Photos play an important role in many peoples lives, and are often collected in dedicated photo albums and photo books (Fotobuch gestalten) . In the past, people kept hard copy photo albums as a way to store their photos, and this practice is still widely used today.
However, there are also a number of digital photo books and online photo books around today, which are either used as an alternative or a complement to traditional albums. People collect photos for a number of reasons, mostly as a way to preserve memories and share them with families and friends. Internet based photo albums allow people to easily share their favourite images with people around the world, and also offer advantages in terms of the safety and security of photos.
Photographs have been around for a long time, with the first permanent photo made back in 1822. Building on a discovery by Johann Heinrich Schultz in 1724, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce discovered that silver and chalk mixtures darkened under exposure to light. Through a lot of subsequent development over the decades, the process of photography has now became widely used all around the world. While photography equipment was large and expensive at the beginning, it is now very small, affordable, and easy for people to use. The evolution towards digital photography in the last couple of decades has seen some of the biggest shifts in photography, with people no longer needing to develop their photos in the traditional sense.
People all around the world collect photos on a regular basis, as a way to remember special events and people once they have passed. Photo collections also allow people to share their favourite images with their loved ones, and enable people to preserve them for future times. While traditional hard copy photo albums are still widely in use, digital collections are also becoming more popular all the time. The latest incarnation of the digital photo album is the online photo album, which allows people to store and share images in an offsite location. Internet based photo books offer some advantages over traditional albums, with increased security, easy customisation, and the ability to share with people all over the world.