By Ann
We got our first digital camera over 10 years ago. I loved digital cameras from the start because I could see immediately if I got the picture I wanted. With the viewing screen and garbage can icon, I could delete all the lousy photos I took. I would never again pay to have a grainy images of my thumb developed.
The problem is that I rarely bothered to develop anything. I “shared” photos by turning on the camera and showing the pictures to whomever was nearby. Or I downloaded the pictures to the computer, and there they sat. I have thousands of pictures undeveloped on my desktop computer, laptop, CDs, cell phones, and various camera memory cards. I need to cull, organize, and most of all print some of these images. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to create scrapbooks with past photos so we have hard copies of our family vacations, holidays, everyday events.
I have friends who have made photo books through websites that print and bind the pictures into a beautiful scrapbook. I really like the idea of a photo book organized by a theme. It is so much nicer to turn the pages of a book to view the photos, than to click through pictures on a computer screen. The book makes a wonderful gift, and can be passed around to be viewed and shared. I’ve looked online and found websites with simple but attractive templates. I thought the pricing seemed fair as well, and one book can hold many photos. Has anyone else done this? Does anyone have a photo book website you’d recommend?
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Comments
8 Responses to Sharing Photos
Snapfish.com. I made books for Xmas 2008 for both my husband and my parents. I had each of our siblings send us pictures of what we did throughout the year and put it together. With the digital world our parents seem to be missing out on some of the family pictures floating around.
The quality of papers and cover were very nice much better than the one I have seen on Shutterfly. You can email the book out to others you want to see along the way and get their opinion and make changes before you order. It is easy to edit the pictures in Snapfish before making the book also. Very user friendly program.
It’s so sad to lose pics. I lost all my Christmas pics last year when my hard drive suddenly went bad. I had backed up all but those last 3 months when it happened. I was upset to lose some of the pics I had taken of my father. Luckily, I taped all of Christmas morning on my camcorder.
Ann, I have so many unprinted pics too. I hardly ever print them out, but send them out in emails. I’m not big on scrapbooking but it would please me if all my photos (old and new) were sorted and in albums.
I have never heard of photo books like those. That’s a cool business idea. I will check it out. If I’m designing (playing) and someone else puts it all together …. well, I like that.
Thank you, Regina. I came across an article rating all these sites, but when I realized the page was from 2005, I decided to ignore it. Five years is a century in digital terms. Shutterfly was their top pick, so I was leaning that way. I’ll check outsnapfish instead. Thanks.
We just got home from a fabulous New Year’s Eve 2009 wedding that my husband just attended. I realized that we took over 200 pictures between the rehearsal dinner and the wedding and reception. We decided to make a CD and send it to the bride and groom so that they have it when they get back from their honeymoon. This way, they can print whichever pictures they choose. Since seemingly everyone takes pictures these days, sometimes I feel overwhelmed……..scrapbooks are nice, but please, who wants to see ALL of those pictures?! We took 200+ at during one event, and we were only 2 of 125 guests! I really think the rarity of pictures make them so much more valuable.
Happy New Year to everyone!
Shutterfly and Snapfish are the two best IMO. Kodak takes too long. I have loads of the photobooks from both companies that my Mom makes me.
220+ photos? That’s a lot of photos for one weekend. I’m sure they’ll appreciate the pictures, though, I agree with you that sometimes less is more. That’s why I love the idea of these scrapbooks. They organize the best of the pictures, and you can even crop the ones you have.
I have been placing some of the old pictures that I have scanned up on Facebook. It allows other family members to view them also. That can be a problem though. I know my sister’s husband accidentally deleted her Facebook account a couple of months ago by opening up a new Facebook account with the same email address. She was not very happy about it but at least she still had them on her hard drive.
I also started a family blog about a year ago using blogger. It is private and by invite only and we have used it to post different pictures of things all of our extended family are involved in. You can also leave comments on it which is fun. My parents do not have a Facebook account so this works really well for them.
The photo album that my sister made using Snapfish (mentioned above) was beautifully done and great quality.
I’m guilty of having thousands of pics on my hard drive. I’m trying to sort through them now and burn them onto cds.
I have found these little photo albums at Michael’s that hold 100 pics each. They are perfect for a set of vacation pics or birthday party pics, etc. So, now, I’m trying to print them and get them directly into an album. Otherwise, they will sit.
I need to explore the whole snapfish thing and making one of those books from there. They look really nice and are much easier to do than scrapbook. My son will be 3 this month and his “scrapbook” only goes up to baptism. His baby book, however, I have kept up with AND I keep an online blog/diary for him, too.