Pictures are one of the most important things on my journeys; they are my eyes, and heart; often showing the emotions of my journey that words cannot show. While traveling around the world I took about 50,000 pictures and reduced that down to about 11,000 worth keeping on my laptop. I traveled through India, Africa, remote areas of China, and I crossed bodies of water in boats; all leaving me a bit on edge as I hoped and prayed that my laptop (mainly my photography) was safe and secure.

Considering I was traveling into remote, developing countries I wasn’t always in the most secure environments. We all hear of those travel stories where someone’s camera is stolen or they dropped their disk down a crevice and lost all of those trip photos and I was just waiting for my time to come.

[singlepic=53,150,,,right]I needed to come up with a solution for photo storage while on the road. Sure, I had them on my laptop which I religiously backed up and of course separated the backup from the laptop, but I still felt that my memories were at risk of a hostel or hotel thief. In addition to storage, I needed a way to share my photos with my friends and family who wanted to follow along on my journey. I researched a number of options out there for online photo storage, but few offer true protection and unlimited storage. Even on Flickr or Kodak anyone can simply right click and copy/save (aka – steal) your photography. Therefore I had the challenge of finding an online site where I could professionally display/share my photos, have unlimited upload space, have ‘right click’ protection and potentially sell my photos to anyone in the world.

I found it – SmugMug. For a year membership you can get unlimited photo storage, right click protection, ability to share your photos on your own url, a photographic community to converse with, and no ads to clutter your art and memories. Plus, if you have grand ideas of selling your photography and photography related merchandise while setting your own prices, you can accomplish that too with various membership options.

I have been utilizing SmugMug now for 2 years and I love it. I even customized my site so that it didn’t look vanilla and put my own style into it. I have all of my travel memories nicely categorized and displayed for the whole world to see…and purchase!

If you are preparing to head out on a journey, consider SmugMug as your photo storage and protection solution – you can even Start your FREE Trial… and see the benefits for yourself!

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