Church Photo Sharing Question

[JoeW]

Hey folks, let me provide a little background before I ask my question. I coordinate a group of photographers for my church. So for instance, we have a hypothermia mission (where we provide shelter and food for homeless for a week) and I (or one of the photographers) will document that. Big events, new members, church activities--we shoot it all.

In the past the Communications Director (a paid church staff member) has asked to post photos on a Church Flickr account. Well, as you know, Flickr is now limited the number of photos for free accounts (and we're far more than 1,000 photos). We could obviously upgrade to "pro" but I don't think the church wants to do that--they'd (quite reasonable I might add) prefer to spend the money on helping the poor rather than upgrading our photo storage.

The way this works is that a photographer will shoot an event and then provide photos (usually as edited jpegs) to our Communications Director via the Flickr site.

Here's my question: we're looking for a replacement way to get photos to the Communications Director that (a) allows for storage (I don't want them all on a computer HD), (b) allows a number of volunteer photographers to submit them (obviously email isn't going to work), and (c) accounts for the reality that church paid positions turn over periodically (so the new Communications Director needs to have access to it and be able to understand it). What recommendations or thoughts can any of you offer?

 

[nmoody]

I don't know of a system that works as well as Flickr for what you are describing. If it was me, paying for that could be my contribution to the organization. Maybe split the cost between all the photographers?

I dont think its worth the pain to move away from what you have when it works well for you already.

 

[tirediron]

Agree; this comes under the heading of "The cost of doing business". I do a LOT of work for Wounded Warriors Canada, and while we'd always rather spend the money on programs and assistance, sometimes we have to shell out for travel, equipment, etc. The problem with sharing the payment amongst a group is that eventually someone's going to leave, and then others are going to resent paying the extra share...

The only practical alternative I can see is to use the church's [I assume] already existing website and if necessary, increase your storage space there. Provide each contributor an FTP log-in and come up with a standardized naming convention. Not as slick as Flickr, but it would work.

 

[JoeW]

Thanks guys--I appreciate the advice.

 

[vintagesnaps]

Start clearing out older photos of past events and storing them elsewhere, maybe on an external hard drive.

What happens if Flickr all of a sudden goes down? You'd lose all the church photos. It happened with the 'MyYahoo' page after Yahoo got a new CEO some time ago; I had mine set for local news & sports etc. and it was literally gone overnight. Not that I really lost anything, but I don't think you can assume if ownership changes that a site will still be around or won't change. I also remember it happening with a sports photography site that gave short notice that the site was being discontinued and photographers were scrambling to get their photos; many lost photos they'd stored there.

Every time a new set of photos from an event is added, that might be a good time to remove a set or two from past events from the Flickr page. I'd think too about people taking photos posting there and the communications director store the photos on an external hard drive anyway; then the church communications director decide what to keep posted or displayed (and what to make public or not if the Flickr page is set to public).

 

[JoeW]

Right now, it looks like the solution is going to be to acquire an external HD and another for backup. That's what the decision-makers at the Church have decided to do.

 

[TCampbell]

Flickr Pro is $50/year and you get unlimited storage. You could also just buy some cloud storage. Google Drive is 15GB for free ... and you can pay to increase the limit if that isn't enough. Both Google Drive and Apple iCloud Drive charge $3/month for 200GB or $10/month for 2TB.

With Flickr being $50/year for "unlimited" ... that's $4.17/month.

 

[Destin]

Flickr Pro is $50/year and you get unlimited storage. You could also just buy some cloud storage. Google Drive is 15GB for free ... and you can pay to increase the limit if that isn't enough. Both Google Drive and Apple iCloud Drive charge $3/month for 200GB or $10/month for 2TB.

With Flickr being $50/year for "unlimited" ... that's $4.17/month.

Exactly. Cheaper, easier, and more reliable than external hard drives.

This is the road I’d take.