I decided to create a separate page with the products and services that I recommend. There are too many choices when it comes to photography related products and services. Over the years I have used many of these products and I can only recommend a few. What you find on this page are products and services that I recommend. All these products and services are backed by companies that have outstanding reputation and customer service.

Every time you purchase a product through any of these links, you are helping me to keep this site going because I get a small referral fee from these companies. This does not affect the price you pay in any way shape or form. In fact, I am pretty sure you’ll get the best price anywhere by buying them using my links for your purchases.

Best places to buy your cameras and accessories

• I buy most gear from B&H Photo Video

Software for organizing your pictures

• Picasa. This is my recent favorite program for managing my digital pictures. I used to hate it, but as of version 3.8, Picasa has made great steps towards complying with most image metadata standards. You can download Picasa here for FREE.
• FastStone Image Viewer. This a very fast FREE image viewer with a lot a great feature. This is the one I use the most and it’s fast and very easy to use. You can download FastStone Image Viewer here for FREE.
• XnView. This is a great FREE image viewer. If you want to manage all your metadata, then XnView is the way to go. You can download XnView here for FREE.
• Adobe Lightroom. If you’re looking for professional software to manage your photo collection including keywords, Lightroom is the only program I recommend. Thankfully Adobe has dropped the price by half and you can get Adobe Lightroom 4.0 for an amazing price.

Products for storing and backing up your digital pictures

• Western Digital Caviar Green internal hard drives. Awesome internal hard drives. They’re running very cool and using very little power. Love these things. Get a WD Caviar internal hard drive here.
• Western Digital RAID enabled external hard drives. These are my favorite external hard drives. I love these products because they create two copies instead of only one. They has two hard drives inside and every time you copy something to them, they creates two copies. This is great because hard drives do fail. See the Western Digital Mirror Edition.
• SyncBack Freeware. This is the best program for doing backups of family pictures. I have used it for many years and it has worked flawlessly. Download SyncBack for FREE.

Products for your digital camera

• Sanyo Eneloop Rechargeable Batteries. These are the best rechargeable batteries out there! You can buy them in bulk from Costco or you can buy a few at great price from B&H Photo Video. They recharge fast and last very very very long time. Ok, ok…enough said! Check out the Sanyo Eneloop Rechargeable Batteries.

Services for your website

If you’re planning to setup a website or you want to move your existing one please consider the services below. I have been using all of them for years and I love them.

• Blue Host offers unbelievable value for your website. If you’re looking for a cheap but reliable web hosting, Blue Host is awesome. Unlimited space, unlimited domains and much more for just $6.95/month. Check out Blue Host. I have been using them for more than two years. You can also read about why I recommend Blue Host.
• Clicky web analytics. With Clicky you can learn everything about your website visitors. You can greatly improve your users’ experience by knowing every action your website visitors take. I have been using Clicky for more than two years. Check out Clicky Web Analytics.
• Extreme Thumbnail Generator. I have tested many photo gallery generators but this one is by far the most flexible program. What do I mean by flexible? Well, not only that you have quite a few themes already provided out of the box, but you can also change any theme and create a new theme. The greatest thing however is the ability to insert image meta data anywhere in the gallery: on thumbnail pages, on image pages, in the header, in the footer, in the “alt” tag….pretty much anywhere. Checkout Extreme Thumbnail Generator. If you want to check out an example take a look at the my photo gallery of Santa Barbara Zoo.
• My travel photo blog. If you’re thinking about setting up a photo blog, take a look at my travel blog for examples on how to setup a successful photo blog. I think you’ll get lots of good ideas. Check out my travel blog.

Services and products for sharing your pictures

Digital photography makes sharing pictures very easy in some ways and challenging in other ways. Here are some some services and products that will make sharing your pictures a great experience.

• Fotki online photo sharing. Get the most value out of sharing your pictures online. I have been using Fotki.com for many years now. I use Fotki for sharing family pictures with family and friends. I love the fact that I can add passwords to all the albums I want to protect. In addition we use Fotki to print all of our pictures. Their 9c/print deal is the cheapest you can find! The quality of the prints is outstanding. If you’re looking to print your pictures online, Fotki can’t be beat! If you want to sign up with Fotki please use this link.
• SmugMug. While more expensive than Fotki, SmugMug has a friendly user interface and amazing features for downloading different size images. It also works great as an image source for your blog. Take a look at SmugMug by clicking here.