Works For Me Wednesday – Online Photo Sharing

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Do you have a ton of photos just sitting on your computer? If your like most moms, you take tons of photos, and then do nothing with them. Does this sound like you? Let me tell you what works for me. I’m not going to get too fancy here, because as a professional photographer I could go on and on about what to do with all those photos. Instead, I’m going to tell you about the easiest, fastest way to share your photos, and ultimately DO SOMETHING with them!

I know you’ve heard of Flickr. But are you actually using it? Do you have an account but have never used it? Let me tell you how wonderful Flickr is. I’m going to take you through a typical scenario in my house. My son big E just has his 11th birthday party. I upload all the photos from the event and edit out the ones that don’t look great or have no significance. I’ll have a whole other post on “letting go” of digital photos. Just because we take them, does NOT mean we have to save every digital file. Ok, moving on. The next step I do is use the Flickr uploader to upload the photos into my account. There are several ways to upload, you can do it right through their site, by email, your iPhone, but I like their stand alone desktop uploader. Make sure to select if you want them private or public. If you make them private your friends and family can still see them, you just have to invite them, I’ll get to that.

After the files are online, go to “organize & create”. Here you can create sets of photos, categorize, add descriptions, permissions, you have complete control of your photos in this menu. The beauty of this page, is the drag and drop feature. It works like your computer desktop. You just drag the photos you want to work with and then do what you like with them.

So now I have my photos of Big E in a set called 11th Birthday, private to only friends and family. Now I want to share the photos with everyone that attended the party and a few family members that live too far away to attend. I go to my Flickr photostream and select the set I just created. Under the search selection there’s a button, “Share This”. I always select the option of creating a link, that way I can send out a personal email with the link attached. If you created the photo set as a private set, make sure to create a “Guest Pass”, this will allow your friends and family members that are not Flickr members to view your photos. Voila! You just shared your photos.

Now what? You’ve shared your photos with the world, fantastic, but now what are you going to DO with them. Let me share what I do. Every year around Oct/Nov I create an album. Its really easy, you just select the tiny drop down menu next to Organize & Create and select Prints & Photo Products. Select all the photos to go in your album, drag them to the working area and select photo album. This takes your to Snapfish where you finish up the album.

It really is that easy! So stop letting your digital photos collect digital dust and DO SOMETHING with them.

The Photo Addict.