Click here for photo coupons from Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish, and Picaboo I've been thinking it's time for me to put together my 2008 Year in Review Photobook, but there's nothing like some good Shutterfly coupons to give me a kick start! If I can create and order my photo book by Feb. 2nd, I can get 20% off my photo book plus free shipping (with code SHIP50 at checkout). In addition, I can stack more coupons by using a "private offer" for my account for up to 25% off with the code "SHOPANDSAVE" (expires 2/4). I also have a mail offer for $10 off a photo book with the code "PK01-0GN3-3XZK-343DM5" good through 2/15. All of this adds up to a great deal on a beautiful, hard bound collection of all of our family's photos for the past year. The expiration date is coming up soon, but I seem to work best with a deadline.
Click here for photo coupons from Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish, and Picaboo Digital photography is a wonderful thing and it has revolutionized our photo taking, but it’s also brought its own set of challenges. If you’re like me, you take a ton of photos because it’s free. However, after a while, your computer is filled with photo files making it hard to find and enjoy the photos you really love. How can you organize and enjoy your precious photos?
Here are some ideas to enjoy the quality of your photos as well as the quantity: 1. DOWNLOAD: Download your photos to your computer and put them in a folder. I usually use a title like “2009 January.” When the computer organizes the folders alphabetically, it will keep all the folders beginning with “2009” together. If I have a lot of photos for a particular event, I’ll put them in a folder titled with the year and then the event, like “2009 Halloween”. 2. FIRST PASS EDITING: Right after downloading, go through your photos and make a first pass at editing. If you see a blurry photo, delete it. There’s not much you can do to fix a blurry photo. If you see red eyes, fix them. If you took multiple shots of the same thing, choose your favorite and delete the rest. If you see photos that you really love, star them. I use Picasa (free downloadable photo editing software) and iPhoto, which are both great. 3. BACK-UP: Regularly back-up your photos to an on-site back-up and an off-site back-up. Click here to read more about backing up photos. 4. ENJOY: Do something with your photos so you can enjoy and share them, whether it’s putting them on your screen saver, uploading to Facebook, putting them on a Shutterfly Share site (which is also an off-site back-up), or creating a Year in Review photo book.
Resolutions made in 2008 to continue to 2009 1. Make a “Year in Review” photo book for the past year. 2. Carry a small camera in my purse so I’ll always have it with me. 3. Back up my photos on an external hard drive and on Shutterfly.
New Resolutions for 2009 4. Use the movie feature on my camera more. I’ve been watching old camcorder movies and realizing what an amazing medium this is for capturing what my family was like in earlier years. 5. Edit my old camcorder movies and burn them to a DVD for easy watching. 6. Get my old film negatives scanned and catch up with historical photo books from my non-scrapping years.
Click here for photo coupons from Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish, and Picaboo I'll never forget that day even though it was 17 years ago. I was in my home. Looking out my window I could see flames coming over the hill. I could feel the heat of the firestorm and could tell that oxygen was low. Nobody needed to tell me to evacuate - I could sense the danger. I had about 30 seconds to look around my home and save something before it all burned up. What did I save? You know what I saved. I grabbed my photos and ran for my life.
It was the October 1991 Oakland Firestorm that burned 3000 homes. I was lucky. The wind changed the direction of the fire and my home was saved, however I have several friends who lost everything and never even had the chance to rescue something before evacuating. When you talk to them, even today, about what they still miss, they'll usually talk about their photos.
Now we all have digital photos stored on our computers. The odds are low that we'll lose our computers in a fire, but we could. Even more likely is the possibility of losing our photos due to theft or a hard drive crash. We all need to protect ourselves from a heartbreaking loss by backing up our photos. It's best to have 2 backup copies -- one on-site and one off-site.
How should you back up your photos? For on-site back-ups, you can use CD's/DVD's or external hard drives, which seem to be getting cheaper. After I make a "Year in Review" photo book, I like to copy all of the past year's photos onto a disk and put it in a pocket that I've adhered to the inside back cover. For off-site back-ups, you can copy the same disks and store them somewhere other than your home. You can also use Shutterfly, Snapfish, or Kodak Gallery for free, unlimited storage. Another option is to use a service like Smugmug for a fee. There are also other services that charge a monthly fee and automatically back up your hard drive every night.
If you don't have a regular system for backing up your photos, make a resolution to do it now before something happens to your precious memories.
I've always loved to take photos, but for years I couldn't figure out how to get them into photo albums so I could enjoy them. For a while, my photos stacked up in shoeboxes. I tried scrapbooking and made a few albums, but I got frustrated at how long it took me. Finally, I discovered digital photo books and found I could make a photo book that covered a whole year's worth of photos in a mere week or two. This was and still is the answer to saving and enjoying my photos!
I'm a mother to three active daughters who give me plenty of opportunities to take photos. We all love to look through the family photo books.
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