How are you sharing your photos? Images of your travels, photo trips, as well as fun moments with friends and family. Studies show the main reason we take photos is to share our special moments with others. How are you sharing your stories, passing on your experiences, expressing your interpretation of life, enabling your legacy to live on with your photos? I encourage you to do more with your photos, like setting up a new or enhanced website or creating and publishing photo books. You have incredible photos and I’m sure your family and friends would love to see them!
How Did You Share Photos in the Past?
Ten, twenty, thirty years ago…It was so much easier then. There weren’t as many options as there are today for sharing photos. For me, creating photo albums was how I enjoyed sharing my photos and the inspiration came from my grandmother. The first photo album I created was in the 60s; I still have it, the edges were chewed off by the family dog, but it’s still fun to look at it. For the next 30 years, I created photo albums and scrapbooks. All my film, along with extra prints were cataloged, labeled and stored in archive quality boxes stacked neatly in my closet. Does this bring back memories for you? Did you create photo albums or scrapbooks?
It’s probably not a surprise to anyone that I was very meticulous about keeping photos organized. lol That made it easy for me to sort thru them when working on a scrapbook or photo album. My plan was to create beautiful photo albums that could be shared with friends and family and someday passed along to children and grandchildren, like my grandmother did. There are well over 50 photo albums on my shelf and a handful of very specially prepared scrapbooks. When my son was growing up, he enjoyed looking through the ones that he was in, making this labor of love worth every minute.
Since then, the options of what to do with photographs have expanded and the audiences with whom to share them has grown. Extended families are bigger and it’s no longer only family and friends; if you want you can share your photos with the world.
How Are You Sharing Photos Now?
Today, multiple sharing mediums collectively represent my photo albums including my website, books and social media. It’s even more fun to share photos! There is family, extended family, and friends living all around the globe, and these additional venues make it possible to share photos with all of them at little to no cost. Admittedly, a lot of time goes into it but like anything, you get out of it what put into it. And it’s worth the fun of staying in touch and sharing experiences.
I am curious… what do you do with the photos you take these days? Some people tell me that only a few photos they take end up being shared. Unfortunately, most of their photos are locked on their hard drives, in the cloud or burned to CD/DVD. Too many photos, too little time and not knowing how take advantage of the options are what I hear most often.
I want to help you create these venues to share your photos and minimize the time it takes. A lesson I’ve learned by trial and error that will save you time is… thinking about what you want to do with your photos first, before you start post processing. Why? Because each method of sharing photos has guidelines (such as color mode, image size, resolution, meta data, security, etc.) and by knowing those guidelines up front you will avoid rework later. I have had to rework images to fit into different sharing venues and had I known about the various options and guidelines up front, I would have processed them differently from the start.
Let’s get started. How about creating a beautiful website to showcase your photos, experiences and stories? It’s easier than you may think. Or would you like to create one or more photo books and share them electronically, online or in print? Would you like to create a photo book and sell it? These ideas and more are absolutely doable. Please leave a comment with your idea. By documenting it, it makes it more real.
My new book, Miracle Moments of Transformation, a book of 70 short stories illustrated by 90 of my photographs ,printed in color really enhance the book. My editor often put my quotes from well-known folks, right on the photo. We find that the photo enhances the depth of the quote and the meaning of the quote expands the range of the photos! I have not seen another book like this, so share this idea.
There is a story of elephants and photos of my safari included in the 90 as well as other animal and travel photos. I am working on starting a blog for others to share their ordinary miracles.
Thanks for all you do, Kathleen, to stimulate our love of photography.
Elizabeth, thank you for sharing your book with us. What a beautiful way to share your photos! Would you please post a link to your book? I would love to look at it.