If you received a SmugMug invitation from myself or someone else you know, don’t worry: it’s not spam.

SmugMug is a photo backup, storage, and sharing site used by professional photographers and family scrapbookers alike.

And if you received an invite from me, it’s because I was organizing my photos and saw a few I thought you might like to have. (Yes, I may have tagged you in some of them on Facebook. But we all know most social media reduces the image quality below anything you’d ever want to print.)

I upload my original digital images to SmugMug, so you can download the images to use or print for yourself.

I use the SmugMug Power account so that I can specify exactly who sees what photos. My galleries aren’t just password-protected: I invite you to view specific galleries based on your email address. That means no matter how many galleries I invite you to view there’s just one password for you to remember. (Others may use unlisted galleries, which means there’s a super secret web address to your gallery.)

And while I pay for my SmugMug account since it stores my photos, you don’t have to. You can sign up for a completely free account to view and download my photos. 

Just click the big green “Accept Invitation” button in the email you received, and you’ll be prompted to enter your email address and choose a password. Save that password for access to the gallery I shared with you, as well as any other photo galleries that are shared with you in the future.

Please note that you will have to click “Accept Invitation” on any subsequent emails you receive, as well. If I or someone else shares another gallery with your email address, it will not be added to your SmugMug account until you click “Accept Invitation”.

Do you or a friend have some pictures from the same event? I can create a unique link so that anyone else can share their original images with me, too. Just ask me for a special link that will let you upload your images to the same gallery, where we can all enjoy them!

Click here to try SmugMug for yourself

(use my referral link and you’ll get 20% off your initial SmugMug subscription)

P.S. Don’t worry! The only time you’ll have to pay for SmugMug is if you like it so much that you want to use it for your own photo backup/sharing solution. And with unlimited storage of full-size, original resolution images and HD movies, why wouldn’t you?!