Online Photo Sharing
One of my favorite parts of having a digital camera is how easy it is to share your photos with others. With a few clicks of the mouse, photos can be online and accessible to friends, family, and even people on the other side of the globe. So what’s the best way to do this? Well, there are several options:
Use an online photo printing service
There are many sites out there, such as Snapfish or KodakGallery, that are primarily for uploading photos to be printed. But, they can also be used to share photos with others.
The best part about using an online printing service to share photos is that everything is one place—you can share and print photos all from the same site. Prints are generally decent quality and quite cheap. But, unfortunately, sharing usually leaves a lot to be desired. There is little to no community aspect to these sites; for the most part, you put up your photos, and other people view them—no commenting, critiques, etc. Also, it can be a chore to allow others to view your photos, sometimes requiring viewers to register before seeing them.
My advice: Use photo printing sites for what they’re made for: printing your photos, not sharing them.
Post on a social site
Another option is to post your photos to sites like Facebook or MySpace. Sites like these are perfect for snapshots of friends—Facebook even alerts those who are your photo about the shot. While these sites are great for photos of your friends, however, don’t expect any feedback to more artistic shots. It’s also fairly age specific—most of these sites are designed for middle school to college-age.
My advice: While social sites can be great for sharing photos of friends, they just simply don’t work well with other types of shots.
Use a web gallery
One of the most popular web galleries out there is Webshots. Sites like Webshots are made for one way sharing, similar to online photo sites. You upload the image, others view it, but they can’t comment. Sites like this are nice because they are in the gallery format, so it’s very easy to organize photos.
My advice: Web Galleries are great for one-way sharing. If all you need is a place for others to view your photos, and you don’t care whether others can comment or not, they could be right for you.
Flickr
Yes, Flickr gets its own section. Why? Because it is perhaps the greatest thing to happen to online photo sharing since the digital camera. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit, but if you want a site that has excellent photo sharing features along with an incredible community, Flickr is the place to be. There are thousands of groups to join, and depending on how involved you get, there are many groups that provide great critiques of your work. The downside to Flickr is it’s not quite gallery-based; you can create “sets” which act like galleries, but you only get three with the free account. If you go with the PRO account, you will get unlimited photosets.
I could go on and on about Flickr, because it truly has elevated my photography—definitely give it a look.
My advice: Unless all you want to do is post photos into galleries, Flickr is the best place to share photos online, so what are you waiting for?
Are there any others that I happened to leave out? Let me know by leaving a comment.