08Apr12
Flickr... Picasa... SmugMug... Photobucket... Random Moments.
Lightroom, Aperture, Photoshop and millions of Apple's third party Apps.
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| A picture is worth a thousand shaves... |
It's not always just about the final photo image. Getting the job done involves a whole lot more.
A word and mention about the hidden back ground editing and hosting tools.
Along with my many photos here in my Portfolio of sorts, I have many other places where my photos are stored. Because of the sheer volume of digital photo images I have taken and accumulated, I've been using many dedicated photo housing websites. I have recently picked up utilizing Flickr! Thankfully in photography, there are so many wonderful mediums to post and manage my photographs. On my poor iMac alone, I house over 15000 photos of everything which mostly include my children. What does that say? That I am obviously quite crazy when it comes to photography and more specifically, I am running out of physical drive space!
It's hard enough to store my photos on my two separate home Terabytes drives. That's 2000 Gigabytes for the technically challenged. Think - nearly each photo (due to my Digital SLR) is anywhere from about 5 to 20 megabytes for each image. If you add that up, it's a lot of space being taken by just photos. Not to mention the various programs I use to edit and manage my images.
Of the many available websites, my favourite for hosting images for free are Flickr and Photobucket. Naturally, the obvious - Picasa which is the home of Blogger's photo hosting is good but it doesn't hold many for free.... While "Free" makes all the difference, there are definitely different levels of Free-ness. I suppose you could argue, anything would be best if were free. But they all do amazing things for FREE. Flickr is my favourite because it not only additionally has huge and wonderful FREE forums for photographers but it also creates an automatic Photostream (Mini viewable Gallery of your very own) of the photos that I upload. Flickr also has a showcase of hundreds of various photography groups that you can join or simply view, which are made up of people like me. Simply makes it, versatile and quite amazing.
Importantly, Flickr and Photobucket also allow me to link my images (by HTML code) that I want to use in various other sites like this one; Blogger.
Here, for example is my fantastic Flickr Photostream, which lately, I have put more photos into, that are viewable by the public (at my choice of course).
http://flic.kr/ps/29Rj1j
Despite the infinite "free-ness" of those above, (unless of course you pay for their optional Pro version upgrade) it's not quite as superior as having a Pro membership with a gallery service that hosts your photos and allows you to sell them. That's where my main gallery at SmugMug comes in.
http://www.purelyrandommomentsphotography.com/Photography/Random-Moments/20194660_j8RH2w
Having these hosting tools are important and they are all things I have stumbled along during my quest to become a better photographer.
Editing tools such as those I mentioned in my previous post, are a must. Adobe Photoshop (which is costly and though I don't find quite specific to post editing/processing of my images I do use for creating my transparent Watermarks). More appropriately, Adobe Lightroom 3 - A must have for the dedicated and advanced photo enthusiast or Apple's Aperture - for those who have discovered the real reason people own Mac's. I can't stress enough, if you are a serious photographer, BELIEVE me - you need a Mac. I pretended for years that owning a PC was enough and boy was I ever wrong. All it was in terms of "enough", was enough to get by. Once you open your eyes to the Mac world, you wont ever look back. Photo editing and processing is what the Mac was built for (not to mention whatever else you do). I am certainly not paid to sway anyone to purchase a Mac, but let me tell you, it makes your workflow so much easier. And if there ever was a tip to share or value, it's this one - GET A MAC.
If you appreciate someone's photography, appreciate all that goes into that final image. As I have learned, snapping any old image is easy. When next you want to take a photo, think of what the photo is supposed to convey, does your subject tell a story? Don't allow yourself to take that next photograph with the usual group of people in the middle smiling. Know that, there is much MUCH more that goes into a compositional photo than just pressing the shutter button alone.
My new Photo Mantra: "Pressing the shutter button is easy, it's what comes before and after that can be tough." - Sandi Graham-McWade 2012.
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