Online Photo Storage
Derek Smith • 20 December 2019
Online photo storage - As many readers will know I strongly recommend storing photos safely online, storing photos in this way has many advantages:
1) Your precious photos and memories are stored away from home negating the risk of losing any images by fire, flood, theft, or computer failure.
2) Your photos can be viewed on various devices, mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers.
3) Your photos can be "tagged" for easy search, or organised into Albums, Folders, or Galleries.
4) Ability to share photos with friends, family, or others.
Of course, as with any technology, there are disadvantages:
1) There is an annual, or monthly charge for the service.
2) You may lose control over your images.
3) Your images could be hacked or suffer from internet issues.
In no particular order, these are some of the options available:
Microsoft 365
Not strictly a photo sharing site, but at £5.99 a month the 1TB of OneDrive storage is good value, and the complete Office suite is available for use. The OneDrive app works on portable devices, in Windows 10 the OneDrive is fully integrated into the file system.
iCloud
Apples take on cloud photo storage, can be free up to limited storage levels. It can be difficult to access from Windows, or Android devices, and locks the user into the Apple ecosystem, otherwise if you own an Apple device very useful.
Amazon Prime
A bit of a surprise this one, free postage on ordered Amazon items, a selection of films, and box sets to watch, plus Amazon photos, unlimited full size searchable photo storage, with apps for Android, Apple iOS, and can be used on the desktop at £7.99 a month, what’s not to like.
Google Photos
I wouldn’t recommend this one, not for serious photographers, it’s baked into Android mobile phones, and tablets. Free to use up to 5Gb, then a paid subscription to Google Drive, it’s intrusive, and Google repeatedly offers different “intelligent” filters for your photos.
Flickr Pro
A paid for photo storage and sharing service. Fast fully searchable, it works seamlessly on the Apple Mac to automatically upload photos, apps available for Apple iOS, and Android. Flickr can be used privately or to share by joining groups of camera models, lenses, or categories with other photographers, secure data, and no advertisements on the Pro version. I like the Info panel with all the EXIF details shown. Currently on 25% discount for new customers coupon code 25in2019 or link below to give the gift of 25% off Flickr Pro now.
https://www.flickr.com/account/upgrade/pro?coupon=25in2019
SmugMug
1) Your precious photos and memories are stored away from home negating the risk of losing any images by fire, flood, theft, or computer failure.
2) Your photos can be viewed on various devices, mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers.
3) Your photos can be "tagged" for easy search, or organised into Albums, Folders, or Galleries.
4) Ability to share photos with friends, family, or others.
Of course, as with any technology, there are disadvantages:
1) There is an annual, or monthly charge for the service.
2) You may lose control over your images.
3) Your images could be hacked or suffer from internet issues.
In no particular order, these are some of the options available:
Microsoft 365
Not strictly a photo sharing site, but at £5.99 a month the 1TB of OneDrive storage is good value, and the complete Office suite is available for use. The OneDrive app works on portable devices, in Windows 10 the OneDrive is fully integrated into the file system.
iCloud
Apples take on cloud photo storage, can be free up to limited storage levels. It can be difficult to access from Windows, or Android devices, and locks the user into the Apple ecosystem, otherwise if you own an Apple device very useful.
Amazon Prime
A bit of a surprise this one, free postage on ordered Amazon items, a selection of films, and box sets to watch, plus Amazon photos, unlimited full size searchable photo storage, with apps for Android, Apple iOS, and can be used on the desktop at £7.99 a month, what’s not to like.
Google Photos
I wouldn’t recommend this one, not for serious photographers, it’s baked into Android mobile phones, and tablets. Free to use up to 5Gb, then a paid subscription to Google Drive, it’s intrusive, and Google repeatedly offers different “intelligent” filters for your photos.
Flickr Pro
A paid for photo storage and sharing service. Fast fully searchable, it works seamlessly on the Apple Mac to automatically upload photos, apps available for Apple iOS, and Android. Flickr can be used privately or to share by joining groups of camera models, lenses, or categories with other photographers, secure data, and no advertisements on the Pro version. I like the Info panel with all the EXIF details shown. Currently on 25% discount for new customers coupon code 25in2019 or link below to give the gift of 25% off Flickr Pro now.
https://www.flickr.com/account/upgrade/pro?coupon=25in2019
SmugMug
My personal favourite, fully configurable, with folders, and galleries, I find it better to manually upload my best edited photos into folders, and galleries as required. The mobile device apps work very well, and the annual subscription is around £50 per year. Photos can be manually tagged and searched.
Happy Christmas to all our readers.
Louth Photographic Society
Good Morning All Last week at the club I gave you a PDI (Projected Digital Image) presentation showing photographs I had taken on my travels last year, following up with some past and present photographs of Binbrook. I hope you all enjoyed the evening and maybe saw parts of England you hadn't seen before. This week, Wednesday 4th March, our member Steve Chapman will be showing us photographs he has taken. This is Steve's first time showing the club his work so will be a very good night. Harry is now accepting your PDI's for the next competition, with the categories of "Architectural Detail" and "Open". The closing date is Friday 6th March. Regards Graham
The N&EMPF Exhibition will be on display in Cleethorpes from 3rd March.
It was "President's Night" with Graham Harrison showing some of his images from short breaks, and holidays around the UK. Graham rented a holiday cottage in Newbiggin, Northumberland, and showed many of his photos from that area, including a visit to Lindisfarne, where the castle on the rocky outcrop made for an impressive photo. In Suffolk, Graham visited Pakefield, and photographed the colourful beach huts at the top of the shingle beach, he also showed several photos from the Lake District. One of my favourite photos from last night was St. Mary's Lighthouse, Whitley Bay, with the groins in juxtaposition. Thank you Graham for a very interesting evening.
