Blog.Photobucket.com

Five simple tips for taking memorable vacation photos

By Tom Munro, CEO

It’s hard to believe that winter break has already come and gone. I managed to sneak out and take my son skiing last weekend, and I hope you had a chance to squeeze in some family together time before the kids go back to school. Not only do vacations provide families a much-needed break from the daily grind, but I also think they’re a great opportunity to capture some special moments together. And because of that, I wanted to share a few of my favorite quick tips to help you capture those memories while traveling:

1. Make a plan for power. Not it’s not as fun as thinking about cool backdrops or funny poses, but the simple fact is that dead batteries ruin great photo opportunities. Learn to manage power with spare batteries and chargers (plan ahead with a power adapter, if you’re going international), and you’ll never miss that epic “shot that could have been.”
2. Protect your gear. Cameras and smartphones are particularly susceptible to damage from moisture and falls, so take proper precautions, especially if you’re active. Invest in a padded, waterproof camera bag, keep memory cards away from anything with a magnetic field while going through airport security, and consider picking up a pack of silica gel to further reduce moisture, if you’re headed someplace humid.
3. Avoid clichéd shots. Resist the urge to pose people awkwardly in front of landmarks and monuments. Not only will your family’s patience wear thin (I speak from experience), but it also makes for generic pictures post-vacation. Instead, make it a game to challenge the group to create clever poses and compositions that haven’t been done before.
4. Plant the seed. Usually one person assumes the role of unofficial family photographer, but don’t let that be the default on family trips! They don’t have to be expensive – even a drugstore point-and-shoot will do – but giving kids cameras is a great way to keep them entertained as they capture the vacation from their perspective. You may be pleasantly surprised at what they can come up with!  
5. Remember the three B’s: Bring storage, Back up files – and above all, Be creative! The first two are pretty self-explanatory; there’s no use in taking the time to take great photos if you run out of shots the second day of the trip or – I hate to even say it – accidentally delete everything. So pack ample storage, and remember to regularly transfer photos to your online account (Photobucket!) to make sure those memories are safe. But, bottom line, enjoy your camera, experiment with new lenses, functions and features and just have fun with photography on your trip. Whether it’s an international excursion or a short staycation, you’re making memories that are worth capturing.

If you have any other tips to add, please feel free to share them in the comments below.

-Tom

Teva Mountain Games Photo Competition

Did you make it to the Winter Mountain Games this last weekend in Vail?

We were there, braving the cold to bring you Photobucket goodies and app downloads.

If you took some photos, remember to enter the public contest by adding your photos to the group album. You can win some great prizes from Eddie Bauer, Teva, Maui Jim and more!

Check out this great photo as an example:

And even if you weren't there, you can still take a good look through the group album and click "Like" for the photos you love!

Thanks to everyone who came by to say hi and learn more about Photobucket! You guys rock!

Embracing SLR Cameras

by Tom Munro, CEO

With the holidays just around the corner, many of us will be eager to capture special moments by taking photos of friends and family. And with the popularity of SLR cameras on the rise, I thought I would provide a few tips to help you get started. Even though most SLRs feature preset shooting modes, transitioning from a point-and-shoot can still be quite overwhelming. Despite this learning curve, the results can be very rewarding, so just take it slow and be patient. You will love the pictures you can take!  

First, read your instructions. It may seem simple, but this is often something we overlook when buying new electronic ‘toys.’ Sure, some gadgets are self-explanatory, but your camera’s instruction booklet is an important one to read. It will walk you through all the features of your camera so you’ll be able to make the most of your investment.

Next – start exploring the menus and settings. Bloggers Kevin and Amanda say you should prioritize learning the concepts of Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority. This will go a long way in helping you understand lighting, depth of field and where to focus. And then you’ll be able to get those great, dramatic photos where one object is in focus and the background is blurred. Lifehacker also has some great tips to check out as you’re exploring, too.

Then, practice! Don’t wait until you are at the family Christmas party or the New Year’s Eve party you are hosting or you may miss those fleeting moments you want to capture on film. Instead, set up a time to try your hand at different techniques at home with your dogs, kids, friends, significant other – basically, anyone and anything you can use as a subject. The point of this is to just get comfortable with your SLR.

