One of my favorite classes in college was Photography. I enjoyed learning about how to operate an old 35mm manual camera, as well as learning about the various factors that go into controlling how the "scene" you've framed in the viewfinder becomes a photograph.  While I don't get to "shoot" much, I do enjoy the opportunity when it arises. 

I've recently been looking into the various photo sharing sites that are out there.  Everyone knows Flickr, but some not so known alternatives have caught my eye as well...most notably Zooomr and SmugMug.  I haven't done an in depth evaluation of the three services I'm considering thus far, but I've explored them enough to know what I do and don't like about each. This post is an attempt to get me closer to figuring out which one I want to go with.

Flickr
Flickr has a ton of users, and as such a very strong community.  I'm a big fan of their interestingness feature, and more so FlickrLeech which allows you to see all the interesting photos in one page without having to page endlessly.  There has been a lot of noise made lately about the various changes that are going on as Yahoo tries to integrate Flickr into their other web properties and vice versa.  While there are advantages to having someone as big as Yahoo behind you, it also can be a drawback.  I wonder if Flickr still has the passion and innovation it had when it first started. As I've explored some of the other sites I've felt like they were more innovative and forward thinking in their approach.  At $25/year for a Pro account their pricing seems very reasonable.  For more details on what that $25/year gets you checkout the Flickr upgrade page.

SmugMug
Ironically, what drew me to SmugMug wasn't their kick ass product, but their CEO/Chief Geek Don MacAskill who has blogged some interesting details about how they're using Amazon S3 to save lots of money.  In addition to having a very interesting CEO who blogs about cool technology, SmugMug also happens to have the nicest interface I've seen thus far for browsing photos.  They recently released an update that is flowing with magical Ajax love, which results in a very nice photo browsing experience.

In addition to having a killer product, SmugMug also is right up my alley as far as companies.  From what I've read, we share many of the same philosophies on how to run a business. Additionally, I like their company story.

SmugMug is slightly more expensive than Flickr at $39.99/year.  To get the scoop on what they include checkout the details on their website.

Zooomr
I was introduced to Zooomr through Scoble's Photowalking series with Thomas Hawk.  Zooomr has some unique features that I haven't seen in other photo sharing sites.  One of the more interesting features is portals, which let you link photos together and provide interesting ways to navigate between the linked photos.  Zooomr is/was (?) also giving away free Pro accounts to bloggers, which is actually why I have that photo at the top of this post.  Zooomr has some nice Ajaxy photo viewing features, that while not as nice as SmugMug's are towards the top of my list.  I'm hoping that some of the things I've wanted from their interface will be coming in Mark III, which is supposed to drop in early March.

I've never been able to find out what a Pro account costs on Zooomr.  Perhaps they just give all their accounts away to bloggers and don't change a thing? :)

Anyway that's about it for my very unofficial run down of the sites I'm considering.  Let me know if you have any recommendations.