Good Morning All Last week at the club Harry and Chris gave us an insight into how our exhibition preparation is going, we have a lot of historical photos to go on show and there may be room for some more up to date ones but Harry and Chris will see how much room we have left when they start putting it all together at the museum. I also took the time to find out what you wanted in the new program, filling in the competition subjects and outings. This week, Wednesday 25th February, it is the Presidents night, so that's my night and I will be showing you what I got up to in 2025. The rainbow at Brough castle gives you idea of one area I visited. Harry is now accepting entries for the next PDI competition, with the categories of "Architectural Detail" and "Open". The new program is nearly done and to give you a chance to get ready for the first two competitions in May and June the subjects are May, PDI comp - Landscapes with water and Open and June, Print competition, Trees and Open. Regards Graham
Good Morning All Last week at the club we held our Print Of The Year (POTY) competition, it's one of our highlights of the year and judged by Grahame Dunkin, it proved to be an excellent night with some very good prints on show. The results are on our website under competitions but the highlights were Dave Turner being placed first in the Pictorial, landscape and best Mono print in show; Robin Begley, First in the Record section, Keith Rossington first place in Portrait, Harry Kerman first in the photo/journalism (including Street) and myself taking first place in the Nature as well as overall Print of the Year. My photograph of a Hairy Shield bug was taken at Chambers wood on a camera club outing. This week, Wednesday 19th February, we are sorting out Prints for our 70th anniversary exhibition at Louth Museum. Please bring along any local prints you may have and maybe a few further afield for selection. Please also bring along any prints you may have that you think will be ok for the LPA Foster challenge and LPA Battles. They need to be mounted on a 500mm x 400mm mount and a maximum print size of A3. Don't forget to take a photograph of water if you are doing this years project, no real excuses at the moment. Regards Graham
Our highlight competition, Print Of The Year (POTY) competition was held last night, with our judge Grahame Dunkin giving his experienced critique on the excellent images submitted. Congratulations to Dave Turner for his Monochrome image of the year: West Pier Watchtower - Whitby, and Graham Harrison for his Colour image: Hairy Shield Bug.
Good Morning All Last week we went to have a look at the Lancaster sculpture at Norton Disney, it is open for visitors at certain times and although work is still ongoing the main Lancaster is finished and a car park in place. The sculpture is full size weighing 100 tons and honours WW2 RAF crews. Last week at the club Derek Smith ran an editing night, members were asked to bring their laptops in and Derek gave us all an SD card with some images to edit and information regarding the free editing software. A different and interesting night and hopefully we all learnt something and anyone new to photography would have learnt quite a lot. Thank you Derek for running the evening. This week, Wednesday 11th February, we have one of the clubs yearly highlights, the Print Of The Year (POTY) competition to be judged by Grahame Dunkin, all the entries are now in and you should have checked the scoresheets to make sure yours are included. Dave Turner is also asking for prints to enter into the Foster Challenge and LPA Print Battles. He will ask to use prints that are in the print of the year but if you have any prints that you think would be good to enter in the two competitions please bring them and hand them into Dave Turner. The following week we are having an evening collecting everything in for our exhibition at the Louth museum, if you can sort out any prints especially local prints that could go into our exhibition please bring them in on the 18th February. Regards Graham
Last Sunday I was in Stockton on Tees working with Izzy, a favourite model of mine she enjoys cosplay, that’s dressing up as a character from Marvel, Hasbro, or film titles. This photo is of Fey, a woodland sprite, pictured against a woodland backdrop that I bought for the photoshoot. I stayed overnight at a Premier Inn, and in the morning drove to Staithes, as I had always wanted to visit this fishing village, Staithes in the February rain wasn’t much fun, and the tide was out, but I did manage to take a few photos, and I captured one for the “Water” project so I was pleased with that. I was quite surprised how vibrant the colours were in the drizzle, and misty light. Driving back over the North Yorkshire Moors in rain, and fog, didn’t allow for much photography either. Yesterday, walking along the harbour front in Bridlington the high tide, and strong winds had thrown lots of debris onto the promenade, seaweed, nets, tree branches, and cuttlefish kept council workmen busy clearing up the mess. With the right clothing, and a weatherproof camera photography can still be enjoyed even in poor conditions.
A photo editing workshop was held last night, with members bringing in their laptops, and post processing sample images. Members were able to practice processing bracketed, and focus stacked images. Simple editing tasks of cloning unwanted items from images, cropping, and resizing of images were shown. The excellent FastStone photo viewer, and editor was able to accomplish most tasks apart from developing of RAW images, this free software is a “must have” for those with Windows computers. The Affinity photo editor has now been acquired by Canva, and the changes applied by Canva have made the software very confusing to use, and on my 14” Lenovo Thinkpad, it was very difficult to view the master layer to apply adjustments. PhotoScape X is a simplistic photo editor, for all that the software was easy to use, and the RAW processing was seamless. It was an interesting evening, and hopefully members will have attained some new skills in post processing, some of the images edited are shown here.
Good morning All I did manage to get to visit Gibraltar Point last week, very few birds to photograph at this time of year but I took a few and a Grey Squirrel. Last week member Dave Mann showed us photographs from his visit to Beamish, it's a great day out and Dave went round most of it and showed us some photographs from the new 1950's town as well as the farm, pit village, town and trains. Thank you Dave, and Harry for helping out with refreshments. This week, Wednesday 4th February, Derek is running an editing night, he has sent us all information on what we could download, if you have a laptop remember to bring it along. Print of the year is fast approaching, if you are entering make sure you send Dave Turner a list of your entries with which subject they are in and bring your prints along this week. Regards Graham
