SmugMug Professional Level *****

Along with owning a digital SLR comes a new problem. What to do with all those pictures?

Let's face it, the cost of film and developing is the one thing that forces you as a photographer to be selective about what pictures to take. At to this the problem of not being able to change out you film speed without finishing off the roll, and film photographer are just down right encourage to miss some great shots.

Going to a digital SLR (or any digi-cam for that matter) is bound to make you want to take shots you wouldnt have. Arguably, many of these shots shouldn't be taken. But that's what the delete button is for.

Between my Nikon D70, my very portable VAIO laptop, very usable Verizon Broadband Wireless card and SMugMug.com, I'm getting invited to take pictures a lot more often and I'm taking a while lot more when I go.

Not only do I have the control to get great shots, but I can upload them while I'm taking more shots and still on-site. A few weeks ago, my best friends son was Christened. I was uploading the pictures on my way home from the shoot!

SmugMug, like the D70 is a revolution that had to come sometime and one that I was waiting for.

You know, one of those things you can't find anywhere but periodically find your self Googling just to see if someone has finally brought it to market.

SmugMug's service has been great. I have only found one problem with them to date. Namely, they won't allow me to customize the metatag keywords on my pages. They all default to things like "SmugMug" and "photo album." These keywords aren't the ones seen by people, but the ones search engines use to help people find your pages.

Mind you, when I say they don't let me do this, it is an issue of technical implmentation, not an issue of policy restriction. These guys are very open with there system. I'm just looking for something they didn't think was important enough to support when they were implementing the system.

If I were using any of the other services, I wouldn't even think of the problem becasue their systems are so closed, they wouldn't even have an offering strong enough to get close to having this problem.

The guys at the help desk took my criticism openly and said it would be a topic of discussion for a near future release. So, my one gripe may be resolved by the time you are reading this.

SmugMug offers unlimited uploads of your pictures. They do not run ads on your pages. That up to you, if you choose (I recommend google ads.)

If you enable "printing" (and this option is VERY configurable) people will be able to order prints on-line. I ordered a few to see what people would be getting and I was quite impressed.

Here's the great thing, you set the prices and share in the profits. In fact, the lions share of the profit goes to you for anything over their base price. Their base prices comapare to Wolf's Camera's discounted prices (which are not really super cheap, but a good price for good pictures.)

I generally send my important pictures to the local Wolf's (Ritz) Camera. They take pride in their work and always seem to do a great job. There prints are top-notch. At least, I thought.

Now, I have to say that SmugMug's third party printer is Top-notch.

The printer is a third party becasue SmugMugs mission is to make the best site for photographers. There a bit of a technical slanting to them as well. While their interfaces are extremely easy to use and self explainatory, they still alow you to customize many aspects of your site right down to the HTML level. Additionally, SmugMug pulishes (for everyone's use) an API to their system.

I would describe their system as open to the degree that is possible while still giving their users a reliable system that meets it's intended purpose.

They aren't stingy either. If you're big into things like eBay, SmugMug will host your pictures and allow you to link to them from external sites. In theory, your could create your own photo site and link directly to the pictures at SmugMug; allowing you to use you own interface.

I wouldn't though. The SmugMug interface is the perfect balance between performance, sophistication and ease of use.

These guys aren't only smart but they have a very "open" attitude about their system.

While they can provide you with a "sub-domain" of smugmug (ex. joes_photos.smugmug.com), you are perfectly free to set up your own domain and direct DNS for your webserver to their servers (ex. www. joes_pictures .com .) Please note that these are examples only and are not intended to direct your toward any particular domain.


SmugMug: Try it; then buy it!

Well worth it.