I have always loved taking pictures. I think I got that from my mother. She often had a camera in her hands. When I was little, she had one of those oold-time black box shaped camers that took black and white pictures. It must have worn out, because eventually she got a new one that actually liiked lik a camera (well, a 1950's style camera), and the new camera took colored pictures. Now, we have the wonder of digital pictures. No camera even required. Your phone will take the pictures for you. And now the pictures can either be stored in your computer, or uploaded to an online storage area, such as Flickr or Picasa. I have both accounts, but use them differently. Every picture I take automatically goes into my Picasa account, and into my Web Albums (Pixite) app. The Flickr account is one where I can share photos with my family, and I have been working on uploading pictures into the Flickr albums. My oldest son started something called a "Transporter", and it is an even better place where everyone in the family can upload and store pictures. I am still learning how to use that one; but I have figured out how to get pictures out of it. Where does everyone store their pictures? I have lost enough of the old ones when my computers crashed that I definitely want to store mine in another place as well as on my computer now.
Not all methods of taking pictures are created equal. My phone takes very nice pictures but I could not enlarge them like they can on some of the cameras and IPhones so I broke down and bought a digital camera. I got with a middle of the road Sony Sure Shot digital camera and I love how nice it works. Lots of pre set filters that take some of the guess work out of getting great shots. If my ship ever comes in I would love to get one of the better SLR camera's. I am still old school and see no need for a separate and distinct photo share site. I upload my pictures, edit the ones I like and then burn the better ones to a disc. I prefer burning because you can store it as a back-up, I do have many that are on my home terabyte drive or my USB. These are just to share with whomever I want. I keep telling myself one of these days I will scan in some of my old pictures so that these are available for anyone interested when I am gone. I always took pictures as a kid, and have had all sorts of different cameras. I got great pictures from the polaroid's that used to self develop right in front of your face. The film packs were expensive then, about $35 for maybe 20 pictures. I have probably about 5 or 6 of the disposable cameras that I have yet to get developed laying in a drawer. I took a few in, they were birthday pictures from when my son was 4 and some snowstorm pics.
Photography is my passion and I take so many pictures that I had to find a proper way to store them.I also lost many photos when my computer crashed a few years ago. I never want that to happen again. Originally I was storing them on usb sticks but then I bought an external hard drive which is just for my photos. Mind you I haven't transferred all the photos over to the hard drive yet mainly because I want to organize them a bit better. Most of my photos are nature and wildlife shots as I'm not a big fan of people pictures.
I think it would make a difference what you intend to do with your pictures as to which method of online storage works best for each person. Most of my pictures are pictures of my family; so being able to share those pictures is an important thing in my case. We are working on a family project where we all put our pictures online in one place and then each family member can also download the pictures that other family members have posted; so having a place with multiple access is important in my case. However, the Transporter only shows the picture, and no information about each picture. Part of what I am trying to do is label each picture so my grandchildren/great-grandchildren, etc. will know who is in the older pictures. Some are pictures that my folks took years before I was born, and even I have no idea who they are. I am trying to prevent that from happening again. The Flickr album is perfect for that because you can label the picture and write about each one.
Hey all. Have to do something will all the digital photos I've got on the old PC hard drive. There's only about five year's worth there but it would be a pity were they to get lost when that machine finally bites the dust. Don't use online spaces for them, still suspicious of privacy matters (will I ever get over that? hard to say....) Wanted to mention a free, easy-to-use program that I use both for work and play for editing and making basic corrections to my digital photos: XnView. It's intuitive, clear and, again, easy to use. Have tried PhotoShop but the learning curve was too steep for the time I had for it, while XnView was a snap to learn and become agile with. Best of all, it's free! peace, revel.
