Flickr-ing

Remember when we used to keep a photo album on the coffee table to show off when we had family and friends over? Worse than that, my parents used to joke about being invited over to a friend's house to look at vacation slides... slides...??? And that photo album - the ones from back in the day are missing most of the little black photo corners, and on the more recent ones, the cellophane sheet protectors have yellowed and are all sticky...

I too have been guilty of storing pics in these archaic formats - ordering "doubles" of all, and keeping the negatives for posterity in case I needed to make more prints. Takes up lots of room, and guess what? We never go back to look at them... until recently when the grandparents were having parties to celebrate the golden years and we needed a way to look back.

Fast-forward to the present! Online photo sharing, editing, and organizing courtesy of Flickr! I have used Shutterfly and Picasa to create greeting cards and photo journals for the family! What a pleasure to select 50 fabulous pictures, edit them, pick borders and backgrounds, add labels and comments, and watch the joy in the eyes of the viewers!

I'm beginning to explore using Flickr and like the tag and group features. It really makes it easy to navigate through photos and see the diversity in the database. One of the photos that caught my eye is "Winter Sun at the Lake" http://www.flickr.com/photos/starlighthope/3143681571/. To my, this composition conveys ultimate peace, quiet, and tranquility. The flare of the sun illustrates the dawning of the day - the first signs that activity will once again begin.