On 7 January 2004 I was awakened at 0600 by the persistent chirping of my cell phone. "Chris, this is Richard Sergay from ABC News in Washington. What can you tell me about the photos?" Not having a clue what he was talking about but not wanting to broadcast my ignorance, I said, "Nothing more than what we've already said."
After a bit of give and take, I was able to deduce that we (Military.com) were broadcasting some of the first photos of Saddam Hussein's capture. The photos were taken by Army soldiers during their highly secretive operation to capture Saddam in his underground hiding place. One of the soldiers took the photos and sent them home-and they ended up in the hands of our editors.
No longer relegated to professional news organizations, everyone now can be a photojournalist, and nearly every consumer hand-held device has an embedded digital camera. Now it's likely that amateur photographers, not the pros, will capture spontaneous news-just review the images of Abu Ghraib or the Asian tsunami. :
The photo space is hot. In the last few months, many of the online photo sites have been acquired by the big portals or consumer electronics manufacturers. This increased competition for your attention is driving significant innovation, consumer value, and choice for both amateur and professional photographers. It is also making it extraordinarily simple for those in uniform to share their photos with family, friends, and, potentially, millions of interested strangers.
With more than 60 million digital cameras and 150 million camera phones expected to sell this year, it is clear the 150-year old photo industry is in revolution. "Digital photography is absolutely mainstream and is used by millions," said Chris MacAskill, founder of Smugmug. "One of our fastest-growing segments is service members looking to stay connected with their families."
It can be a bit tricky to make sense of all the options available to the digital shutterbug. Essentially, there are two flavors of tools for storing, printing, and sharing your pictures: client software (installed on your computer) and web services (web sites). In most cases, they are not mutually exclusive and can be used in conjunction with each other.
Generally, the software on your computer allows you to extract, touch-up, email, and print your photos. In my opinion, the two best programs for digital photo storage and manipulation are Picasa (Windows only) and iPhoto (Mac only). Not only are they extremely slick and intuitive programs, they are free. Picasa (owned by Google) can be downloaded at www.picasa.com. iPhoto cannot be downloaded, but it does come preinstalled on new Macs or it can be purchased as part of a software upgrade called iLife '05 (www.apple.com).
In terms of web sites, there are many more options, and the best service for you will depend on how seriously you take photography and how web savvy you are. The two broadest categories of photo sites are free and paid services. Increasingly, however, the lines between the two are blurring.
Free sites generally let you upload, store, and share photos with friends. They are easy to use and more than adequate for casual photographers. Most free sites generate revenue by charging you to print your photos ($.25 cents buys you a 4x6 print). The more popular free sites are Ofoto (www.ofoto.com), Snapfish (www.snapfish), Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com), and Webshots (www.webshots.com). Because these services are free and rely on photo printing to generate revenue, they generally limit users to displaying only a lower quality image on the site (prints are all full-quality, however). In other words, when you share your photo album with your shipmates, they won't be able to download the full-sized image. Instead, they will have to settle with a lower quality image or order a print.
For the most part, the paid services sites are for the more discriminating photographer. They often offer all the same features of the free sites and permit you to store and download full-sized images on the site. For fees ranging from $25-$100 per year, users get to build, manage, and share professional-looking albums. Many people who use these sites also appreciate the ability to share their photos with other serious photographers for comments and insider tips. Two of the better fee-based sites are Smugmug (www.Smugmug.com) and Pbase (www.pbase.com).
Photos are not just for special occasions anymore. With the ability of an individual to instantly capture and shares photos for free, digital photography is ubiquitous, persistent, and meaningful. The next big story from Iraq is just as likely to covered by cellphone on Flickr as by the Associated Press or The New York Times. Smile at the phone and say cheese.