- If I were honest, I would have to admit, that in a fundamental sense of the word 'art', I couldn't pass off a stick person as human to save my own life. That is why, for folks like myself, digital art is a godsend. Put a pencil in our hand and we will make you a grocery list, put a computer in our hands and even we can produce something worth sharing beyond a shopping cart.
The advent of digital imagery has changed the way we think of photography on many levels, not the least of which, as our Library Lady has taught us, is that it has opened up the possibility of sharing our photographs electronically, instantly, and with the entire world. The geek in me, however, is compelled to note that storing your photos in web albums is also a means of backing up those precious, irreplaceable memories and instances of your creative genius! It not only replicates the files stored on your local computer, but it stores them remotely so that in the event your computer meets with some sort of mishap, be it theft, breakdown, or---God forbid---flood, fire, or earthquake, your images are away from harm safely out there in the "cloud". If disaster should strike, you can recover your images from your web albums as simply as downloading them to that shiny new laptop insurance has bought. Of course, this would never be our sole backup method. We all back our personal data up on some sort of removable media at home as well, right? Because we can't have little Sarah take her first step a second time, now can we?
One such place to share and store your digital media is, of course, Google's Picasa. As Library Lady has noted, it is not the only such service out there, but it is one of the most trusted and one of the most popular.
As I'm certain most folks do, I often turn to Google's image search to find digital artwork to augment projects I'm working on. But, oddly enough, when for this lesson the matter of subject was left unabated, I must admit I had no idea what to search for! As it was, I ended up going around and around in circles until I happened to stumble upon this gem:
I went ahead and created a Picasa profile for myself, more or less for the experience of it. In keeping with the lessons learned last week, I restricted the amount of personal information I shared. I populated it with a half a dozen pictures of my two dogs, Katie and Darcy. Check it out if you'd like:
As for whether or not I will continue to use Picasa once our course is complete; I don't honestly know. As a Mac user, as I have mentioned before, I am a subscriber to Apple's MobileMe which is host to a similar service, one that I have found more convenient simply because of its association with MobileMe's other features that I use on a daily basis.
Not to mention the fact that, iCloud, MobileMe's successor, lies in wait just around the corner for its release this fall and promises to make the sharing and storing of digital media even faster and easier! Not just for us pretentious Mac snobs, either! <G>
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