Finally, take off the auto mode training wheels and put your camera into manual mode – this is, in fact, why you decided to get an SLR in the first place. In part two of Lifehacker’s look at SLR cameras, they break down how to use your camera in full manual mode. The possibilities are limitless, so don’t be afraid to try new things here – you never know, you might stumble upon something amazing!

Don’t have a SLR or are hoping to get a one for Christmas? Here are the top SLR cameras of 2011 according to ZDNet. Good luck, and happy snapping this season.

-Tom

Photobucket now has unlimited storage!

The web’s premier photo and video site on the web, Photobucket.com is now giving unlimited storage* for all users! This means that free users get all of the below:

• Unlimited photo storage
• There will be a limit of 500 videos for free users
• All storage for free users will be resized (we will not keep originals)
• Bandwidth restrictions will remain at 10GB/month for free users

Now’s the time to sign up for an account with Photobucket and upload all your photos and videos to share with family and friends!

And if that’s not enough great news, if you Tweet, post on Facebook or email your friends with the news, you could win an iPad 2! So what are you waiting for? Get your upload on with unlimited storage at Photobucket! Click here to learn more.

 

*Photobucket reserves the right to limit excessive use and the unlimited storage offer pertains to non-commercial use only.

*Updated* Site Changes

As a lot of you saw, we made some big changes yesterday. We have been working on this for a few months, and many of the changes are a direct result of the comments and suggestions from our users. We continue to listen to your feedback and have made some updates today:

• We have added one-click copy to all link codes. This means that you can click any link code on the site and the code is automatically copied - No right-click or CTRL/CMD + C required!
• We have restored the ability to upload more than 2 files by URL.  We do recommend that you check out our Firefox plug-in if you love uploading by URL. The plug-in allows you to right-click on any photo on the web and then upload it directly to your Photobucket album. Get it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10035/
• We have changed the Sub-albums panel to show all sub-albums, sorted alphabetically

We have an amazing community of users, and we appreciate all of your feedback. We are listening and will continue to enhance your Photobucket experience.  Thanks again for your comments.

Your Photobucket Team

New Great Changes Coming Soon

We've collected your feedback and are making some changes we think you'll like! We are really excited to share with you some sneak peeks of upcoming changes:

New design:

• Sleek, new design to complement your albums
• Redesigned page layout for optimal use of your browser size
• Improved account settings for a customized user experience

Improved uploader:

• Use the  button to easily upload from anywhere on Photobucket.
• Save time by adding tags, titles and descriptions as your photos and videos are uploading
• Automatically share your photos and videos to your favorite sites when you upload.

Easier navigation:

• Quicker access to any page with our improved navigation bar
• Faster browsing in your albums and search results
• Effortless album management and customization with our new ‘album options’

 

Let us know what you think! We will keep you updated on when you can be on the lookout for the changes in your album.

Welcome Tinypic Users!

Hello there Tinypic users! We are very thankful for all your support over the years and want to officially welcome you to Photobucket. Starting on September 16^th, we will transition Tinypic users outside of the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK to our main site, Photobucket.com. Our goal is to take the services you enjoyed with Tinypic, such as sharing photo links with friends, and improve upon that experience with Photobucket. On Photobucket, you’ll find it easier to share links to your social network profiles directly from your Photobucket albums. In addition to sharing and uploading, you can search through hundreds of content categories in Find Stuff, edit your photos, keep track of all your photo stats, and much more. We are constantly updating our site to provide features and options for our users.  If you have any questions regarding your account please feel free to contact our customer support: support@tinypic.com.  Thanks again for your support, and enjoy using Photobucket!

New Webcam Feature

Ever in the mood to just have a mini photo shoot with your webcam? Now you can capture pictures with your webcam and directly upload them to your Photobucket account. Here are some simple steps:

1. Log into your Photobucket account.
2. Select the From Webcam option from the More Upload Tools drop-down at the top right of the Upload panel.

If you have a webcam attached to your computer, it is automatically detected. If not, connect your webcam, and click Try Again.

3. Click Allow to give Photobucket permission to use the webcam.

     4.  Click Capture to take a photo with your webcam.

 

    5.  Select an album and click Upload to upload your photo, or click Try Again to take a new picture.   Easily share all your new photos with friends and show off your best modeling poses!

