Sharing Baby Photos--without Sharing them with the World

Gone are the days when parents carry around a wallet full of tiny family photos to show off to anyone who’ll look. Now we carry phones, share photos on social media, and send them via texts. But what if you want your kids to have a little more privacy to their photos, but you still want to share large numbers of them with close family members or friends? Enter a photo sharing site or app. I’ve gathered some information about some of the best options out there for you to try. 

Dropbox

I’ve used dropbox for years for file sharing, and when my daughter was born, I created a dropbox folder to share photos with my family and friends. On my end it works like another folder on my computer or an app on my phone. I organize a folder a month, with a few extra special folders (like birthdays, family photo sessions, etc) and fill it straight from my phone with photos and videos. I have a permanent private link I can text or email to friends and family and they can save the link to their favorites and re-visit and download photos as often as they like. With very little training, even my fairly computer illiterate family members have learned to love the dropbox!

Google Photos

Google has their own photos app, complete with unlimited storage  Lots of people consider it a must-have. It’s got some nice features and does a great job of auto-backup.  I personally use this as an extra backup for all of my photos. The program sorts the photos and auto-tags people, which I sometimes have to help along, but it does a decent job, and learns as it goes. You can even do some decent editing from the site and change a lot of settings as well.

Apple Photos App

If you and your loved ones all use iPhones you can always make a shared photo album on your photos app.  It’s pretty easy to set up a shared photo and fill it with the pictures you want to share with your family.  This is great to share with a small number of people, but doesn’t work for families who use android, or for grandpa’s flip phone.

Email

One of my friends who is hyper-vigilant about her daughter’s privacy creates a photo collage and has an email list she sends it to with some regularity.  Her life is busy and she finds this is the most efficient way to update her family and friends while still keeping her daughter’s life private.  

There are plenty of other options, but these are a few of my favorites so far.  Happy Sharing!

Jenny Ditch is a mom of one little girl in Illinois who is so thankful that internet sharing didn’t exist during her very embarrassing childhood!