In the early days of the Internet when bandwidth was limited and storage expensive the options for sharing digital photos online were limited. You could use a few professional photo album web sites but they had to charge for their service since there was no business model that allowed them to provide that service for free. Advertisement back then generated less money than today and could not cover their bandwidth and storage cost.
The alternative to professional photo sharing web sites was to use one of the few photo printing web sites. These sites allow upload of photos for the purpose of ordering photo prints. Since uploading and short term storage of photos was needed for their photo printing service those sites could also offer photo sharing as a free added value service to their users that would attract more photo printers to their service and would also promote their brand name. Most of those web sites however only allowed photo sharing for a limited time basically meaning that photos uploaded to the site would be automatically deleted after a certain number of days usually 14 or 30 days.
As technology advanced the cost of bandwidth and storage dropped significantly. Today it is sometimes said that bandwidth the storage are literally free when measured on a per item or in our case per digital photo basis. The cost of building a service that allows users to upload an infinite number of photos and have them stored indefinitely on a server is manageable. Advertisement based business models can support the cost of such a service. It is not surprising that today there is a very large number of web sites offering free photo albums and photo sharing.
Social networks are one of the more used photo sharing web sites today. Although not their main feature photo sharing is part of the social interaction. Users can create photo albums and share them with the public or with their family and friends. Storage is infinite and photo albums are stored forever on a safe backed up server system.
The good old photo printing web sites found themselves in competition with many photo sharing web sites. In order to be able to keep up with the competition photo printing web sites today offer very complex photo album features. For example many offer server based photo processing allowing digital photo cropping and other effects like red eye removal. They have also tried to cooperate with the competition by providing what they know to provide best simply printing services. By integrating with other web sites they allow social media web sites for example to provide a print now option next to each photo that basically behind the scenes communicates back with their photo printing partner.
There is a lot to be said about making yourself a professional photographer, but the most common thing that can be said is that to be a photographer, you have to have a flair for color, style and design in order to be successful. A few years ago, the photographer's outreach was only as far as he or she was as willing to drive to, but now, with photo sharing websites and photo editing programs that instantly allow access from any Internet connected computer, photographers can create a fan base across the country.
A newly developing professional photographer can use free photo sharing to show clients their work, even if they cannot meet in person because of distance. Even before a potential client decides to hire the photographer for a photo shoot. A client can view an online photo album with various photos that the photographer has taken, as well as some of the before and after photo editing work that the photographer has been able to do with certain photos.
It can be exciting for a photographer to boast their best work on online photo sharing web sites, but it can also be a great marketing tool for a photographer if they know how to use tagging on a photo. By linking the photo with certain key words, a photograph can come up when the key words are put into a photo sharing web site search page. This will bring in traffic towards your online photo sharing page, which will thereby bring you more interested potential clients.
With the online photo editing and photo sharing sites available, there is no reason that a new photographer will not be able to be successful and drawing in new clients that will want to hire you for your skills.
Both Ronnie Hammond & Grojan Fabiola are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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