I have to admit, I love using the various online photo sites such as Snapfish (owned by HP), Shutterfly, and Kodak’s EasyShare Gallery; to get high quality prints of family photos, to order coffee mugs with the kids’ pictures on them, and my newest favorite, digital photo books. They are an improvement on the traditional magnetic page albums, since printing the photo directly on the paper takes up far less room. Now when we finish a vacation or even celebrate a significant milestone event, I upload the photos, add some captions, select a cover and order the book/album. You still need to have digital prints around for sharing with others or using for collage or scrapbooks but these photobooks are GREAT! My father and I compiled scanned historical genealogical photos and information and made copies for everyone in our family. What a great way to celebrate the results of your family tree research!
Something to remember: your photos are personal and should be kept private. It’s a sad fact that strangers out there might have uses for your photos that you would never allow or be terribly upset to have occur. For example, you wouldn’t want a pedophile to have access to photos of your children. So please make sure you secure your albums at any online photo sites and restrict access on photo sharing sites (such as Flickr).
There is even a new lawsuit involving Flickr and the access many people allow to their albums for others to use their pictures. A young girl’s photo, taken at a church BBQ, was put on her counselor’s Flickr site. Apparently his settings allow people to reuse the photos, as many of his other images are professional quality and artistic. He probably just wasn’t aware of the implications for casual snapshots of people. The surprising next “act” in this drama was that an ad agency selected this image for use in an ad campaign for Virgin Mobile in Australia. And the lawsuit is due to the fact that this young girl never gave permission for her image to be used in this commercial fashion. Make sure your settings protect your privacy and the privacy of others. Click here to read more about the story.