Desperately Seeking… the Perfect Photo Gallery

Now that I’ve scanned my gazillion slides from past adventures in various ‘n sundry corners of the globe, I was eager to find a good online photo gallery worthy of storing/displaying my precious pics.

Years ago I (like most everybody else on the Planet) signed up for a Flickr account and uploaded a slew of pics from my trip to Bali.   But somehow Flickr now just seems so… high school.  Not as sophomoric as Photobucket, but still…

Then there’s Picasa (handily entwined with my Blogger account – as is everything Google of course).  But it too seems limited in its design, and even with a paid upgrade, it just doesn’t quite tickle my photo gallery toes.  Besides, while everyone has their own peculiar druthers when it comes to such things, my priorities are crystal clear:

1. I insist upon UNLIMITED storage and lightening fast uploads
2. I favor an uncluttered interface with hopefully a dash of understated chic.
3. It has to be simple to rummage around in, yet allow me to fiddle with adding a smidge of css, etc. if I get the itch.
4. I also need the site to NOT compress my images, and allow me to download the originals any time I please.
5. Shoot, I was even willing to (gasp!) p-a-y a few rubles if I could get all that.

So I searched high and low, read reviews of all the top photo gallery sites, comparing and contrasting til I was bleary-eyed, and finally settled on my heart’s desire – SmugMug.com

Unlike Flickr and Picasa, SmugMug doesn’t even offer a free account.  But SmugMug’s Standard account at $40 per year is leaps ‘n bounds better than the comparable paid pro versions of Flickr and Picasa.  The choices of templates are all quite demure, and with all you have 15-ways-from-sunday to view the pics.  Still, I knew I’d want to tweak things a bit more, so I tossed in an extra few bucks to get the “Power” version that lets me customize to my heart’s content.  Better yet, I unearthed a fine photography site that’s powered by SmugMug that provided a discount code so my SmugMug Power account only cost me $48 for the year.

I’m truly smitten with SmugMug – it has everything I was looking for and more.  And already I’ve made good use of it – uploading my pics from Egypt, Panama, Thailand, the Azores, et al.  Still a bunch to go, but I’m now feeling a great sense of relief.  At least now I have a nice secure place to stash my photos that will serve me well once I hit the road and head on over to that g-forsaken rice paddy in SEA (and uh, add a bazillion more pics to the mix!)

Meanwhile, do check out my new photo digs if you like:  Through the Eyes of TravelnLass

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