My Favorite Photo Lab Site... After much digression

I have loved photography forever. Hard to tell, huh?

I just really got into it when I had children, of course. Then I really became interested in learning and getting better at it when the world went digital.

I was the yearbook sponsor at Boaz High School and our reigning photographer was the great Bentley Gray. I had been toying with Photoshop and taking pictures, but he provided the yearbook staff with a digital SLR camera that was 6 mega pixels. I did not realize the differences this would make....and since that time I have gone crazy with photographs.

He gave me a few pointers on choosing my camera, a lot of helpful hints on Photoshop- and a lot of inspiration. (Check him out..........)

My dream is to open my own studio one day- a design studio with photography and all sorts of other fun stuff.

But that is not what this post is about........

I take hundreds of pictures. Literally. Probably just about every day. I pick out the ones I want to order and get prints

and organize and label an album to put them in my chronological collection,

store the rest on a CD and make DVD compilation movies yearly.

It is just the thing I do. Sick, I know.

AT least they do not have spine labels with call numbers--!!

Uploading and getting pictures is easy nowadays.

But as I am sure I have previously stated, I am a photo snob- even with my snapshots.

A wise photographer once said to me that most people do not know the difference in a good shot and a bad one.

I have found that to be true. I mean have you ever looked at Myspace and Facebook? Do these people know what their profile photo looks like?

And what about the family portrait from Sears/Walmart with the Green Cloth background and sitting on a brown carpeted table? Sorry if I offend....

I am sure I can search the interweb and find lots of prime examples for you, but I will spare you the agony. Exposure, focus, background clutter, choice of composition and color.....obviously some people have no idea.

OK again, that is not what the post is about.
That same wise photographer also told me about an online lab that is the amateur lab of the professional one that he uses.

http://www.mpix.com/.

You can't find a better online lab, I promise you.

I have tried the free Shutterfly prints, the Ritz and Wolf Camera Prints, Walgreens, CVS and your old Walmarts....and nothing compared to the color, quality, speed, accuracy and variety provided by Mpix.

I just THREW away 25 free prints from Shapfish. Literally.

I have 200 free prints from Ritz camera from when I got my camera and they stick out like a sore thumb in my albums compared to the Mpix prints.

Once you are used to the quality of Mpix, you will never use another lab except in dire emergencies when you must have 1 hour. In that case, use Walmart or print them yourself, doesn't matter.

Mpix has grown so much that you get get just about anything you want from them- from wallets to mounted 20X30 canvas, framed prints, Christmas cards, books, trading cards, magazine covers, buttons, calendars.....I can assure you, I have one of every product!

I have a wall of sepia framed canvas prints that I ordered from Mpix hanging in my foyer. Got them framed when I ordered and they come ready to hang!!! Who can beat that. All my colors match, all my frames match. I can upload one night and sometimes they ship the next morning. I ordered Early enough in the day sometimes that I get them by the NEXT afternoon.

And 4 years and hundreds of orders, never a mistake.

And my latest creation was an amazing Hardcover book of our Colorado trip.

I will show you that in the next post........

If you are nice.

I was going to in this one but couldn't shut up!!!