I've been lucky that I haven't lost any photos yet, because I'm terrible about doing backup. My previous computer died a year ago and before that I went through a period of several weeks during which it kept getting blue screens, but I somehow managed to get all my photos moved onto external hard drives before it finally gave up the ghost. You'd have thought I'd have learned my lesson after that, but 2014 was a difficult year for me and I never gave much thought to backup. I think I need to find some time to do it. I belong to a photographic challenge site where I upload the occasional photo, and I also have some of my photos for sale at Microstock sites, but aside from those I don't upload many photos onto the internet.
I have a bunch of old PCs in my library that I keep only because, one day, I hope to be able to get into them for the photos that were left on the hard drives. Most of them still work, although one or two may not. My wife and I ran an Internet cafe for a while so we also have six old Gateways from that experience.
I have an old desktop that has pictures on it from when the grandkids were little that I would like to get off of the hard drive before I get rid of the computer. I have not ried Flicker yet to store my photos although I know many people use it.
I've been regularly using photobucket, because it's a perfect social site to exhibit my shots, since I usually take nature and wildlife shots. Photobucket has a great privacy tool where you can limit the number of people that can access your albums or allowing specific people to view the pictures. Another method I use is cloud computing (MEGA) they allow up to 50GB of storage, and can be accessed, literally ANYWHERE. MY son show it to me and it's been a pretty good solution.
I'm also a prolific picture taker, so have lots and lots of photos, but mine are primarily nature pictures. I bought a portable hard drive a few years back, and I back up all of the pictures I really care about (family, pets, good nature pictures) on there, so I can grab it and go, in the event of a hurricane evacuation. I have scanned some old family pictures, and those are also on the portable hard drive, as well as my desktop. I do have flickr, picasa, and photobucket accounts, but I have to confess, I haven't done anything with them in years. I checked on the flickr account several months ago, so I know that's still active, but I haven't even logged into the others in at least a couple of years. I should add that to my To Do list, just to see what's on there.
I need to remember to back-up photos... I have an old photo-bucket account but I haven't use it for quite a few years. I just transfer them from my digital camera and keep them on my hard drive, but I really should back them up, or else once my PC bites the dust (which is hopefully not soon!) I'll have lost them all, but I keep getting sidetracked, I hadn't thought about it for a good while... Thanks to this post I'll at least put it on my to-do list so I remember. As for editing, I'm clueless on how to do anything like that. My daughter's quite the pro at it though, I think she took a photography course including editing, so I leave it to her if I want things edited.
Basic editing is really easy and can be a lot of fun. You should give it a try. Why don't you download a free program called Gimp and play with it a bit? You may just surprise yourself with what you can achieve.
I have been playing more and more with picmonkey and I have gotten happy with the results I am getting with the program. I have used both paint and picmonkey together to get the results I am looking for. I took a selfie and used both programs to get a nice picture of myself. I did a little fading of the shadows and got a good picture.
I had forgot about picasa, and I think I will try picmonkey, I did try gimp and I did not feel it was that easy of a program to get used to. i have already started this years pictures, I went to a concert last week and forgot to bring the camera, I wish I had because it was real up close and personal. I did get a few winter shots of birds in the trees and took some nice spring pictures of the daffodils and the forsythia that was just in brilliant color. I would really like to do something more with my photography, in the beginning I did it to add to my writing, and I guess that I still could but it seems like there is not enough hours in the day anymore. I have been looking at doing some entries into the local fair and would not mind trying my hand at a gallery showing. but here is the thing, everyone does nature pictures, and I am no different. I love to take pictures of flowers, and bugs and just weird stuff. I thought at one point maybe what I would like to do is produce one of a kind greeting cards. I was thinking about this yesterday when I was folding up small brochure that I made for one of our gardening committee. It came out real nice. I had the thought maybe in the future I would change the clip art for real photos of the owners gardens.
I would strongly advise you to sign up for Microsoft's OneDrive. It's free, and it gives you 15 GB, with offers throughout the year which allow you to increase your storage for free. OneDrive is a cloud server on which you can store files, which can then be accessed from any device as long as you enter your credentials. Alternatives to OneDrive are Dropbox and the iCloud, but I prefer Microsoft's service, because it never let me down.