10 years ago, you would have to pay a photographer to develop the photos and go to a fucking post office, then your mom would wait a week to receive them.
I had a Fujifilm digital camera which saved photos to an xD card. I'd plug it into my computer's USB port, it registered as a mass-storage device, and I'd pull the photos. If I wanted to send them privately, I could email them. If I wanted to share them with the public, I'd throw them up on a web host and link them from my LiveJournal (I was actually hosting my own site at the time, through a server in my living room, but any of the gazillion free webhosts at the time would've worked).
There were other options, too. My cousin used Ophoto. I think Flickr was around then. Facebook Photos came out about 9 years ago, I think, so I wouldn't have long to wait.