The digital camera revolution has changed the way that most of us take photos. Whether you’re using a top-of-the-line DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera or a simple point-and-shoot, it’s likely that you’re shooting more photos than you used to with a film camera.
It’s also likely that you’re paying less attention to getting prints made. That means your photos often end up just sitting on your camera or computer, where you aren’t sharing them with friends and family, like you would have in pre-digital days.
Luckily, the flexibility of digital photography makes it easier than ever to be creative with preserving your memories through photographs. With a little help from some online resources, you can share your photos and do more with them than you’d ever imagined was possible a few years ago.
The first step, of course, is transferring files to your computer, so find all your memory cards and get to work. Once you have everything at your virtual fingertips, you can start organizing. Photo websites like Flickr let you organize your photos into sets, tag them with information to make them easily searchable, pinpoint on a map the location where the photo was taken and more. It’s a great way to share, for those who have friends and family spread out across the country and the world, but it’s also helpful for your own organizing purposes.
While you can certainly print out your photos and put them into an album, like we all did when getting prints made was the only way to see your pictures, sites like Vistaprint.com make it simple and cost-effective to do put your photos to more unexpected uses.
Once you have all your photos organized, you can start thinking about what you’ll do with them. When the holidays are approaching, you might want to pick out your favorite shots from the past year and use them to create photo calendars. It’s a great alternative to the standard Christmas letter or generic holiday gift — you can show, rather than tell, what your family has been up to over the past year. And when you hang it up at home or in your office, you’ll be able to look back at your memories over the course of the year.
While photo cards are a great idea for sending holiday greetings, think outside the box and remember that you can use them all year round. If you have an artistic nature and a talent for creative photography, you could even create blank cards adorned with your images and use them as all-purpose greeting cards for saying everything from “congratulations” to “get well” to “happy birthday.”
The sleek simplicity of photo postcards is making them a popular option. Young couples are adding engagement photos to them and using them to announce their wedding dates, new parents use them to show off their just-born babies — you’re only limited by your imagination. Use them as party invitations or moving announcements that show off your new house.
Next time you take out your camera, think not only of capturing the next great shot, but how you’ll be able to share it later.
