Digital cameras are a pervasive technology. They were quickly adopted by everyone and became the standard for most families. I haven't seen the figures, but I would guess that digital cameras penetrated the households of Americans faster than the VCR. 

The number one problem with digital cameras is organization. Unlike traditional photography where you limited the pictures you took due to the cost of processing the film, the cost of taking a digital photograph is next to nothing. This leads to snapping pictures constantly or taking many different pictures to "make sure you get it right."

I never had much luck organizing my photos. When I pull them off the card I place them in folders on my PC with imaginative names. Taking a look at my photo folder now I see things like Vacation 2003, Birthday, PetWeather and Travel. See, I don't put the photos in the proper folders. No, I simply copy over the existing folders on the card to something on my hard drive. I think PetWeather contains photos of my pets and the weather of the day. 

Needing something better to organize my photos, I looked online. I started this process about a year ago, so people had recommendations for me. My sister swears by Snapfish. Someone else told me to use Kodak's service. The more technical in the crowd told me to download a PHP program and run it on my server. After much research, as if reading blogs was research, I decided on Flickr. 

Why Flickr? People kept talking about the power of the community and the Web 2.0 experience. I paid my money and started uploading photos. It worked out well for a while, but then came my brother-in-law's wedding.

Not knowing if he wanted his wedding photos shared with the world, I looked for a simple way to limit access on Flickr. I couldn't find it. Later, I learned that Flickr doesn't support using passwords to protect your sets. If you want to limit access, your visitors need to join, let you know they joined and then you need to give them access.

I like community, but I don't want it shoved down my throat. Sure, I wanted to share my photos, but I didn't want everyone to see them. As I started looking around Flickr in more detail I felt like one of the uncool kids in school. Everyone else was so hyped about Flickr and I wasn't getting it. I felt left out. 

At that point I quit uploading anything to Flickr. I contemplated my next move, and let me tell you, it took six months to act on it. :)

Beginning this summer, I heard good things about a site called smugmug. They were a bootstrapped site started by a father and son. What caught my eye is that they were trying new technologies when it came to photo sharing. When Flickr was being bought by Yahoo, smugmug was adding more, cool features. I followed their advanced from the fringe and was finally convinced to check them out based on the CEO. Don MacAskill is the CEO and he speaks plainly in his blog. The particular entry that forced me to check them out was entitled Amazon S3: Show me the money. Read the entry. If you don't walk away from it wanting to do business with the man, well, I don't know what to say.

He's energized about his product. He believes in his product. He shares details of how his company is saving money, increasing customer value and demonstrating the cutting edge.

I joined in mid-December when I had time. Part of me was excited about the fact this was a pay site. I can't tell you how many times I've developed a relationship with a Web 2.0 site only to have it cut me off at the legs. Morally, I couldn't hold them accountable, because, well, it was free. Paying my money entitles me to support and clarifies my relationship.

Joining was painless. You get a 14 day trial to try things out, which is enough time to find out smugmug is very easy to use. Sure, there are those Web 2.0 touches you've come to appreciate, but the bottom line is it just works. Within ten minutes I created my first gallery, password protected it and sent the URL out to my family and friends. Another 10 minutes brought comments in the gallery from the family and friends. They didn't have to sign up. They didn't have to figure anything out. It just worked. 

When I went back to add some more galleries, the site started acting weird. I'd click on something and it would take me someplace unexpected. As this was the first day of my trial, I wasn't filled with confidence. I dropped by the smugmug forums and found out someone reported the issue. From the time it was reported to the time it was fixed was less than two hours. More importantly, the smugmug team apologized, explained the issue and constantly updated the status.  

smumug has a ton of features I could care less about. Yes, they offer photo printing, but I have no idea if the prices are good or not. Yes, they have geotagging, but I have no idea why I would want to use it. Yes, they have the ability to create your own gallery templates, but I am too busy to become a designer.  smugmug just works. 

At the end of the trial, I gladly paid my money for a year of access. I now have a easy way to share pictures that is affordable and secure. Since smugmug uses Amazon's S3 I know my pictures just won't disappear.  

So, if you're looking for something to organize your photos that is easy to use, online and a joy to work with, you need to check out smugmug. 

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