New iPad App

Our new sleek iPad App is here! We are excited to bring iPad users an app that brings all the best Photobucket features to one place. The iPad's 9.7 inch high resolution screen will bring your photos to  life and be a constant source of entertainment. Some highlights of the app:

• Upload photos directly to your account.
• View full-size slideshows of your images.
• Download images directly to your iPad so you always have a cool and unique background.
• Search Photobucket's huge media library
• Browse and discover amazing photos in one of our 27 Find Stuff categories. 
• Create, edit titles, and organize all your photos.

Learn more and download it now!

New One-Click Sharing

Photobucket allows you to set up persistent connections to your Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace accounts, if you choose. When you set up a persistent connection, you do not have to re-enter your login information for that website every time you want to share media or an album to that site. Additionally, you can share images and videos automatically upon upload, with a click of your mouse.  

1.       Log into your Photobucket account.
2.       Click New! Auto-share your uploads! in the Upload panel.
3.       Click Connect beside each service you want to connect to, then enter the required info and allow the service to connect.

4.       Click Done to close the Set up box. The Upload panel now shows an Auto-share checkbox and icons for the services you are connected to.
5.       Click the Auto-share checkbox on the Upload panel, then click Upload images & videos.

6.       Choose and upload your media. All the media you upload is automatically shared to the services you connected.

For more information:

Help topics for enabling & disabling the connections:

http://pic.pbsrc.com/help/Content/Sharing/Autoshare/autoShareUpload.htm

http://pic.pbsrc.com/help/Content/Sharing/Autoshare/DisableAutoShare.htm  

Now Supporting HD Video Uploads

Crisp, clean and beautiful, HD video is now on Photobucket! We now support HD Video uploads up to 300MB or 10 minutes in length. We have upgraded our player to accomodate HD support so it is 16:9. Check out beautiful examples of HD Time Lapse videos by director Ross Ching.

Send Photos to Your Phone

Our new Send to Phone option allows you to send your favorite photos from your album or cool images you find on Photobucket directly to your phone. Send photos to your phone to make them your wallpaper, forward them to your friends or make them a contact ID photo. Look for the “Send to Phone” link and blue phone icon on any image to get started. For more information and instructions see our tutorial.

 

Eye-Fi Announces Video Support for Photobucket

Our friends at Eye-Fi today announced today that they will be supporting uploading video to Photobucket, as well as photos.  Eye-Fi provides very cool wireless memory cards which allow upload of photos and videos without needing to connect your camera. You just set up your camera to point to Photobucket, leave it on when you get home, and everything uploads automatically. It's incredibly simple and easy to do. Read Eye-Fi's press release here. Learn more about the Eye-Fi card here.

Tips for No Stress Photo and Video Organizing!

We launched our new Organizer on Photobucket a couple of weeks ago.  It came out at the same time as our fabulous new Themes feature. So we wanted to make sure you didn't miss the Organizer! 

Getting Organized without Stressing!

To celebrate the Organizer, we put together these tips for started to get your photo and video collection organized. Everyone is different. Choose a method that works for your style, build a routine, and get going.  Procrastination only makes it worse, and as Henry James said “Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.”

Photobucket Album Themes -- Hundreds to Choose From!

So there's a virtually unlimited selection of Album Themes on Photobucket. We're giving you literally hundreds of themes to choose from.

Plus, you can build your own theme too if you want to. Click "Continue Reading" to see more ideas.

 

Brand new "organizer" for your photo and video albums

Our brand new album organizer has to have been the number one requested feature from our most active Photobucket users.  So now it's here. 

So for all you Photobucket users with thousands of photos and videos in your albums, and a bit of a muddle going on with how they are categorized, this one's for you.

Simply click in the top right corner of your album on the "organize" link:

Photo and Video Album Themes Launch Today on Photobucket

We're pretty sure we've enjoyed getting this feature ready more than anything we've done at Photobucket all year. Heck, maybe ever!

Album themes

What's a theme? It's a 'skin' that you can apply to your entire personal Photobucket album -- and it customizes the background, colors and borders around your photos and videos.

