Colorado Art Studio

I have wanted to upgrade to a Pro Flickr account for some time now, yet I didn’t want to dip into the family funds. One obstacle is that I had pretty much drained my Paypal account over the holidays so I had to wait. Luckily a very nice woman purchased something from my Etsy store this past week, so I was able to upgrade to a pro account today. I spent the AM organizing some of my photos into sets and deleting old photos that were just taking up space.

Here’s what you get for $24.95/year:

• Unlimited uploads (10MB per photo)
• Unlimited storage
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Unlimited photosets
• Permanent archiving of high-resolution original images
• The ability to replace a photo
• Ad-free browsing and sharing

Compare that to what you get with a Free Account:

• 100 MB monthly upload limit (5MB per photo)
• 3 photosets
• Photostream views limited to the 200 most recent images
• Only smaller (resized) images accessible (though the originals saved in case you upgrade later)

I think it will be worth it in the long run and will offer people a way to see groupings of my work, from ACEOs to postcards to paintings and whatever else I create since I don’t stick to one medium. It felt really good to treat myself to something new today!

In other news, my good friend, Nikki from Wild on the Inside, alerted me to another cool Flickr tool the other day. Moo Cards are mini calling cards created from your Flickr photos. She ordered some for herself and is going to give us a full critique when they arrive.

Speaking of Nikki, she is one of my best friends in the whole world, but unfortunately lives far away from Denver. She married her sweet heart and now resides in the San Fransisco Bay area. She and I were flight attendants together for United Airlines and used to “buddy bid”, which means you work the same schedule as each other. It was a blast and we did manage to bring the best out in each other. One of the things we used to talk about on the jump seat was life after United and how we were going to quit and follow our bliss. We ended up doing it, but following our bliss is harder than I imagined.

She really is wild on the inside…a devoté of Burning Man and crazy funky coutour. She keeps trying to get me to commit to Burning Man, but I’m just not there yet. Why am I telling you all of this? She has just started blogging and opened a new Etsy Store.

In addition to the wonderful people I have met through blogging, I have discovered yet another benefit to this activity! If you read yesterday’s post, you’ll remember that I lost all of my documents, photographs and other files that I have accumulated over the past year and a half when my computer crashed on Saturday and I had to reinstall my operating system. I am happy to say that since Saturday, I have managed to restore my computer to a workable state that suits my needs just fine…Yay! But what of my lost photographs? My portfolio?

Guess what? It’s all archived on my blog and Flickr! So, yesterday, I began going through my website, blog and Flickr account and saving photos back onto my hard drive. Not to worry, I am going to back this up after I’m done! I’ve been pretty good about posting regularly and uploading my photographs to either my blog or Flickr or both. Good for me that I’ve left a trail in cyberspace.

It’s a little tedious, but I’m happy that not all is lost. The added benefit is that now I am organizing my photographs more efficiently as well. There are some photographs that are gone forever, but that’s okay, just having some of them back is a relief. The downside to all my computer activity the past few days is that I haven’t done anything creative. I hope to get back to making art work today!