I am trying to decide on a new place to post my pictures I want to be able to allow family to grab a pic if they want one, but I would't mind making a few bucks if others want to buy any of my pictures. I tried Photrade, but they appear to be going under. Right now I am looking into SmugMug. Anyone have experience or opinions on what is available right now? Also was curious if anyone has gotten into iStockPhoto.
I haven't tried stock photo yet...I started posting mine on Pbase a few years ago, and have been happy with it. Loading photos are easy, the layout looks good and is nicely editable, family or friends can easily view, and I've gotten some unsolicited sales and a few publishings from my galleries there in the past few years. I haven't really thought about looking around for others mostly because it works well enough for me so far...but I don't post large res shots there for security reasons (to prevent my high res shots from being stolen and sold) and don't actively solicit sales of photography. I would imagine SmugMug and Flickr might also be worth a look.
check out phanfare, you can link right to my phanfare site through the signature link below, i think they are competitive pricewise, i like that i can keep family galleries locked out for uninvited, while still leaving all other galleries public, and yet i can lock the dowload feature off for public galleries, while leaving it unlocked for the private ones, this means no more making and mailing cd/dvd, invited family and friends can view and download the same high res jpegs i would send to them, get only the ones they want, and i'm not out a $100 dollars in mailer costs everytime we have a major family gathering i can get visitor reports by day,gallery and who for the past 30 days at anytime with one click, lots of background choices, music tracks can be set by me, if you go to my festival galleries you'll hear a track from that particular artist as long as i have something available, captioning is pretty easy, 3000 per album, 500 per gallery, even the med cruise i did not hit the limits, print ordering available this is my second year with them, they provide just the service i want, a place to display my images without a lot of work, i do not need any more text capability that basic labeling,album and gallery description and captioning, i have no interest or time to learn/develop a full blown website
I have used phanfare somewhat and it has worked well. I will have to checkout pbase. One thing that is important is having a site that will be around for sometime and that can protect my photos. Photrade started off well, but they have really struggled lately.
I use phanfare and smugmug, and like them both a lot. I am trying to decide if I want to stick with one of them or switch over to zenfolio come spring when my year is up with these others. I like these 3 better than Flickr though. They are all similar, it is just going to come down to which one has what you want at a cost you are ok with, and the right user interface as well.
