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Health & Fitness

Showing Off Your Photos

Here I offer some creative ideas for your photos.

When I moved to Land O' Lakes, I was excited to find that my neighbor was a professional photographer. Enthusiastically telling him about my interest in photography and enumerating how many photos I take, he responded, "What do you do with them?" I inferred that he was asking, "What good are all those pictures?" As a professional photographer, he saw photography as a way of making a living, not as a hobby, and his photos were not for personal use.

With digital photography, it is easy to be prolific and it is relatively inexpensive to store all those photos on external hard drives. Terabyte (1,000,000,000,000 bytes) drives are now available for under $100. But what do I do with those trillion bytes of photo files?

You could just have them printed as 4X6 paper prints, but then what? Back to shoeboxes? Try some of the many creative choices as the destination for your images. There are many photo novelties that the processors offer: mugs, mouse pads, shopping bags, note pads, key chains, magnets, iPhone cases, playing cards, shirts, aprons, holiday ornaments, snow globes, dart boards, sports bottles, stickers, bobbleheads, clocks, banks, and even blankets! (I'll bet there were a few in there you didn't know about.)

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But wait - there's more. Did you know that you can have real postage stamps printed with your photo on them? You can create your own Christmas stamps or stamps for any special occasion. You can use custom stamps to honor or celebrate someone you love. Just go to usps.com and search for "photo stamps." The cost is just $18.99 for a sheet of twenty 45 cent stamps, but stamps are available in other denominations with printed envelopes also available.

Another of my favorite photo displays, is the do-it-yourself calendar. I like to make calendars from our own vacation photos. They are easy to create and available from many photo processors. Family photo calendars can make great Christmas gifts.

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But my very favorite photo creation is one that will undoubtedly outlast any of those mentioned. It is the self-published photo book. Available from many providers, photo books are easy to create, with prices starting below $20. Books are available in hard or soft cover with a choice of dimensions and any number of pages. Some photo book Websites offer "instant" books allowing you to simply upload the pictures with the online software creating the book. Others offer you full control including background, page layout, colors, and text. You can create vacation books, baby books, wedding albums, books "in memory of", or you can create your own illustrated novel. I created a book for my brother with historical and family photos. My wife created one for her best friend with photos taken over a 50 year span. Both books brought tears of joy to the recipients.

I encourage you to consider some of these options for your photos. You'll be surprised how easy it is and how enthusiastically these are received as gifts.

For more information on showing off your one-of-a-kind photos, join us this Thursday night at 7 p.m. at the Land O' Lakes Community Center for the next in our series of digital photography classes. Take advantage of the special introductory price of just $10 per class. Call 813-929-1229 or e-mail info@con2000.com for more information.

Editor's note: Have a question about photography? Email Maury Griffith at info@con2000.com. He will answer select questions in future blog posts.

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The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

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