Click either for larger images.
Our Photo Album is designed to be a showplace where members can see what others have been doing, or they can show friends some of the trips they have been on. It is also an exhibit where new and prospective members can learn about our trips and activities. We welcome members sharing their photographs and reports about trips in which they participate.
In reality, very few AMC members share photos that they have taken on AMC trips. We wish that more would consider helping us present our Chapter Trips. We not only need more trips and events represented, but better quality. There is the long standing problem of making it easier for members to get photos to the webmaster for inclusion in the Photo Albums. Considering the average age and generation of most AMC members, it is the webmaster's opinion that almost all are "computer challenged". It is hoped that this page will clarify the position of our Chapter and give members various options for sending in photos and reports. Folks, we are not cutting and pasting photos in a high school scrap book, this is the more complicated digital age. And it is moving very very fast. If you have questions, suggestions, or need help, contact the webmaster.
If there are any photos on our web site that any member feels puts them in a 'bad light' or is socially unflattering, please contact the webmaster and I will consider removing the photo or photos. Removing a group photo or photos, where the contesting member would not be subject to the legality of a 'model release', can be discussed with the webmaster. If you are the sole subject of a photo, it will be removed without contest. We try to be fair to all members, but candid photos don't always present members in their ideally perceived image.
Photographers submitting their photos are granting a non-exclusive license to use their photographs on the Narragansett Chapter web site for the enhancement, promotion and publicity our Chapter gains though their inclusion in our "Photo Albums". Some of the better photos may also be used as banner photographs on separate pages. Members photographed during an event will be construed as having given implied consent by attending the events or trip. All photographs on the site are placed under a restricted Creative Commons license. The photographers do not need to obtain model releases to take photographs at our activities. The webmaster has the responsibility, as publisher, for any situation where a model release might be required. Photo albums constructed before this policy will be considered grand-fathered unless the photographer informs the webmaster otherwise.
With the advent of digital photography many
of the problems of taking good photographs have been eliminated.
Rarely do you have to consider focusing, exposure is automatic, you can take
many digital photos without considering the cost of film, you have
face detection, red eye removal, every camera has a zoom lens,
automatic color balance, and many other features. No longer do you
have to wait for the film to be developed and photo printed. You can
view your photo in the camera and take another shot if required. So
why do many photos still look amateurish? Engineers may have solved
many of the technical aspects of photography but not the artistic aspects.
When this author started photography, taking a 120
Ektachrome slide photograph cost 25 cents, or $1.60 in present day
dollars. This expense resulted in one great benefit. Every shot
counted. You composed carefully, focused carefully, checked exposure
with a separate meter, and then took the photo. Many times with a
tripod. You developed a sense for a good photograph. It appears that
the simplicity of digital photography has not required present day
photographers to develop that sense.
An example of a simple
mistake when taking photos is timing and framing. Here are two photos
of the same subject. In one the photographer did not wait until the
riders were ready, and the photographer was thinking of the people in
the shot, not the overall photo, so he aimed for the faces. In the
second the subjects are looking at the photographer and the photo is
framed. Always think of the photo as a framed picture.
Most cheap Point&Shoot digital cameras today have at least a 3X zoom, some have 10X and more. Learn to use the zoom to frame a photo, don't wait until back at your computer to do "creative framing". Using the zoom of you camera will result in better photos because you don''t have to run all over the place to get the shot, and it makes you think about what you are photographing.
To summarize in a single sentence. For a really good photograph you should pre-establish where there might be a good photograph, get in
the right place at the right time, and carefully (or sometimes
quickly) compose it. Here are two good links to help develop that
skill. Study the web sites and see if they help your photography.
The AMC has videos of various subjects. This one is how to take good photographs using three rules-of-thumb for outdoor photography. Click video to start. Click again for Youtube page. If you don't see the video it may be that you need Adobe Flash installed in your browser.
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Outdoor Photography Tips with Jerry Monkman |
Jerry also has a nice Flickr photo review site where members (Yahoo account needed) can submit their best photos. He picks one a month to feature and critique. I think Chapter photographers could learn something here.
If you have any trip reports or stories that you would like to share with the membership, send them in. You do not need to formally format the reports with any photographs that might be included. Just send in the text and photographs as separate items. We will format the report with the photographs. Currently all reports with photos are displayed in this style.
We would like to give the opportunity to members of the AMC and other groups to display their best original photographs and original art work on the front page of the Narragansett Chapter web site. This will give our website a little freshness and give a free gallery for artists to show their talent. All the entries should be related to the outdoors or AMC related activities. All entries should have some artistic design or related quality that makes them a good candidate. This page explains the procedure.
The webmaster needs a general assortment of stock photos of Club related activities to use in various places on our website. One example photos used in the online Gazette to make the newsletter a little more lively. If you have any photos of bike rides, paddles or hikes, or even social events, that you wish to donate to the stock photos that the webmaster has accumulated, please send them to the webmaster. These photos will in almost all cases be reduced to thumbnail size as seen in the online Gazette, so keep that in mind when you pick your subject matter. Also include information about the photo, such as what trip and date it was taken on.