Try out themes today

To try out themes, go to: http://photobucket.com/albumthemes

Or, click "album themes" up at the top of your album. That will take you to the themes selection page. We are shipping with close to 500 different themes for you to try out. Not enough? Then you can make your own. And if you think it's cool, submit it to be shared with other Photobucket users.

Vanity URLs for your Albums

Vanity URLs for Your Group Album and Personal Album

You probably already know this, but you can also make a "vanity URL" for your Group Album. So when you're inviting your friends, family or fans to your Group Album, you can hand out an easy-to-remember  URL.

This is not a new feature today -- we shipped this with Group Albums in May. We just want to remind you it's there!

This works for your personal Photobucket album too. There's a link in the upper left corner of your album to set your own URL:

New today: upgraded combined photo and video uploader on Photobucket

Thanks to all your feedback, we’re upgrading the way you upload photos and videos to Photobucket today.

This upgrade radically simplifies uploading to Photobucket.  It allows you to upload both photos and videos at the same time, and presents options for choosing and selecting media from different locations.

Here’s a quick summary of the improvements:

• You can upload photos and videos at the same time in the same upload session
• You can shift- or ctrl- select multiple files and upload them all at once
• You can upload up to 50 photos and/or videos at once
• You can upload photos from your mobile phone directly into your album
• You can upload photos or videos by emailing them to a unique email address associated with your album.

Naturally, we’re keeping the "old" way of uploading, because we know that some people just like it that way or are 'change averse'!

The size and limits of photos and videos that you can upload does not change.

• Free users can upload up to 1GB of files (images/videos) to their account (up to around 10,000 files).
• Pro users can upload up to 5GB of files (images/videos) to their account (up to around 50,000 files).

Photobucket free users can upload images and have them appear automatically in the following sizes:

• tiny (100x75)
• small (160x120)
• medium (320x480)
• large (640x480)
• 15" screen (800x600)
• 17" screen (1024x768)
• original size, with a 1MB file size limit
  
• videos maximum of 5 min length and 100MB size

Photobucket Pro users can upload images in all the sizes above, and in addition:

• 19" screen (1280x960)
• 21" screen (1600x1200)
• 22" screen (2048x1536)
• 23" screen (2240x1680)
• original size, with a 2MB file size limit
  
• original size, with a 5MB file size limit
  
• videos maximum of 10 minutes in length and 100MB size

File format support does not change either. All users can upload in all the standard file formats (JPG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG) and all standard video formats (3g2, 3gp, 3gp2, 3gpp, 3p, asf, avi, divx,  dv, dvx, flv, gif, moov, mov, mp4, mpeg4, mpg4, mpe, mpeg, mpg, qt,  wmv,  xvid, rm). Pro users can in addition upload SWF (Flash) files.

You can choose to upload from your computer, a Web URL, from your mobile phone or from your email.

When you upload from your computer, you can pre-choose the size your image will end up. Or you can leave it in its original size, with a limit file size of 1MB (free users) or 5MB (Pro users):

When you upload from a Web URL, you just enter the URL of the image.

If you want to upload images from your mobile phone, use the unique email address associated with your Photobucket album to email from your phone to your album. When you click on this option, your unique email address is revealed:

You can also send an image direct from your email account to Photobucket. Just attach the image/photo/video to the email and send to your unique email address:

And finally, we always welcome feedback. Please contact us at pbfeedback@photobucket.com.

Improvements to Albums and Subalbums

Today we launched some improvements to the ways that Photobucket handles albums and subalbums.

Improvements include:

• Ability to set sub-albums "public" and "private" selectively
• More room to display album names in the left sidebar
• "Expand" and "collapse" feature to display more, or less, subalbum names for lists longer than 25 albums

Edit Album and Sub-Album Properties Click on the "edit" link at the top of your album sidebar to edit the album properties. You can: Rename your albums Delete albums Set some albums "public" (anyone can see without a password) or "private" (only those with a password can see that album). Make New Sub-Albums You can have many albums, and layers of sub-albums, on Photobucket. It's a good way to keep all your stuff organized. To make a new album, just enter the name at the bottom of the sidebar, and click "save." Expand and Collapse the Left Sidebar If you have more than 25 albums, use the "more" and "less" links to control how many of your albums show in the sidebar at once.