The last few days I’ve been mulling over my choices as to how to best present my photos to you. It’s been a toss up between changing the format of this website (using other wordpress themes with either one column or flexible widths), or registering myself a Flickr, MobileMe or Picasa web page. All I want is clean, convenient, free (or cheap), smart looking and well integrated into both Mac and Aperture systems. None of these options really worked for me on some or all of these levels.

Tonight, however, I believe I have made up my mind. Check out what I decided by visiting cdubphoto.smugmug.com and let me know what you think! I spent a good portion of four hours building myself this new SmugMug page. SmugMug seems to be a good solution based on my aforementioned requirements – unlimited bandwidth and storage; a very nice, clean look with customizable features and appearance, relatively straight forward management; a free plug-in so I can export straight from Aperture to it; and a modest cost of $40 per year. For now I’m on a trial account and I’ll make my final decision in two weeks. You bet I wish it was free, but after investigating those other options, I’m pleased to spend this paltry amount for a service closest to what I was looking for that respects my privacy (no ads, no spam) and my requirement for simplicity.

SmugMug is endorsed by several excellent photographers and they sell their service admirably – take a tour and find out. In reality, it’s not the most user-friendly interface, but it’s not bad – hey I got it up in only a few hours. My plan is to put up new photos every few days, filling categories such as travel, people, landscapes, architecture and still life with new photos fairly often. I’ll build a “new photos” section right on the main page so you don’t have to go digging to find out what’s new. I’m not storing all my pictures on this site (at least for now), just the ones I want to share (ideally the best ones). I’ll ensure I make a mention of new photos you should check out everytime I have some to share.

What do all of you use to share your photos? I know a couple of you have your own websites, but I’m wondering what you think of photo sharing websites, what your considerations and requirements are, and any detractors you can think of.

And finally, I’ll reiterate that you should definitely check out this great new gallery of mine – cdubphoto.smugmug.com ! (Hey, it’s my site and I can advertise as much as I want, right?)

Happy weekend everyone.