What do you do with your images?

[Orguy]

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What do you do with your images after you have looked at them on your computer, possibly edited them, etc.? Do you post online somewhere (Instagram, Facebook...), or make prints for hanging or albums, make photobooks? If you have someone make prints for you, whom do you recommend?

[pico]

Almost all my images go to the bin. A few survive to be backed-up and for some reason lost possibly because the backup deletes ignored images as the backup fills. I take it as a modern sort of survival. In the end, it does not matter.

Aside, one way to make a photo last forever is to be sure it sucks, has a grandiose title and certifiable pathological narcissistic rational. 

[sturkel]

This is one of my favorite topics as everyone is taking more photos now then ever before, yet there is very little to show.  I myself make travel books of our trips, I sell a fair amount of my work as stock photos at several sites.  In addition I sell fine art framed prints at auctions.  By far the travel books are my favorite. I would say 50% of my work is saved and archived for sale in the future.  

 

Cheers

 

Stan

 

[Stephen_C]

My photos are pretty much strictly for personal consumption. I seldom think any are really worth displaying or posting anywhere, save for the odd ones I've posted here from time to time. However, I do keep many of them for my own viewing pleasure. I guess I tend to be fairly ruthlessly self-critical of my photos (which is probably justified! 😀) so there are very few in my collection I've rated with a single star, even fewer with two and only one with three (and that's out of over 8,000 photos...not all taken with Leica equipment, of course).

Just very occasionally I find circumstances come together (right time, right place, right light, no self-inflicted idiocies on the part of the photographer) and there's something really worth having...but it doesn't seem to happen very often!

Stephen

[pico]

Speaking of photographs making money: flip-side: I think if I had created the opportunity many of my subjects might have paid to have images destroyed. (All such have already been posted here.)

Edited July 13, 2019 by pico

[Orguy]

1 hour ago, sturkel said:

This is one of my favorite topics as everyone is taking more photos now then ever before, yet there is very little to show.  I myself make travel books of our trips, I sell a fair amount of my work as stock photos at several sites.  In addition I sell fine art framed prints at auctions.  By far the travel books are my favorite. I would say 50% of my work is saved and archived for sale in the future.  

 

Cheers

 

Stan

 

When you make travel books, do you literally make them yourself or have someone else do it? I read online some people use picaboo.com photobooks and wonder if any of you have tried them (or someone else) and are satisfied?

[Leica Guy]

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I’ve made 10 books for family and friends of various topics. I use Blurb and am very happy with the results. It’s not terribly difficult. It just takes time and depends on how much detail you want to include. For instance if you put captions under each photo, it will take longer and also depends on the number of pages. 

I’ve wrestled for a long time as to the best way to pass on my best photos to future generations in our family. My very best idea is to do books and distribute them among family members who are interested and appreciative. 

For instance our family has been holding a re-union event on Cape Cod for the past 35 years. I did a book of 100 photos from those years and gave it as Christmas presebts to each brother and one widow. It was overwhelmingly loved. Especially since matriarch and patriarch members of the family recently passed. 

For completeness, I thought I’d add that I upload many of my best photos plus I create galleries for our trips all on Smugmug. I make more than enough profit each year selling prints from Smugmug to cover the costs of Smugmug and a host for the site. It also gives me a fourth copy of many of my best and memorable photos in case my three HD’s were destroyed or went kaput. 

www.danoldfieldphotography.com

Edited July 14, 2019 by iQ2

[Overpowered by Funk]

I keep a Flickr stream that dates back to 2005 and includes 14,000+ images, most of which are kept private. Locally I save images that are worthy to a RAID system that has redundancy built into my network (read a second RAID) and then backed up into the cloud via a trickle upload. My approach is unusual for a shutterbug who doesn't sell my work, but it's made possible by my profession.

Edited July 14, 2019 by Overpowered by Funk

[sturkel]

So I use Adoramapix to make my books as well as amazon and blurb. I self publish now which is much easier then you think. In the past I would publish at book that sells for $40 and only make $5 royalty

 

 

cheers

[evikne]

The most important thing I do when I've imported new photos to my computer, is to delete as many photos as possible. To help myself with this task, I have created a smart (self-updating) collection in LR that automatically publish my newest photos to the TV screensaver. This way I am forced to weed away all the bad pictures, because I don't want others to see them. 🙂

 

[marchyman]

I've a hard disk dedicated to images I've taken/scanned over the years.   Rarely is anything thrown away.  I use Lightroom to organize and keyword the images.  Metadata searches usually let me find what I'm looking for.

What am I looking for?  Answers to questions like "What year did we go to the Big Island"?  How old was our grandson when I gave him his first motorcycle ride?

In other words the pictures are part of my family history.   Some are shared with other family members in semi-private SmugMug albums.  An ongoing project is scanning prints, slides, and negatives from my parents, pushing the history back a bit further.

[Leica Guy]

4 hours ago, marchyman said:

I've a hard disk dedicated to images I've taken/scanned over the years.   Rarely is anything thrown away.  I use Lightroom to organize and keyword the images.  Metadata searches usually let me find what I'm looking for.

What am I looking for?  Answers to questions like "What year did we go to the Big Island"?  How old was our grandson when I gave him his first motorcycle ride?

In other words the pictures are part of my family history.   Some are shared with other family members in semi-private SmugMug albums.  An ongoing project is scanning prints, slides, and negatives from my parents, pushing the history back a bit further.

+1. I operate in a very similar way. 

[Donzo98]

3 hours ago, iQ2 said:

+1. I operate in a very similar way. 

Me too. I recently bought a NAS... for archiving my images. Love it. 

