Printing, Sharing, & Storing Kids Photos

Video Transcript

"So, I'm going to talk to you about something that I think is very important. You have just shot all these wonderful pictures and most of the time, I hear my friends say they have hundreds of pictures that are just sitting on their memory in their camera. And I'm going to tell you, the trick is, immediately when you get home from where ever you are, the birthday party, the trip with your family. Download those images right away to your computer and empty off that memory card and go ahead and delete it, wipe it clean, and have it ready right now for next time. So, now you've got all your pictures to deal with. Go through every one of them as soon as you can, and delete all of the duplicates, all the ones where peoples eyes are closed, or talking, or maybe the flash didn't fire. Any one that you aren't absolutely thrilled with. Because you've probably taken a hundred pictures or so, and you really only need maybe twenty of those, honestly. So go through and really be discerning and get rid of all those pictures that aren't the best pictures from the event or the trip. Because you are going to take a lot of pictures in your lifetime now that you know all these tricks. So, delete them, then take the ones that you like, that really capture the moments and organize them on your hard drive so they are easy to find and I absolutely recommend that you back them up every single week. I use a program that backs up my entire computer on a hard drive that is outside my computer, an external hard drive every week, so that if anything happens to your computer, your pictures aren't lost. I can tell you that I've had a couple friends whose computers have crashed, including someone who had three children and they lost all their pictures, and their oldest child was seven. So they lost seven years of images. So, I don't want that to happen to you. Back up your photographs and everything on your computer every single week. There are some other great ways that you can do that. Say you don't want to buy the external hard drive or you can't afford it, because they can be expensive, there are some great programs that are completely free. There are web services that you can sign up for and it doesn't cost you a penny. Now, I'll name a couple that I like, but there are probably a lot of others out there. For example, my favorite is snapfish.com. If you go onto snapfish, you just have to register, it's completely free. They don't barrage you with emails. And you can upload an unlimited number of photographs. Now, the benefits to doing this are, number one, if there is a fire, those pictures that are on your computer or possibly on the external hard drive that is more than likely sitting right next to your computer, are completely safe. They are on a server, probably in a completely different state. So if anything should ever happen to your home, anything unfortunate like that, at least you still have your memories and your photographs. The other benefit to using these web services, is they often have ways for you to share with your family. For example, on snapfish.com, if I upload my images, I can check a little box that says I want to share it with other people who have also gone on and registered. So the downside to something like this, is all of your family and friends do need to go on and register so that they can view your pictures, or at least so they can view these albums that regularly update. So every month, I upload my pictures, I check the little box that says share with my family. And now, anytime they go online, they can see these new pictures that I've uploaded for them. And there's other opportunities there as well. You can print, make unique items like calendars. Now, calendars are a great tip, I do it for Christmas every year and everyone swears it is the best Christmas present ever. You can make mugs and t-shirts, all kinds of things. But you've already got your pictures up on this website and it's very easy then to print them, share them, and use these pictures so they are not just hanging out on your camera. Another thing I can talk about briefly is, you can get really wonderful printers, now, at home. I have a Canon printer that is specialized for photo printing, which is great because I have inks in there and paper that are archival quality. Now, a lot of people's printers at home, actually don't provide photographs that will keep for a really long time. So if you don't have one of those printers, you don't have to go out and buy one. You can just go ahead and use one of these email services or online photo services, like snapfish. They are usually only $0.19 a print and sometimes you can get them a lot cheaper. They have programs where if you pre-buy a hundred prints, you can get them for $0.09 and that's way cheaper than you are going to be able to print tat home anyway, after you take into account the ink that you run through and the paper that you might burn through with mistakes and different things. And another idea would be just to take your memory card right over to one of the photo finshers at Target or at your corner pharmacy, or at Costco and download your pictures and print them out right then, cause you can get great deals on these pictures. And now you have them and you can use them and send them to relatives and do all kinds of great things with these pictures instead of just keeping them on your camera."