I was never into taking lots of photos, much less videos, but all that changed once my daughter, Natalia, was born. All of a sudden, capturing and sharing little every day moments were important to me (and my family).  However, between being a parent and living the rest of life, time always seems to be in overdrive.

Having kids creates a true appreciation of time

Finding fast, simple, and hassle-free ways for capturing and sharing these special moments became a personal mission born out of necessity. Yes, there are a ton of options, but for me, the real problem wasn’t a shortage of options, but a shortage of time. My goal with this blog is to help you demystify these options, pick the right tools, and design a workflow that lets you get back to the more important things in your life.

I’ll start by describing my top three sharing pet-peeves:

Pet peeve 1: Sharing lots of photos and videos is a hassle

There are lots of little time consuming steps getting photos and videos from camera to shared, but the ones that take up the most time and effort are organizing and publishing. I’ve talked to people that don’t share photos (and definitely not videos) because of this.

Once you get the photos and videos off the camera, they typically need to be organized. This may entail previewing thumbnails, deleting bad shots, renaming files, touching up photos, editing video, tagging/grouping into albums. If you’re as lazy as I am about getting images off the camera on a regular schedule, you end up with large batches of photos/videos that only exacerbate the organization process.

Next, depending on the sharing service you use, you might have to resize or convert files (especially video) into an appropriate format for uploading. Uploaders have gotten better and let you batch multiple files for uploading, but you still have to wait for the entire batch to finish before you are “really done”. My typical batch is about 50 high resolution photos and 3 short videos which over a broadband connection takes close to 2 hours. Yes, I can set the upload to run in the background, but it’s still something that I have to keep in the back of my mind and periodically monitor. I can’t really notify anyone until I verify the upload successfully finished.

Pet peeve 2: Getting others to view your gallery is not always a given

Most of the photos and videos I share are targeted at family (grandparents included). All they want to do is click a link and simply view a slideshow or movie, not fill out a registration form which a lot of sharing services use to build up their mailing lists. On top of that, many of the services (especially the free ones) clutter the gallery interface with ads and other content that further complicate navigation on the site. I don’t want anything to compete or take away from my images. Visitors end up either frustrated or turned off and your gorgeous gallery never gets viewed. When it comes to gallery design, less is definitely more.

Pet peeve 3: Making back-ups are absolutely necessary but quite painful

You only appreciate backups when you need them but by then it’s usually too late. The problem is that making traditional backups using DVDs and/or tapes is manual and time consuming. There are automated backup devices like Apple’s Time Capsule which has been a life saver when my hard drive crashed last Christmas. But to have true piece of mind, you really have to keep your backups offsite (outside your home) to protect against the worst – floods, fire, theft. The ideal place for storing backups is on an external server (in the cloud), but that has it’s challenges too.

First, uploading originals is even more time consuming as the files are a lot larger. Additionally, a lot of sharing services either have storage restrictions or downsize your images to save space. Others keep your photos and videos hostage and make you buy prints. I want to be be able to store my originals unmodified and get them back whenever I need them. It’s my content after all.

What’s next?

In a nutshell, I want a sharing workflow that is easy for me, easy for them, and provides peace-of-mind (backed-up/secure). In future posts, I will go into specific details on how I am building a sharing workflow that flows.

Do you have other sharing pet-peeves I have not covered here?