At Home with Tech

SmugMug is not just for professional photographers. Here’s why I decided to sign up for an account.

Keeping track of all my family photos feels like a Herculean effort these days. It’s not getting any easier. Sure, I’ve got photo organizational systems in place: Lightroom, digital backups and cloud storage.

But I often feel like I’m simply maintaining the existence of tens of thousands of photos. (Have you checked lately how many you’ve collected over the years?)

I’m hardly keeping up with my full curation process. Yes, I share photos with family and friends via texts and Dropbox links. I include some of my favorite travel and nature pics on my blog. I even get around occasionally to creating a photo book. One might say from afar that I’m getting the important pieces done.

But I remain unsettled.

Scrolling vs. Flipping
The photos I usually share are individual photos that you can simply flip through one at a time. That’s okay, but I’d really prefer if they could live collectively as a group in an online photo gallery. Then, you’d be able to view them as a collection that you can scroll through. The viewing experience is already optimized. (It’s a big difference.) And if you’d like to look more closely at one photo, you can do that too.

But I didn’t want to take the time to start designing and publishing complex online photo galleries. I needed a drag and drop solution…

After doing a bit of research I decided that SmugMug could help me.

Unlimited Storage
SmugMug is marketed to professional photographers who want to sell their photos online. But SmugMug also can be a powerful tool for handling your family photos. Not only can it generate unlisted online photo galleries to share with your family and friends, you can also create galleries with passwords. The bottom line is you have total control with who can see your photos.

SmugMug’s interface is easy to use, and the online galleries look great.

And get this… SmugMug offers unlimited storage. That’s right… unlimited. So I signed up and got to work.

But I wasn’t done climbing out of my own photo rabbit hole. Not yet.

Less is More
Sure, SmugMug can house all of my photos for permanent archiving, but really why would anyone want access to many tens of thousands of photos that tell my family’s story? No one will have the time. I certainly wouldn’t want to burden my son with that one day.

I’ve been going through, organizing and digitizing hundreds of my father’s photos that contain my family’s history back to the late nineteen century. Believe me… that’s been a lot of work.

My own family photo collection is enormous by comparison. I’m actually nearing 100,000 pics. (You should check how many you’re carrying around.)

Your family’s story can be told in a fraction of that. (And mine can too.)

Preparing for the Next Generation
So these unlisted SmugMug galleries I’ve begun generating will become the backbone of a slimmed-down, curated and optimized Lester family photo history.

It’s permanent, safe and ready to hand over to the future.

What do I mean by that?

Long-Term Strategy
Nothing lasts forever. Back-up hard drives can fail. A curated cloud photo collection seems more resilient to the ravages of time. Sure, no company lasts forever, but you’ve got to put your stake in the ground somewhere.

I’ve purchased my ticket to the future on the SmugMug train.

And yes, the ticket does come with a cost. I signed up for the annual ‘Power’ plan, which is $110/year.

As you multiply that out across (hopefully) many years to come, the price tag will be substantial.

But there’s no solution to store an unlimited number of full-res photos for free. That said, I technically do have that perk with Amazon Photos. But that platform doesn’t really offer a photo gallery solution when sharing links. (And I do sometimes wonder how long Amazon Prime benefits will include its photo division.)

A dedicated photo company feels like a better long-term bet.

Time to Share with the World?
Finally, there’s the other major SmugMug benefit that every photo gallery doesn’t have to be private. SmugMug is designed to create your own public website that features your photos. Being able to show off my public-facing photography is quite appealing.

You may have noticed that beyond my job as the family photographer, I’ve enjoyed sharing my travel and nature photography on my blog.
How nice it is that I can also curate these images to share on my SmugMug site.

It’s All Part of the Plan
No, I’m not selling my photos. Not today. No, I’m not a professional photographer. Well, not today.

Does my photography hobby support my professional brand leading video production teams?
It sure does.

Can SmugMug house videos?
It certainly can (up to 3GB files/20 minute length/1080p resolution).

Will my SmugMug site align with my other personal branding efforts?
Absolutely.

Barrett’s SmugMug Site
You can see I’m tad enthusiastic about joining SmugMug.

• Long-term archiving? Check.
• Private link sharing? Check.
• Public website for some of my own work. Check.
• Setting up for a future handoff to the next generation? Check.

Am I feeling smug? Maybe just a little.

But the truth is any photo curation solution takes a TON of work. And I’ve just begun my SmugMug journey.

If you’re interested in taking a look, you can find it here:
barrettlester.smugmug.com

Hope you like it.