Many get shared on FB and IG as well.

[SonbomaBear]

My library (LR) lives on a RAID and is backed up to my computer's drive nightly.  It is backed up to two externals every Thursday.  I have two cloud accounts tat I do not rely upon. I also have an external drive with SD card reader where I back up the unsullied cards -- every once in awhile I need to OOC RAW file.

OOC = out of camera 

[LocalHero1953]

What happens to my images?

- Printed to go on our walls: a group of 10 of children/grandchildren in our hall, changed periodically; a group of a dozen or so of dancers, running up our stairs; a group of 8 travel photos on the first floor; a few other individual larger ones elsewhere. I'm fortunate that my wife likes my photos; I use a cable hanging system to place them in groups, that makes it easy to change them. I print myself on an Epson P800, and cut my own mats with a Logan guillotine.

- Social media: I wish I had more time to put them on instagram, but I often put them on FB.

- Books (Blurb): ditto about time: I have created archival family photo albums up to the year of my birth, then my childhood; after that it gets difficult as the number of images increases exponentially. I have created a few travel-specific books for family distribution, and a few small arty books for specific subject matter.

- Website: created initially by a family member, a web designer; it is in drastic need of updating.

- For others: I do quite a bit of portrait and publicity photos of local amateur musicians, actors and performances. I just see this as a way of paying off my guilt at spending so much money on expensive equipment.

My older analogue images have all been scanned (this took many years); I still receive other negatives and prints from among the wider family which are then scanned.

Digital images (>40k, 1.2Tb) are all stored primarily in the cloud with Adobe CC. Originals and edits are all backed up locally. Local storage comprises a 4Mb NAS in RAID 5 format (~3Mb effective capacity) for routine use, and a 8Mb DAS in Raid 1 (mirrored) format (4Mb capacity) for backup. I am increasingly trying to cull my digital images (not scanned analogues): there are so many: probably 50% are near duplicates taken because digital allows you to; 80-90% of them are not of good enough quality to be used for anything; 95-99% will never be used for anything.

My laptop has a 512Mb disk, but this is not used for image storage except while travelling and in transit to Adobe CC.

===========

It has been useful listing it all out like this - it reminds me how much I have yet to do - if only I had the time!

[ralphh]

I print them and hang them on the wall (old fashioned I know...)

The plan is to produce a book per year of our family photos.  I'm about 3 years behind at the moment though 😢

I print pretty regularly so what's in the frames is changing quite often.  I also therefor have a portfolio case full of A4 and A3 prints.

edit: err, excuse the clutter and mess

 

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Edited July 15, 2019 by ralphh

[Leica Guy]

6 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

What happens to my images?

- Printed to go on our walls: a group of 10 of children/grandchildren in our hall, changed periodically; a group of a dozen or so of dancers, running up our stairs; a group of 8 travel photos on the first floor; a few other individual larger ones elsewhere. I'm fortunate that my wife likes my photos; I use a cable hanging system to place them in groups, that makes it easy to change them. I print myself on an Epson P800, and cut my own mats with a Logan guillotine.

- Social media: I wish I had more time to put them on instagram, but I often put them on FB.

- Books (Blurb): ditto about time: I have created archival family photo albums up to the year of my birth, then my childhood; after that it gets difficult as the number of images increases exponentially. I have created a few travel-specific books for family distribution, and a few small arty books for specific subject matter.

- Website: created initially by a family member, a web designer; it is in drastic need of updating.

- For others: I do quite a bit of portrait and publicity photos of local amateur musicians, actors and performances. I just see this as a way of paying off my guilt at spending so much money on expensive equipment.

My older analogue images have all been scanned (this took many years); I still receive other negatives and prints from among the wider family which are then scanned.

Digital images (>40k, 1.2Tb) are all stored primarily in the cloud with Adobe CC. Originals and edits are all backed up locally. Local storage comprises a 4Mb NAS in RAID 5 format (~3Mb effective capacity) for routine use, and a 8Mb DAS in Raid 1 (mirrored) format (4Mb capacity) for backup. I am increasingly trying to cull my digital images (not scanned analogues): there are so many: probably 50% are near duplicates taken because digital allows you to; 80-90% of them are not of good enough quality to be used for anything; 95-99% will never be used for anything.

My laptop has a 512Mb disk, but this is not used for image storage except while travelling and in transit to Adobe CC.

===========

It has been useful listing it all out like this - it reminds me how much I have yet to do - if only I had the time!

For upgrading your website, I’ve had excellent results and experiences with Smugmug. Their canned designs are great and it’s easy to do a full custom just watching Youtube videos. I did my site over a weekend. 

[LocalHero1953]

2 hours ago, iQ2 said:

For upgrading your website, I’ve had excellent results and experiences with Smugmug. Their canned designs are great and it’s easy to do a full custom just watching Youtube videos. I did my site over a weekend. 

I'm happy enough with the design of my website, it's just the labour of refreshing the photo galleries I publish there.

My son-in-law (a professional web designer) who created my website, wants to upgrade the design as well - I'll leave that to him

Edited July 15, 2019 by LocalHero1953

[fredus]

I print the best one. This is my family portrait hallway at home  I also make a bunch of photo books,. I work at Shutterfly, so it helps ... 😉 

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica Q

[Leica Guy]

I print a few of my best and display on walls in my house. I’ve migrated over many years from printing and framing myself to now often using BayPhoto and metal prints. 

I also make photo cards using Photographers Edge cards. Super easy. I occasionally sell them, but mostly I give them away in boxes of 10 as gifts. I have no affiliation with them  

http://www.photographersedge.com/

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