Being a recreational photographer I have often thought, "What am I ever going to do with all the shots I take"? I have thousands on my computer thanks to Digital Photography. My Wife looks at some of them but most of my shots are just that, 'shots' plain old shots and thats all they will ever be, shots confined to the hard drive.
Because I live in a very picturesque part of New Zealand I thought it might be a good idea to have my own display space, that way I can share some of my photos with who ever wants to look at them. So I have recently registered my own domain name and purchased TTG CE2 Pages and TTG CE2 Highslide Gallery from http://shop.theturninggate.net/ I know there are plenty of other Gallery Templates out there but I wanted to have more control over what I was doing and besides TTG plugins all work seamlessly with Adobe Lightroom 4. All up it has cost me $150.
The reason for posting this is not so much to advertise my new website but to recommend the idea to other recreational photographers to set up a small website and share some of your better shots with others, also perhaps start a thread here for users of TTG plugins.
What do recreational photographers do with all their photos?
(30 posts) (22 voices)-
Posted 8 months ago #
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what do i do with my photos?
post them on the web, post them to social networking sites, get noticed, get asked to help friends out with projects(by photographing), do those projects, do them well, get recognized, become famous(if you wish to be so)?photojournalism, and photography in general gives you a lot of opportunity to meet people and experience things. i'm not very good at photography, but its fun to imagine being somewhere near the top, and just doing something you enjoy without serious asperations of 'making it' is easy to do.
Posted 8 months ago # -
@ earthsea
Currently I just post mine on flickr and occasionally print the odd one. I have sold one or two to people I know but that's about it. I have been looking at putting a website / blog up through something like zenfolio that offers galleries and visitors can select prints and other merchandise to buy if they wish.
I also have started submitting stock photo's to an agency recently.Posted 8 months ago # -
Do you mean the 27,000 on the 2 TB hard drove stuck on my MacBook? LOL Many of my shots are used on my website which requires five per week. The others are generally offered via the Flickr download to the subjects or other interested parties at no cost. All the free photos are intended to draw folks to the website which has a message. As I worked as a pro for several years in the past I do not know what my classification is at present, but I kinda like "student" best.
Posted 8 months ago # -
I use two sites for my pictures. Picasa is what I use to download my full size pictures on for clients so they can have easy access to them and also a place I can store all my pictures. I also put the same pictures on Facebook for clients to share on their Facebook accounts and for people in the pictures to tag and/or download.
Posted 8 months ago # -
My photo's end up on my wall, website and our photo club has a monthly competition. But soon some may even be published for free of course.
@Admin, it would be nice for all us non-commercial folk if NR would let us list our personal web pages! I'm love to look through Msmoto's photos!
Posted 8 months ago # -
About 4 years ago, with the encouragement of a friend who had seen my work, I started posting a "Picture of the Day" on my Facebook wall (this was long before I'd discovered NRF so I wasn't knocking our PAD off). It was my first foray into publicly displaying my shots, and I figured if anyone was going to be encouraging it was my 500 or so friends and family.
I'm now have a "gallery" of about 700 images. Every day I get 5-10 comments. Many facebook connections I run into after not having seen them in a while preface conversations by mentioning how much they enjoy seeing my pictures every morning. It's been a nice way to help stay in touch with people and it's a good gauge of what people like. Very often I find that something I was relatively ambivalent toward elicits a lot of responses. Granted, Facebook butchers images to a certain degree, but overall it's been fun. Very likely nothing will ever come of it but it's been fun.
Posted 8 months ago # -
I very much like the idea of a personal domain name and a Gallery website.
Perhaps this thread can be expanded so some comments about how to register a domain name, what software you can purchase to set up a Gallery, what software allows orders through Paypal payments, etc. Is is possible for one of us to create our own website, post photos (of things - for example, school sports or performances so other parents can download photos of their kids, etc), sell photos, take orders for prints, etc.
Posted 8 months ago # -
donaldejose,
One of the easiest and most simple ways to have your own web page in my opinion has to be with someone like http://www.smugmug.com
They will provide your domain name and templates for an annual fee and their team are there to help with any questions. They also provide a service where they take orders for your photos and it all works from 'Publish Services' in Lightroom if you have it. As I said above, I went with 'The Turning Gate' which I found not the most user friendly system to set up but does give me the freedom with its many options to design my own front page and have my say. I had to buy my own domain name separately which was a one off cost of $35 and I pay my service provider (where I store my website) $80/year for any amount of space I want.
It does provide another extension to my hobby and is the easiest way to show anyone anywhere what I do. Its also a lot of fun.
I endorse this great idea... @Admin, it would be nice for all us non-commercial folk if NR would let us list our personal web pages! I'm love to look through Msmoto's photos!Posted 8 months ago # -
Being a beginner I have all my RAW files from a recent 6 month stint in NZ stored on a drive so that come the day when my post skills exceed that they're currently at, I'll dig into them again.
I had so many shots from NZ I actually printed a book with my favourites in there, just over 100 shots, in addition to 6 I printed large for various walls around the house.
If it wasn't for NZ I probably still wouldn't have a camera better than that within my phone.
Posted 8 months ago # -
@ Postman: I am envious of you visiting NZ! With regard to your files - if it is a disk drive you are keeping them on, they aren't safe. At least put them on some flash drives and keep them in various locations. HDD's need to be run frequently or you risk losing them all when you do go to open them, and speaking as one who lost his world in a fire, PC's disappear completely in a fire so do't forget off-site locations too.
In answer to the OP: In spite of all the warnings here and from other places, I tend to be very ruthless with the delete key. Not sharp enough? Delete. Scene that didn't finish up as good as I thought it would? Delete. Portraits that don't flatter? Delete. I fact, all pictures that aren't in any way good enough or the best I could do at the time - delete.
