A simple guide to share and print your own favorite vacation photos

This post is an example of the content I share every Friday in my Living by Experience Magazine. If you’d like your free copy, just click here.

I’m often asked if I can print a picture someone took themselves. Understandably so: each limited edition photograph I sell comes on a variety of museum quality products, like metal, acrylic glass, or even bamboo. I take the motto “make your walls smile” very seriously, and the products we source for our print mediums are only the best of the best. However, we only sell and print photographs that were taken directly by me. So if you want to print your own images, this article is for you.

While it’s not as easy as snapping your fingers to create expert photography results, practise does make (close to) perfect. For my fine art photography I use a variety of lenses to create the image I’m after, since I don’t edit anything afterwards. For my more ad-hoc personal travel photography I use a high-end point-and-shoot camera and simply rely on a good mix of focus, contrast, and exposure to create the image I’m after. Any camera can do those things, and most people never truly need a much bigger, heavier, and more expensive DSLR. Sometimes I’m just taking quick snapshots on my phone, leaving me with even less bells and whistles to play with. Just to be clear: my personal vacation pictures never see the (public) light of day, only a few make it onto this blog to illustrate a story, and none of those snapshots make it into my art gallery, ever. That’s the difference between taking pictures and making photographs. Yet still I want to keep those snapshots, and maybe even share some with family – in print or online.

Now all we need is the right tools to share and print those keepsakes. With all the privacy concerns surrounding Facebook and social media I wanted another place to share some personal images for friends and overseas family. And after I cancelled my Costco membership last month I also needed a new place to print some of those images to share with my non-digital family members. So I’m going to share an alternative with you I recently discovered: Photobucket. I signed up for a free account here, tested out the online account features to upload, share and print. I also downloaded the iOS app to play with.

Here’s a step by step guide:

1. Upload and edit your image through the website or iOS / Android app. Pretty self explanatory! Once you’ve uploaded, select your photo and launch the editor.
2. Enhance the image, by applying for example a black & white filter. Be creative, the rest of the details are up to you!
3. You can share directly from within the app to just about anywhere. Just select the photo you’d like to share and tap the ‘share’ icon to select from a number of options. You can also share multiple photos straight from the album.
4. For the ones you really love – don’t miss the in-app Print Shop! You can quickly turn your own masterpiece into a piece of wall art. You’ll find the Print Shop from the side menu or the home screen.

With a free account, you can store all of your photos, videos and GIFs, then share them by email or social sites like Facebook and Twitter. Plus, the Print Shop and powerful photo editor makes Photobucket the ideal solution for all of your photo needs.

Give it a try yourself, create a free account through the link below and get 10% off any prints.

P.S. Questions? Text me: 604-210-8668. Your support means the world to me, so if this post helped you, please consider buying a book (for you), a coffee (for me), or checking out a more in-depth course (for free). Thanks! 🙂