How Do You Organize Your Online Photos?
I have been thinking a lot about this subject lately and I guess I want your help figuring it out. I know people who upload all their photos to Flickr and have them all organized and labeled and that sounds really great but I honestly don't need one more thing to do. I spent a lot of time organizing my Flickr photos several months ago because I get a lot of blog hits from them but I just don't have time to keep up with it.
Another problem with Flickr is that anyone can use the photos you post there for any purpose. Isn't that a little scary? Stranger just told me a *story about a big company that used some one's photo in a national ad campaign and the people can't even sue them because apparently once you upload photos to Flickr they are fair game. I know someone could steal my photos right off my blog but at least I could sue someone, if I wanted to, for taking something that's copyrighted.
In fact my photos have been stolen at least once that I know of. An organizing site that I won't name used one of my photos in an article without asking me. I just happened upon it by accident so who knows how many more of my photos are being used without my permission? It doesn't completely ruin my day because I'm not a professional photographer, or anything else for that matter, but it still feels funny.
I know some people watermark all their photos before they post them so I played around with that one day. You can see the results here. I suppose someone could edit the watermark off though unless it covers the whole photo and it makes it that much harder to post photos. That's not good when you're as lazy as I am.
Then there's the whole issue of posting photos of kids that I've chosen not to think about. Or I've thought about it and decided to post them anyway. Not to mention the completely insane urge I have to organize my photo file on my website to remove all the unused photos and watermark the photos that I am using. I know. It's crazy.
I guess I just want you to figure this out for me and while you're at it make it all easy and convenient. I appreciate it.
*Edited - I looked up that case with the Flickr photo. You can read about it here. Apparently the photographer added a Creative Commons license to his photos so the company was within its rights to use it. I just went to my Flickr page to edit the Privacy & Permissions page to reserve my rights to my photos and I didn't have any CC licenses on them so no one should be using my photos but me. If you are concerned then you might want to check your photos as well. There are different kinds of Creative Commons licenses so you can choose the one that works for you.
Labels: Blogging, Photography
posted by The Lazy Organizer @ 4:45 PM
9 Comments
9 Comments:
I use photobucket to host my pictures. I rarely upload any personal pics anywhere.
actually... if you upload your photos to flickr and mark them ALL RIGHTS RESERVED then companies CANNOT use them... no one can. I have right click disabled through flickr.
Here's a link to a photographer who had something similar happen to her.
Her work is actually legally copyrighted with the Federal office, etc. and therefore she has legal recourse to sue the pants off the company. She did. And won.
However, I don't use flickr to host. I own my domain... if you do, you can host the pictures yourself. Which is often what I do.
I don't put my photos into an online host. I need to so that I don't lose all of my photos that are in files on my computer but just haven't yet. I'd want to make them private if I did.
I organize my photos into categories, I have them by month/year, scrapbook projects I've done, etc. I need to reorganize some & back them up onto CD or an online host but it works for me to have them all on my computer so far.
I'm hoping you get some good answers here, as I'm in the process of trying to decide how to best organize and store all my photos. I'm up to almost 6,000 in Elements and I need to free up some disk space. They are on CDs and DVDs, but I'd like to have another copy somewhere and I was thinking flickr. I actually think the best option is to get an external hard drive or portable hard drive. You can get a fairly large (storage space) one for not a whole lot of money. Then you don't have to worry about copyright and access by others.
I use Kodak. As far as I know only people I invite to see them can access them. But I could be wrong.
i also use kodak. i upload the photos i take during the month into separate photos albums (family -- september, for instance). at the end of each month, i usually send invites to family to see what we've done in the month.
on the computer they are filed according to date i take them off the camera, YYYY/MM/DD, and i burn them to a cd each quarter (so i have 4 cds of photos each year).
my sewing stuff is at photobucket, i just started at flickr (because i finally got into ravelry!), on my blog, and in an annual album at kodak.
congrats on the impending baby! :)
I use photobuckets for pictures from online and such, but for my personal photos, I don't use it.
Right now, I have it categorized by year then by month, then by date. However, I need to find a method that works for when I'm looking for something specific like a photo of my dog or whatever. I have too many pictures to start renaming them all now, but I'm hoping that for 2008 I will come up with another method (in addition to, or instead of, I'm not sure which) because, like you, I'm Lazy. (or I have better things to do? haha)
I also put all my pics on CD's and keep them in a firesafe, just in case.
okay, this is complex. i use picasa on my computer, and i save them in folders by date. (i like the tip above about burning to cd each quarter...) then i use picasa to upload directly to shutterfly in matching folders and i make photo books...see my post on all this here.
Found your blog via Rocks in the Dryer. Adding yours to my google reader today!
I love, love, love Flickr! I take a ton of pictures and I usually want to share them, so I take pains to organize. I usually organize them before uploading them and then upload them using the upload tool. You can create sets from there and add tags all at once. Of course it applies the same tags to all the pictures, so it might require tweaking.
Their organizr is really easy to use as well, allowing you to add tags to a bunch of pictures at one time or edit the titles and descriptions. This saves a lot of time.
As for permissions, I am also big on making sure your privacy and permissions settings are a certain way. We only allow comments from people who are our contacts and we only allow people we mark as family to use the "blog this" feature. All rights are reserved, for the exact reason you mentioned.
Great blog!
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