Amateurs, what do you do with your photos ?

I have thousands of photos, mainly our kids growing up. I am curious to learn how other people who don't make a living in photography and only do it as a hobby enjoy their photo collection. I mean, there's only so many walls in the house, and hanging family portraits all over the place doesn't always work. I have some half a dozen 8x10 portraits framed and hung in our bedroom, a couple of 12 x 14 "artsy" shots in the living room, but the rest are all on computer and most of time nobody sees them... what do you do with yours ?

Leave them on my hard drives.

Smugmug.

You could always print as a 4x6 and stick in a photo album like the old days. You don't have to print everything large and hang on the wall.

I use Flickr as my secondary offline backup (removable HD is the primary) and add the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike licence to all of the public ones so that blogs and websites can use them as free stock. I wouldn't advise doing that with family photos, however.

I put hundreds together and place with music as a slideshow video,,mostly my daughter and the sports or activities she is involved in

Some go up on Flickr, some on FB, some stay on the harddrive and never see the light of day. If it was an event then I give copies to family

I distribute them to family members in the form of usb keys or sd cards. They copy and use them as they desire and return the usb keys to me periodically.

My basketball game pics are distributed in the same manner to one of my grandsons who distributes them electronically to player's Facebook's... also an usb key to the coachs every now and then.

Every now and then, my wife says she wants a print... and she does whatever she wants with it.

I've put together a couple of photo albums but I've also created several windows themes around my images for myself, family and friends. Those images usually come from edits used to fill photo-frames.

I upload the photos I like to PBase. That way they can be "shared" in various ways (and what good are they if you can't share them?).

Of course, PBase is a "public" host -- I get several hundred "views" just in the course of a day (and occasionally someone actually leaves a comment). And, it's been useful when I've shot an event in which there is some interest -- I have a quick way for interested parties to check things out.

And, there are family and friends who, if I've done photograpy with them involved, again have a quick and easy way to check things out.

Also, there is Facebook -- if I do some shooting that Facebook friends might find interesting I can either upload shots (I've been using the Lightroom "Publish" feature lately) or I can post a PBase link either on my Facebook Wall or on that of an interested friend, or in a message or whatever.

And then, there is POTN! I've been active here for several years, and "sharing" photos has always been a part of the POTN experience for me. It's easy for me to link a shot from PBase here -- my PBase uploads are set to the POTN "regulations", so no muss and no fuss for me.

And then, a couple weeks ago I was visiting some friends on Christmas Day, and they expressed some interest in my photography. Well, in a back room they had a laptop set up that was "hooked" to a widescreen TV hanging on a wall. So we were able to go to my Pbase site, and to my "Favorites" gallery, and run a PBase Slideshow -- a very cool way for up close and personal sharing!

'Course, if someone is visiting in my home, I have prints framed and hanging on my walls, and hundreds of smaller 8x10s, 5x7s and 4x6s laying around. Plus, I can do a slideshow from my laptop/TV as well...but I don't get a lot of visitors, just occasionally!

You can make photo books on a website like Picaboo from your photos, documenting the kids' history, etc. You can make scrapbooks using several applications like PS Elements. Create slide shows on CD or DVD. Lots of possibilities.

Oh, and I'll add that POTN gives another way of "sharing" -- sigs!

I've occasionally had someone here tell me that they've checked out my PBase "stuff" from the links in my sig, and even have complimentary things to say, and coming from a fellow photographer, that does give one "warm and fuzzies"!

I have a SmugMug site that only my friends and family see, they are the main reason I take pictures anyway. I started this as a hobby and it will continue to stay that way so I have no need or desire to show anything publicly. It wouldn't necessarily bother me to do so but so far I haven't felt the need to go out of my way to make them public. If I have the chance to make money then it would be a different story. As for the files themselves I keep them on my hard drive, backed up to an external drive, and also backed up online with CrashPlan.

I pick the best pictures, put them together in a theme and print them in a coffee table book. My other pictures are organized in Lightroom and are easily accessible when needed. Every now and then I will print a picture to be framed or as a gift for someone on my Epson 2400.

Amamba wrote in post #13727161
I am curious to learn how other people who don't make a living in photography and only do it as a hobby enjoy their photo collection.
... what do you do with yours ?

I was at a friends house recently, he uses Apple TV and had a presentation of his pictures going on his large flat panel TV the entire time we were there. He had hundreds if not thousands of pictures being displayed randomly in that presentation.

Me..
+ I have several flickr accounts for different purposes
+ Any e-mail to family gets a link to a flickr pic.
+ Any snail-mail sent to family always gets a print or two.
+ My kids all have photo albums
+ Christmas cards are always created using a family picture that I took.
+ This year I ordered a couple of photo calenders from VistaPrint* created with my pictures (office and home)

At our church, I also run the projector where we display the words to hymns, announcements, greetings and a PowerPoint presentation with the message. Often the announcements and Greetings contain shots that I have created for that purpose, which I also make available to other churches.

*This is not a recommendation for VistaPrint, I have found their print quality to be mediocre at best, though acceptable for a calendar.