need a tiny bit of help!

[brunch]

hello! i was wondering if someone could help me clear a few things...
I am slightly confused about the differences between photo blogging and image hosting sites. I am looking for somewhere safe to upload some of my photos so that friends and family could view them but at the same time get some feedback from a community on how i could improve my photos. I was told that flickr would be good for this, however i heard that people often have there images stolen (is this a big problem? how can i stop this?).
I would be very grateful if someone could help me out!

[Gonzo13]

I use flickr and I set most of my images to friends and family only. As far as I know though your friends and family would have to make flickr accounts and say they were your friends/family. This would make ist so that you woldn't get feed back from the community. I also use deviantart I don't believe that I have had a problem with people stealing my work but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. I also use watermarks on almost all of my images that show up online and I make them a smaller size too. usually 800 or 900 pixels on the longest side. I hope that helps.

[Digidave]

On Flickr you can set your pictures for only friends & family to see. They will need a password if I'm not mistaken. You can still add them to a post here at DPS & get feedback. We wouldn't be able to click on the picture to link back to Flickr to see a larger view though.

[Rolling Stone]

There is a guest pass link you can send them. They can use it forever. So choose carefully. I believe public images are the ones that get stolen from time to time.

[eric_nelson]

Originally Posted by brunch

I was told that flickr would be good for this, however i heard that people often have there images stolen (is this a big problem? how can i stop this?).
I would be very grateful if someone could help me out!

I use flickr and have had great success, if your fear is stolen images, there are some new tools to fight this. I have been using the following TinEye Reverse Image Search and found one copyright violation. Also, flicker tracks your images and views giving you a sense of what is being looked at and how often.

Best of luck...

BTW Google has a great program that is free.