During the holidays, it's easy to spot great photo opportunities. Everything is lit up in shiny colors or a sparkling glow. There are also memories you want to capture with family and friends you haven't seen in a while.
Instead of just posting those special moments in a basic Facebook album, or worse, losing them in a digital wasteland, try something new!
There are some free, simple tools available that can help you create a fun, multimedia showcase. You can even connect these sites to your social networks to share the finished masterpiece with family and friends.
Magisto: Now you can finally take all those random video clips you've collected and turn them into a video you can actually sit all the way through. All you have to do is upload your video clips, choose a song and wait for the digital editing elves to put the final product together. It comes out the other side like the video below, which is described by the video blogger as being a "compilation of random clips of my life as an amputee."
Animoto: You can also turn your photos into a video slideshow with music using Animoto. With this service, you can only create 30 second videos for free. If you want longer videos, you have to pay a fee.
Scrapblog: Create a digital scrapbook to share with friends using this free site. Scrapblog provides a marketplace for digital scrapbooking materials. Once you have uploaded photos (or imported them from another site like Flickr or Facebook), you can start choosing stickers, patterned backgrounds, frames and text to layer on top of photos. While many of these digital supplies are free, you can also choose to pay for more options. Once you are done laying out your pages, you can even order a physical book version.
Pinterest: You know those pictures you are so proud of? Post them on Pinterest, a site that helps you collect and organize the best photos the web has to offer. The site creates a virtual pushpin board, a collection of items that serve as a source of inspiration. For example, I keep a collection of photos to inspire me to try new recipes and work on various crafts. I also uploaded photos from a trip to New York and added it to my 'Favorite Places and Spaces' virtual board. You can add a photo to your pin board and see if it gets picked up by fellow collectors and repined over and over.
Picnik: This free photo-editing site gives you the tools to make basic edits or modify photos with different effects. There is also a pro-service, which gives you access to even more tools that will help you cleanup profile pictures.
Memolane: This site integrates all your social networks in one place to create a virtual trip down memory lane. Once you connect your social networks, it maps out all the media you’ve uploaded along a timeline. You can add sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram and Fourquare to relive days through your social media posts. Check out BrisFestival’s account to see this site in action.
Tumblr: If you think your photo taking habits have increased to official shutter-bug status, then you may want to consider creating a Tumblr blog. The site makes it easy for you quickly create a photo blog without worrying about the technical aspects of blogging. You can even shoot an email photo to your own unique blog address. Those photos will be automatically published without you having to sign in or worry about formatting.
If you've used any of these sites, or have another favorite that's helped you get more creative, let us know!
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