need to do is connect your camera, via the USB cable, to your computer and you can copy your photos to the photo sharing website of your choice. You then click the area that typically says, “share” and type in the email addresses of your chosen family members and friends. You can share individual photos or entire albums you’ve created showing off your favorite shots. Your friends receive an email with a link that they can click on to view the pictures. Once they look through the photos they have the option of ordering prints as well as other photo gifts such as mugs, t-shirts, mouse pads, etc.
Most sites are free to join with the most popular being oFoto, Snapfish, and Shutterfly. Some newer photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Photobucket, Flektor, Phanfare and Smugmug are also growing in popularity. Another helpful site is Google’s Picasa, which offers a free program that you can download to organize your photos on your own computer. It also fixes photo flaws such as red-eye and allows you to crop, along with giving you the opportunity to upload your favorite shots to any photo sharing site.
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