Jen and I have been uploading 35mm and digital photos to the Web since February 2000, when we first discovered Photoworks (although my first photo went online on my first Web site back in 1995). We used Photoworks for nearly two years before we decided we didn’t like the print quality of digital photos, or the slowness of the site (they’ve since improved the site’s speed).
So we started to test other sites — Snapfish and Ofoto. We did a print quality comparison and site speed test, and decided that Ofoto, along with being backed by the Kodak brand, was far superior to the others. The site was consistently fast and reliable, too. So in December 2001 we uploaded our first album to Ofoto (now Kodak EasyShare Gallery) and since then have been archiving on the site every photo we take (and ordering some). I’ve even started uploading all the old albums from Photoworks and Snapfish.
As of today, our Kodak EasyShare photo count is 8,388 photos. Not counting the albums I haven’t yet transferred from Photoworks, that’s an average of 1,398 photos we’ve taken per year (116.5 per month) over the last 6 years (rounding the timeframe up a bit). You might say we’re photo-crazy fools.
During the past 4 years in which we’ve been using Ofoto (I still like to call it that, despite their effort to rebrand as Kodak EasyShare Gallery, which is more of a mouthful), my number one biggest gripe has been the inability to download the original, high-resolution versions of the photos. To date, the only way to do so is by ordering an archive CD with all photos. This has always bugged me since Ofoto doesn’t own the original source files. I do. But I do understand that they want to leverage that as an offering in exchange for all the free hosting and photo storage. That time has come.
You can imagine my excitement yesterday when I happened to be uploading photos and noticed the new Kodak EasyShare Gallery Premier offering, which is about 25 bucks per year and, in addition to the ability to download the original high-res photos (great for backup should anything ever happen to our local copies), we now have a special site where we can choose to publish from our Ofoto account any existing album we choose. We must have been early to sign up, given that our common last name was still available.
So this site joins the list of other places where I display our photos online (photos, blog, gallery). Only time will tell, but it seems to me this new method of display will be the easiest and become my preferrred method.
Kodak: If you’re reading this, here are two more features you need to offer:
- Selective photo publishing to Gallery Premier (rather than the entire album)
- Album & photo searching in my account and in Gallery Premier
