photography

Although email has bullied snail mail, nothing compares to receiving a letter at home that's not a bill or junk mail. Ideal for wedding stationery, gifts, holidays, or business logos, personalized stamps spice up run-of-the-mill government-issued stamps. Thanks to resources like Photo Stamps and PictureItPostage, you can create custom postage using favorite photographs. It's as simple as snap, upload, and order!

Let's say you're planning a wedding, upload your engagement photos, and use the stamps to send out the save the dates. Prices vary, but on average, it costs around $20 per sheet, with 20 stamps on each sheet. And since it's all in the details, you can also choose the stamp's color and layout. We made a few with our favorite Instagram photos and are convinced this is the extra something special-occasion mail needs.

You spent a whole bunch of time organizing your photo library this month, so don't let all that hard work go to waste if your computer or main external hard drive happens to bite the dust. If you're serious about your photography, now's the time to get a secondary hard drive and back up all those photos again, or send them all to the cloud for safe keeping.

A storage service like Box allows you to upload up to 5GB of your most important photos (files up to 1GB each) and access from anywhere with a free account, while $15 a month will get you 1,000GB of storage for your collection. Just $25 a year will get you an unlimited amount of photo uploads on Flickr, which is a great deal, especially if you want to share your pics with the world.

Want to keep your tech life in tip-top shape? Check out the rest of our 31 Days of Spring Cleaning series and get to work!

For the past 125 years, the National Geographic Society has been a champion of scientific research and education. The nonprofit has amassed an incredible collection of photography in that time and, in honor of its milestone anniversary, it launched Found, a Tumblr dedicated to renewing (or publishing for the first time ever!) remarkable snaps from its expansive archives.

National Geographic's FOUND logo is as meaningful as it is beautiful. Charles E. Riddiford, a National Geographic cartographer in the '30s and '40s, designed the typeface of the logo, Ludwig Light.

FOUND's photos tell remarkable stories of a world before the Internet, smartphones, and 24/7 connectivity. In the image above from February 1955, children play in an oceanside pool (now, that sounds like a fine idea).

The unbelievable photo below from 1938 shows three irresistible kittens inspecting a grouper at Marineland.

William Bonner, also known as "Guardian of the Collection" among Nat Geo folk, curates the photography archive in Washington DC. William wants to continue unearthing stories from the basement of the National Geographic headquarters, and is accepting any insights about the images at natgeofound@gmail.com.

Tell us what you find, and discover more amazing photography, GIFs, and geekery at POPSUGAR Tech on Tumblr.

For much of the country, Spring isn't quite here yet, but that extreme weather has an upside: more time to practice the art of photography in the snow. Cameras aren't great at capturing the bright whites of a day spent on the slopes or making snowmen in the backyard, but as I learned during a Sony-sponsored photography event in Park City, UT (a city that knows its snow as the site of the 2002 Winter Olympics), taking a colorful picture in freshly fallen snow doesn't require years of professional experience.

Make the most of the season's final flurries with simple tips on taking a great snow shot. And, in freezing weather, don't forget to treat cameras and gadgets with extra care.

• Exposure Compensation — The monotone white of snow actually underexposes, typically as gray or blue. This can be fixed by increasing the exposure, which on most cameras is denoted by a dial with a + / - symbol. From a neutral 0, boost the number to between +1 to +2 stops. You'll now see a change from a grayish scene to a crisper white wonderland.
• White balance —While the exposure trick will go far in bringing up the whites in your picture, you may also want to adjust the white balance. Switching to your camera's cloudy or snowy shooting scene can help to decrease the blues.
• Flash — We tend to think of flash as a nighttime-only tool. But with the sun's and clouds' reflections off the snow, a human subject can appear shrouded in shadow. Turn the flash on to make subjects as bright as their surroundings.

Want to share your snow photography? Upload it to Instagram and share with us using the #CoolCapture hashtag.

Spring shouldn't be just an excuse to clean out your closets. It's also a great time to get your digital photos in order. I'm guilty of just tossing my pics into one jumbled and disorganized file (which makes it a pain to find a specific pic), but we can all start fresh and clean from here on out, thanks to some helpful tips from the pros. Bradly Treadaway, digital media coordinator and faculty member at the International Center of Photography in New York, shares how easy it is to keep your photos in order with just a little bit of proactive work.

Make it your mission this Spring to keep your photo library in order with the helpful tips below.

• Store on a dedicated external hard drive — Instead of storing your photos on your computer's hard drive (which takes up lots of space), buy a dedicated external hard drive to use as your digital photo library. Store it in a safe place, and you'll never be without your precious pics.
• Label your pics as you save them — Instead of dumping all your pics into one file and saving them, take the time to go through your images, keeping only the best of the bunch, and label with names, dates, and events.
• Stay organized with labeled folders — Create folders for each event you shoot, specifying the event name and date for each label. If you're taking random pics, create seasonal folders (like Summer 2011) so you can stay on top of your one-off photos.
• Routinely empty your SD card — By routinely moving your photos off of your camera's SD card, you'll ensure that you will never run out of space when trying to capture a family event, party, or video. Try moving photos and video files off your SD card at least once a month or, better yet, after every major event.

With just the click of a camera, you can make your life easier and get more organized. How, you might ask? There are certain things that are too hard to remember or are just taking up too much space — by taking a picture, we can catalog them into a digital folder of sorts. It's an easy solution that will help you keep track of numbers, lists, and more while reducing clutter. Here are some things you can start snapping now!

• Where you parked
• Receipts
• Business cards
• Item numbers for shoes or clothes
• To-do lists
• Meeting notes
• Phone numbers
• Addresses
• Movie times
• Directions
• Instructions you might need again
• Passwords to locks
• Tips from magazines
• Wish-list items, while out shopping
• Decorating inspiration

Do you have any items that you regularly photograph?