Author: Peter Martin Jones  

There must be millions of digital cameras being used throughout the world. It should be reasonable to assume therefore, that there must be billions of digital images that have been taken. The question is - what happens to them? Or more importantly - what have you done with yours? Every time you take a picture, you take it for a reason. Something attracted you to take it so it has a value to you, and possibly to others as well so why not make better use of them with these simple suggestions.

* Firstly, review your shots and weed out any that are clearly sub -standard. You know the type of things I mean, rivers that appear to flow uphill, severe red eye, lamp posts sticking out of people's heads, and shots that are too light or too dark and so on.

* If you want to, you can redeem some of these shots by using an imaging-editing programme like Photoshop Elements or Paintshop Pro. You can use one click editing to cure exposure, colour and hue problems. You can easily straighten, crop and resize images and this can be well worth the effort to rescue otherwise decent shots.

In fact, some high-end compacts and digital SLR's have built in software to allow you to do this in the camera itself!

* Once you have weeded out or rescued your images there are several things you can do with them other than leave them sitting on your computers hard drive - for a start, you can you can easily make a slide show. Oh yes, I hear you say - I have already done that!

OK but have you included music and transitions on it? If you haven't, you don't know what you are missing. I guarantee that if you include music to your slide show - it really gives it impact. Transition controls how each new image appears by fading one out before the other or by mixing (a new image combining with the old one for a few seconds before it fades away).

These effects and more can easily be incorporated in your slide show by using the free Windows Movie Maker or similar software. It really is worth the effort and it gives your show a more professional look and feel and much more impact.

* Now let's suppose you have a few really good shots or even stunning shots amongst your collection and why not? Most of us wind up with lots of reasonable shots and a few stunning sunsets, mountain scenes and unusual shots etc. You can tell which ones are good if you show a slide show to your friends and relatives. All of a sudden, someone will say, "oh that's a great shot" or "how did you take that" and so on.

When this happens, note these down for sending off to competitions in magazines of for submissions to magazines with a small article describing something of interest that is illustrated by the image. You could also try sending them to photo mags (with full technical details). Photo mags welcome unusual or stunning images and all of these markets pay well for decent material.

* Now over a period of time you will probably have collected a few dozen outstanding images - but I really do mean outstanding! If you have, then you can try sending them to a photo library who will keep your images on file for sale for illustrating books or articles. Once a sale is made, you will be paid a proportion of the sales price with the library keeping a commission. Check the internet for Photo Libraries.

* Quite often, you may wish to Email some of your images to friends or relatives. This can be done quite simply by finding the image and right clicking on it. Now choose "send to" from the drop down menu and then select "email recipient". This method will automatically compress the file size, making it smaller for easier emailing. It opens a new blank email with the image attached.

* You may also wish to upload your shots to a blog or an online magazine. To do this, look for the uploading instructions on the blog site. These usually include an option to browse or search your computer to find the image you want. The process is quite straightforward usually only involving only a couple of clicks.

* It may seem a Bit outdated but why not make some prints that you can put into an album. Somehow, browsing through an album still has a special charm all of its own and is great for sitting in a comfortable armchair on a winter's night in front of a fire. The modern ink jet printer is quite capable of producing decent prints that you can keep, frame or send to friends and family - so why not give it a go.