The article below describes a free Internet service that should appeal to people who enjoy photography, whether as photographers or as viewers and collectors.

Several years ago, long before my site existed, I discovered Webshots, a source of attractive pictures to use as wallpaper and as a slide-show screen saver.  It was free and easy to use, and the selection of photos appealed to me, so I started to use it.  I didn't think much about it because it was merely an "extra."  Other sources offered many of the same features, but Webshots just seemed somewhat more versatile, and I enjoyed the little photo manager program (a free download) that made it easy to manage the growing collections of pictures.  Whenever I got a new computer, I reinstalled Webshots and transferred all the pictures I had collected to the new computer.  I never had to worry about having the photos hog a lot of space because Webshots has its own methods of compressing the files.

Since then, Webshots has continuously improved its photo manager, making it more versatile, and has added more features and services.  In 2002, it added a premium service (at the modest price of about $20 a year), limiting free downloads of photos to two a day.  Although the essentials were still free – as they are to this day – the service had proven valuable enough that I subscribed.  Besides, I think that a $20 annual fee is a small price to pay to help a useful website stay free of advertising and annoying pop-ups.

Since then, too, I have ventured into digital photography.  I knew that Webshots offered the means to post my own pictures on the Web and thus share them with my friends (and the world), but I couldn't be bothered when posting photographs meant scanning each one and creating a digital file.  I limited myself to an occasional e-mail attachment.

Recently, however, as I've begun to save large numbers of digital photos on my computer, I've discovered the benefits of Webshots' photo-sharing capabilities (which are, by the way, also accessible to "free" members).  If I want to share a whole bunch of them (a virtual album) with nearly everyone in my address book, all I do is upload them to my private Webshots homepage (available even to free members) and send the link in a global e-mail to everyone who might be interested.

True, I can also display pictures on my website, but putting an album on Webshots is much, much easier and automatically offers viewers options (such as a slide show) that I cannot offer on my site without a considerable amount of hassle.  And I can always insert a link on my site to my Webshots homepage if I want to make the album accessible to my site's visitors.

I strongly urge any readers who are interested in electronic photo-sharing to give Webshots a try.

Here's how it works.  Go to www.webshots.com and download the photo manager.  (Tip:  Save the downloaded executable file so that you can install it on another computer or reinstall it without accessing the Internet.)  After you have installed it, you can add, delete, organize, and otherwise manage folders and photos (from Webshots or from your own hard drive).  You may select any photo in your collections as your wallpaper and may use your Webshots photos as a slide-show screen saver, running all the folders or only those you select.  Using "Options" (accessible in the photo manager or from the Webshots icon on the taskbar), you can configure how everything works.

When you're ready to set up your own albums on your Webshots homepage, all you need to do is follow the instructions for photo sharing that are provided on the site.  Trust me:  I am severely challenged with regard to following technical instructions, but I had no trouble at all.

Many of you have photos that you like to share with friends and relatives, and you probably go to great pains to e-mail these photos.  This can be a formidable task, especially if you have 40 shots of Aunt Bessie's birthday bash.  Webshots makes it easy.  You can provide titles and descriptive captions (and can even crop the pictures if you want before uploading).  Then all you do is send the link to your friends and relatives, who can view your photos on their computers, as screen-sized displays, full-sized, or as a slide show (with captions).  If you don't want the whole world to see the shots of Danny's bachelor party, you can password-protect an album and make it viewable only by those to whom you issue the password.  (Webshots does exercise some control over what is posted, though, so don't try to post pornography.)

Other sites provide similar services, but none that I know of supply them all or make the services as easy to use.  And Webshots is a photo-sharing program, not a tool for organizing your own photos or seriously editing them.  For that, you want Adobe PhotoShop or Google's free Picassa program.  However, once you have organized and tweaked your pictures, Webshots provides a super way to share them.

(See my Webshots homepage HERE.)