Posted 8 months ago # -
I'll agree with spraynpray on the delete key. I keep very, very few of what I consider snapshots now-a-days. If I have more than one portrait of a person and there's only 1 that stands out, that's the one I keep and backup on another drive. Landscape shots are the same. If there's no artistic flare or what I was expecting to capture, I get rid of it.
I'm also considering making photo books of all of the larger shoots like vacations and such.
Posted 8 months ago # -
I'll agree with spraynpray on the delete key. I keep very, very few of what I consider snapshots now-a-days. If I have more than one portrait of a person and there's only 1 that stands out, that's the one I keep and backup on another drive. Landscape shots are the same. If there's no artistic flare or what I was expecting to capture, I get rid of it.
I'm also considering making photo books of all of the larger shoots like vacations and such.
Posted 8 months ago # -
As everyone else has mentioned; print and frame your favorites. Photo books are even better because they don't take up as much space. Not to mention if you get into the "buisness" you can showcase your ability to clients.
Posted 8 months ago # -
I post them to Flickr for the players and familes to copy (i shoot mostly HS sports). I store them on an external drive. I plan to add a new external drive every year or so and make backups of the images.
I'm not certain how long I plan to keep all these sports shots on my drive(s) since they are posted on Flickr. I save them for now in case someone wanted a large print of something I shot and having the RAW file would allow me room to tweak the image for them, if needed.
Posted 8 months ago # -
I use flickr, I sometimes post of facebook, I have an 8x10 album I put pictures in at home and I have prints around our house and now my in laws houses as well.
If I ever got my lazy butt going I thought about making a page on shutterfly. I haven't looked around at all the services though. Shutterfly seems easy and for $200 a year you get unlimited storage, discounted print prices and there aren't any additional fees. You can set prices for the prints...I think it would compliment a physical (craft show, gallery, store) presence nicely because you wouldn't have to keep the inventory of all the prints in all the sizes and people could order them online. Or if I was really ambitious having online ordering wherever I was with internet and stuff setup that people could use to order on the spot (might keep people from second guessing whether to order or not when they get home).
Posted 8 months ago # -
I starting keeping photo notebooks in 1953. I won a National Science Award in teaching in 1967 much based on slide shows of ecology I was doing with my biology classes. I continued to print, make photo albums, and then supersized the slide shows into slide sound shows. I have had photos in Airports, Grand Central Station as huge Duratrans prints, and have had quite a few photos at the International Photographers shows. I do avoid Facebook, and use my photos in our farm business, and in our timber frame home building business. The highest level of my work, despite having some limited edition print books, is I believe the slide sound show. I prep them on a Mac Book Pro and run them on a Samsung LED HDTV. I have specialized in nature sound tracks recorded on the photo sites. I have used some fairly exotic sound recording systems. Some of my work is owned by Universities. I do several public slide sound shows each year. Some of them I receive an honorarium for. There I use a Canon fairly high end projector and the images are projecting on a big screen. I always bring my own sound system, etc.
Posted 8 months ago # -
About a month ago I eased up on shooting in my spare time and focused on learning to frame. I do everything by hand, from scratch, without power tools. It's been a great learning experience and rekindled my interest in woodworking and cabinetry.
The goal is to get some of my best memories up on my walls framed and looking exactly as I envision they should. Also, no-brainer Christmas presents for friends and family. ;)
I'm still waiting to find a decent priced thin bezel large screen LED TV to mount and play my 'keepers'.
Posted 8 months ago # -
elvishefer said:
About a month ago I eased up on shooting in my spare time and focused on learning to frame. I do everything by hand, from scratch, without power tools. It's been a great learning experience and rekindled my interest in woodworking and cabinetry.Having spent hours going through commercially available frames, and seeing the quality of work of local frames shops (except the museum quality ones) I have decided to do my own framing, matting, etc. I will probably start this winter when photography tends to be slower. In the meantime I am cranking out some beautiful prints on my Epson 7900.
@earthsea - I think it is great you have chosen to share your work and you have found an inexpensive tool to help you do that. Congratulations and Bravo!
Posted 8 months ago # -
@ earthsea.... my photos are on Flickr...available by clicking on any of the PAD posts I put up. PM me for more info.
Posted 8 months ago # -
We sell them for BIG BUCKS! LOL
Posted 7 months ago # -
Since photography is mostly recreational for me, I think it is safe for me to post this here.
My photos go one of four places primarily:
1. Hard drive, only to be seen by myself (90% of images)
2. My website (10%)
3. 4-5% 500px (stopped using Flickr last year, too much junk there)
4. To clients. Generally a small subset of the 10% for my site, + other images specifically requested.Posted 7 months ago # -
@ PB PM.... yes, lotsa junk on Flickr..... my junk! I use it as a distribution point for a lot of snapshots I take for others to be able to share. 500px is a much more art form photographic image site, but seems to have the Facebook quality of a popularity contest.
Both sites have their advantages.
And, some of my photos are not published until after they have been used for the client...
Posted 7 months ago # -
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msmoto said:
@ PB PM.... yes, lotsa junk on Flickr..... my junk! I use it as a distribution point for a lot of snapshots I take for others to be able to share. 500px is a much more art form photographic image site, but seems to have the Facebook quality of a popularity contest.Both sites have their advantages.
And, some of my photos are not published until after they have been used for the client...
Yes, in terms of junk though. There is a lot of good stuff on flickr, don't get me wrong. The issue I had with flickr was that it took a lot of work to find good photos, rather than iPhone snap shots with Instagram filters.
I like 500px because it has a modern sleek interface, rather something that looks like it was made in the late 1990's. I'm not a big fan of the voting system, but it it's there.
Posted 7 months ago #
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