Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Photo Storage Sites

There's been quite a bit of discussion about places on the web to store photographs. I'm very interested in this subject, so I decided to start a new thread. Here are the comments that I've pulled from other threads (the links won't work due to the fact that I didn't copy the source, only the viewable posting).

So far we've got comments on:
ClubPhoto (positive)
Yahoo! Photos (negative)
Smugmug (mostly positive)
Using a personal web server (mixed)
WebShots (positive)

By WWRD:
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Bob R,
I was wondering if the site your pictures are posted on is free. I use a free Yahoo site to post my pictures but I don't like it since users are not able to significantly increase the size of the pictures.
WWRD

By me: (There are some inaccuracies in my statement that are corrected by Bob.)
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I don't want to answer for Bob, but we had a conversation about this on the trail last summer.

The site is http://www.clubphoto.com. They will let you store photo for free, but with the free service you will not be able to organize your photos into albums (I think!). They have paid services that cost money (two levels, gold and platinum). I've been looking into the platinum service (something like $34 for two years). It gives you unlimited storage in 40 albums.

Another site that I have been researching is http://www.smugmug.com. It has been getting rave reviews for the "look and feel" of the site. I'm impressed, but it is pricey (service levels are $30, $50, and $100).

I've been using ImageStation, by sony. It's got some drawbacks, including slow upload times (I also thought smugmug was slow on the uploads) and registration required by your visitors.

The other option that I've been looking into is reenabling a web server that I've run in the past. It's local, so I could upload files directly, rather than over the Internet. Drawback is that I would be responsible for security on the system. I'd also have to do the album design work.

Smugmug gives you a 7-day trial, so I've got a week to make up my mind.

This is what smugmug looks like. You can search for piotrowski to see what I've done so far.

I just turned on my webserver. Here's what it looks like, so far.

By Bob R:
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The only thing about clubphoto.com I'll add is that, with the free service, you can indeed organize your pictures in albums. Limit of 100 pictures per album, 4 MB max per picture as I recall (unlike photos.yahoo.com where you have a total MB limit for your whole site). What you gain at the first (gold) tier of paid service is 20 permanent albums. At the second (platinum) tier: 20 more albums plus the ability of guests to see your high resolution images.

Right now I think I have 38 permanent albums on clubphoto.com, plus about 20 non-permanent. They don't say how long the latter will stay until they delete them, but it hasn't happened yet and some of them have been there a couple of years.

I tried photos.yahoo.com, and switched to clubphoto. com when I noticed some of the differences.

By JJBB:
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I signed up with http://www.webshots.com about a year ago on a two year special for 45.00. It has worked very well for me so far. Here is what you receive with the membership

"(a) an unlimited number of downloads from the Webshots Gallery; (b) no banner or pop-up ads to distract you from photos on Webshots; (c) the entire Webshots Gallery photo collections available for download - not just individual photos; (d) access to Webshots Gallery highest-resolution image files (1200x1600); (e) the ability to create up to 50 albums with 60 photos each; (f) view and download statistics for all your photo albums; (g) unlimited star icon next to your member name; (h) the ability to add up to 20 favorite members; (i) easy photo album backups with MyPhotos Assistant; and (j) priority online customer support."

I am not the greatest photographer but it does seem like a good service with no problems. It also lets you know when your "Favorite Members" have added more albums. Just something to think about.

JJBB

(Sorry, but I'm bored...I wish the weather would improve so I could go outside...I didn't want to drive out to Ridgecrest to climb with Bob...I'll be pi...if their climb goes well...I can see the sun trying to break through...Maybe I can take the mountainbike out for a mud ride in the Santa Monica...MOUNTAINS!...Seriously, I may need some professional help...)

Thanks for the info

Hi Snow and overcast for the last several days and more on the way, a guy got to the campground last week but until the storms pass would be best to walk from road closed sign, A new Sierra photo site weas started I looked at it once , look back several weeks and check the link also many great shots from last year are still on the board.
Young Doug and Becky are now one, outdoor wedding and were blessed with snow,some wind and a great turnout of outdoor folks Thanks Doug

Have you looked into Fototime or heard of it?

It is the one I use and I store up to 500 mb of photos for 1 year for 24 bucks. Lots of nice features and gives one a great ability to share.
I've <A HREF=http://www.fototime.com/inv/5068C909202BE91>posted one of my albums</A> that I have stored there so you can check it out. www.fototime.com

I think I've decided that I'm going to use Smugmug. If you'd like to have a look at what I've done so far, click <a href=http://piotrowski.smugmug.com>here.</a>

I use http://www.webshots.com and have 4 accounts for my website. I can get 100 photos per album, with a limit of 3,000 photos per account. Easy to use, and it backs up captions.
I was with Photopoint a few years ago, with 4 paid accounts for 2 years, and 6 months later they disappeared . . . no explanation, and I lost all the photos and captions. I had some of them backed up, but the captions were lost. A lot of older albums don't have captions now. That's why some of my older thumbnails are blank. I haven't had time to search for those photos, but want to keep "every weekend" on the website.

Congratulations, Doug and Earlene! Outdoor weddings are the best! SnowDude and I got 15" on <a href="http://community.webshots.com/photo/67420776/67452168xyAemq"> our wedding day! </a>

<div style="color:#666699;background:#bbddff">
America Online has just introduced a <a href="http://pictures-beta.aol.com/">beta version of a new photo sharing service</a>.

It allows unlimited albums and photos. You can upload any size picture and download the full-resolution image, although one cannot (yet) view the full resolution.

The price is right: free. All you need is a free AIM account (or a paid AOL account, of course). Guests can view albums without any registration requirements. BTW, you can get free email for your AIM account now, too.

Disclaimer: I work for AOL (and contributed some code for this project). I'm posting here because I think this service might be useful to those looking for an easy and free place to upload and share their pictures. No offense taken if you don't use it or don't like it.

You can find some additional impartial discussion <a href="http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=40&threadid=1618823&enterthread=y">here</a>.

Bill Law
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I remember a post somewhere that a person had their entire photo collection stored on one of these online sites. The site deleted them without warning because they hadn't bought any enlargements within a specified period of time. Of course, the person had no backup and lost all their pictures. These sites are fine for sharing, but keep your own backup.

May I suggest PBase? A nice community, easy to navigate, I believe I paid 22. for a year (300mb of storage). Here's the search for Whitney: http://search.pbase.com/search?q=Mt.+Whitney&c=sp

pbase.com. Easy, cheap with tons of storage.....and your friends don't have to deal with constant pop-ups (webshots).