Sharing your pictures

mrskimbirk

Send those pictures to your friends–Mrs.Mary Kimbirk, my son’s teacher who had triple bypass passed away recently. I had intended to make this picture into a Get Well card for her. Canon Powershot G3 was used for this picture taken in 2008 at California Adventure, Disneyland.

If you’re reading this, chances are, you take a whole lot of pictures also.

I’ve often been neglectful of giving away some of my subjects pictures especially when it’s a social event when I’m not getting paid.

Recently one of my son’s teacher had a triple bypass. I had in mind just the picture I would use as a Get Well card. I didn’t have her home address and I kept putting off getting it.

Well, a few days ago, I found out she passed away. Now I feel awful.

When you’re done reading this, set up a folder and leave it on your desktop, label it something like “Pics to be Sent.” Then browse your library of pictures and start copying those pictures to that folder.

In the digital world there are a lot of ways to share your pictures.

If you have one or two people to send pictures to, emailing is okay especially if the files are not too big and you and your recipient have broadband.

If you’re sharing with a lot of people say a big family, then it makes more sense to upload the pictures to a webserver. From there you get the URL and send it to all your friends to download at their leisure.

Mac users who have a Mobileme account, you can do it all within iPhoto.

Here’s a video tutorial on how to export pictures from iPhoto to your Mobileme (previously called Dotmac) account.

There are several cross-platform solutions like Picasa, Flickr, even Facebook , I think Windows users, no doubt, will have more ways to share their pictures.

Just read the fine print on these “free sites.” There is really no such thing as a free lunch, so I urge you to scrutinize the fine print like that of Facebook’s.

Don’t wait. Whenever you come across a friend’s picture save a copy in that folder on your desktop. If it’s a circle of friends that you see often, they will all appreciate what you’re doing.

If you don’t plan to send them the full resolution file, resize the pictures especially if you want to email them.

A good setting would be 5 in x 7 in @ 150 pixels per inch and a jpeg setting of 6 Quality. That is just a suggestion naturally.

If the recipient has an inkjet printer and wants to print it themselves, that resolution should be more than enough for that size picture.

You can experiment by making a print of your picture at that setting to see if you can live with the quality of the picture.


2 thoughts on “Sharing your pictures”

  1. Shane,
    Websites for sharing files are too numerous to name. Generally speaking, you lose something in exchange for the service. For people who do photography for a living, it’s better to pay for a service like you and I do.

    Facebook and Picasa can use your images for free in exchange for using their services. I feel if it’s just snapshots, it would be okay. If you feel strongly against them using it, you could watermark the image.

    This post is really to remind everyone that life is too short. If you have pictures of friends and family, send it to them. It really doesn’t cost you anything.

  2. Excellent idea! I am going to start my folder now. After neglecting several requests for photos simply due to my own laziness, this should work great.

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