Organizing, Storing and Printing Digital Images - SmugMug
A Mess of Images
In early 2005 I bought my first ever digital camera, an SLR Nikon D-70. I love the camera and it takes amazing photos. Over the past 3 years those photos keep multiplying and they have become rather unruly and unorganized.
I’m currently in the process of decluttering my house and life and cleaning up these images is on the list of jobs to tackle. It’s a big job.
First step was to figure out what to do with them. I want to share them, I want to print them, I want to organize them. And most of all - I don’t want them to be a hassle. [note - I'm not talking about the images I have of my artwork - that's a whole other mess - but photos of everything else].
An Effortless Solution
Instead of researching and hunting around for the perfect solution I decided to take advantage of someone else’s research (my dad’s) and I’m putting my photos on SmugMug. It’s not free but it’s only $40 a year, a small price to pay for storage of all of my images. And because there is a fee there are no ads. It’s a really nicely designed site and so far I’m quite pleased with it.
I’m doing a weekly upload to smugmug and by the end of the year I will have everything organized and sorted out. Along the way I am sharing the pictures with the folks I promised I’d share them with (sometimes years ago). Yay! As I take new photos I am uploading them in a timely manner.
After putting the images on the website I am deleting the images from my computer. SmugMug keeps 4 backup copies of the files in 3 different states. I can’t come close to that kind of redundancy without a lot of effort. I get unlimited storage/bandwidth and I can print the images from the site (as can the people I share them with).
Definitely hassle free.
I love the idea of deleting them from my computer. I’m throwing away all my negatives from my print pictures also. It’s so freeing to get rid of this stuff I will never do anything with.
I’m going to be printing some of them, family ones for albums, inspiration ones to put on my wall and be inspired by. I’ve rarely (as in maybe once) printed my digital images in the last 3 years so this is a new exciting thing for me. Okay - I admit - learning technology sometimes prevents me from doing things - printing digital pictures was hurting my head - but no more! Yes I’m a software engineer and hand code the html for my website but I don’t know how to text message on my cell phone.
SmugMug Details
You can check out my smugmug site. I’ve got some public galleries in the inspiration category (some photos from Arizona and from North Carolina) and a few images from a show out in Arizona last year.
If you want the marketing stuff about SmugMug it is here. If you want to sign up you get a $5 discount if you have a coupon from a referral - you can put in my email address or use this code ZnhmaNpn2n1mk . Not required but $5 is nice. I get $10 off on my next renewal if someone does this so that’s also nice.
Above Image
The photo at the top is a close up section of one of the pictures I have on smugmug - it’s an aloe plant damaged by frost.
I’m so happy!
Posted by Lisa in: Inspiration
Tagged: decluttering, Digital Images, Inspiration, SmugMug
Katherine said,
January 17, 2008 @ 7:33 am
Useful post.
I’ve got a Flickr Pro account and what I do now is load them onto my Flickr account as soon as I pull them off my compact flash card and onto the computer. That makes it quite simple as I tend to work out the groups of images I want before loading images onto my computer. Which them makes the creation of sets on Flickr an absolute doddle.
There’s only one problem with only archiving to the internet - no access to broadband. Now for the most part this tends to be for very short intervals - but just supposing………….
My plan is also to have an organised digital archive at home - on external hard disc and (for ones I tend to use mor often) on CD as well
One of the things I found surprising with Flickr - given the way photography technology and the size of images has been accelerating - is the limit they place on images for download back again. Have you tested this on smugmug - because if it’s got no limit I might just switch to that - or have another back-up account! ;)
Andrea said,
January 17, 2008 @ 5:51 pm
I dig your blog!
Cherry said,
January 19, 2008 @ 7:21 am
Hi Lisa,
Thank you for sharing your outstanding solution for storage!
C
Lisa Call said,
January 19, 2008 @ 10:01 am
Katherine - I haven’t tested the no limit on downloads but according the info on smugmug they truly place no limits.
Thanks Andrea and Cherry!