What To Expect When You're Expecting ... To Share Your Baby Photos
This summer, I hit one of life's great milestones: I became a person who posts baby pictures on the Internet. A lot of them.
Our son was born in August, and I have already taken 15,000 pictures of him, hundreds that I want to share with our family and close friends, and a few dozen that I might want to show colleagues and acquaintances. But how?
In theory, we're in a golden age of photo sharing. There are literally dozens of ways to share photos with friends now. But with the new capabilities of the Internet come new and distinctly contemporary problems.
For one, most parents don't want photographs of their children widely available. You want your people to see them but not anyone else. The privacy issues that lurk in our daily lives cry out to be addressed when it comes to children
And second, not everyone uses the same social network. Grandma's on Facebook, your nephew is on Instagram and your colleagues are on Twitter and LinkedIn.
So, what do my wife and I do?
More Tools For Shutterbug Parents
Snapchat: This mobile app has garnered a lot of publicity as a platform for sexting. That's because photos people send to each other using this app disappear (from all phones and the company's servers) within 10 seconds of viewing them. So how do we use it as parents? Well, for the gross stuff. You might want to send your partner a photo of a particularly impressively filled diaper, but you don't need or want that image in your phone's memory. That's the kind of thing Snapchat was made for.
Blurb: Online services are great for storing vast quantities of photographs of your child. But what if you want something curated, more like a keepsake or a photo album of old? Well, Blurb is a print-on-demand publisher with really simple tools that allow you to create beautiful, professional-looking photo books.
The Wirecutter: If, after taking a few snapshots with your phone, you find yourself in need of a camera upgrade, this is the site to find gear recommendations. It's not like other gadget sites, which are overwhelming. Wirecutter provides one recommendation for every product category. So, you're looking for the best point-and-shoot camera? It will say, "Buy this one."