In the case of photographs for the website, a few guidelines are
offered. In order to make the event photos attractive, we would like
photos that tell a simple story. The photos should have context
with the event. A single photograph of a person, not known to the
general audience, has no bearing on the event unless the photo blends into the overall story line. A photo that
singles out a person, may not be appreciated being posted. The
background in a photo tells much about the activity, as much as the
subject matter itself. Several photos of this kind gives the viewer a
better impression of the trip or activity.
When you take
photos, horizontal photos are preferred to vertical photos. If
it is a great artistic photo that frames better vertically, that's
OK, but for all the rest, the horizontal photo works best on web
pages. The reason..when you view the photo album and click from one
photo to the next, a vertical photo requires you to scroll down to
see the completed photo each time a new page comes up. This makes for
a lot of unnecessary mouse work. That is why you will see almost all
of my (webmaster) photos in the 640x480 pixel horizontal
format.
If the photographer only takes one or two photos of an event, a group
shot is also welcome for the photo album. If you can stage the
photo in context with the event, do so. Nice examples would be on a
mountain ridge with mountains in the background. Or ocean side, but
with a little of the shoreline or waves in the background. If hiking
in the woods and some feature of the hike is available, eg. an old
growth tree, include that in the group photo. And of course photos
are best when shooting with the Sun at your back.
If you have
a group photo where faces might be too small to be seen in a reduced
photo, send the full size photo, I will make a dual page like
done on this
group photo.
If you take a large selection of photos of an event, cull out the worst of the selection. If you have several of one scene, just send the best photo, not all of them. Do not send blurry photos or ones that are obviously badly over or under exposed. To ensure compatibility, file extensions should be either jpg (preferred) or png.
(Update: The size issue is not as important as it used to be since most members now have broadband access to the Internet.) The files from your digital camera may be huge, larger than you realize. Almost all are way too large to use on our web site. They are also way too large to display on a normal size monitor screen. A typical 10 megapixel digital camera will produce, at the highest jpeg resolution, a 5 megabyte photo. A modern laptop computer has a screen size of only about 1 megabyte. My large workstation display (1600x1200 pixels)is filled with a little less than 2 megabytes. That said, photos should be at least 640x480 pixels, which will be a file size about 50 -150 kB. Larger is OK, and that way I can crop the photos if necessary. I will not accept images that are less than 640x480 pixel in size. Whatever size they are, they will be reduced to 640x480 pixels for use on the chapter website.
If you are going to email your photos to the webmaster, you may want to reduce
the the size of the photos before sending them. Contact the webmaster that you have photos, and since you will not be able to attach photos
to the form, I will send you a reply with a proper email address.
Be aware that some mail servers restrict you on the size of uploads and you only find out after the upload failed that the photos were not sent. Then you start all over with fewer photos, emailing the photos in small batches. A real unnecessary hassle. My mail server (ie. Cox) does not allow attached files greater than 20 megabytes, and I have had failures with as little as 15 megabytes. So if you have large photos to email and do not know how to reduce the digital images, or do not have the software, there are many free programs on the Internet that
are easy to use. Here
are some recommendations.
It has come to my attention that some smartphones (Blackberry is one) that include cameras and the ability to email them directly, produce terrible quality photos on the receiving end. So if you take photos with your smartphone, be aware that they may not make the grade for the web site.
This method is similar to uploading photos in Facebook. You tag photos into a batch and upload them directly to the webmaster's computer. (The webmasters computer must be on, which is most of the time.) This method is the answer to those who want a simple method of uploading photos but do not want to install an FTP program, or have to fuss with multiple emailing large photos through email. The instructions are here, but simple enough that you might want to try it "ad lib". You will need the password from the webmaster. Login here. If you use this method, consider saving the link as a bookmark or favorite.
Another way to send in large photos or collections of photos is to mail the photos. Some programs that come prepackaged with digital cameras have the option to copy (referred to as burning) photos to a CD. Sometimes this only requires a few clicks after you have downloaded the photos from your camera. Sometimes it is a little more involved if you must use a separate program to burn the files to the CD. Most people learn how to do it without too much difficulty.
You then mail the CD to the webmaster at the below address. Do not worry about fancy packaging.. I use 9"x12" manila mailing envelopes folded twice over the CD with two regular stamps. I can also scan negatives, slides and printed photos (up to 8"x10") for you, if that is what you have. Please include a self addressed return envelope if you want me to send them back, or we can arrange for the negatives, slides, or print photos to be returned in person at some activity.
Another option for transmitting large photos is to ftp the photos to our “photobin” directory. This is my preferred way of handling photos going on the web site, and is the best way if you have a lot of photos, or are going to regularly submit photos. “Photobin” is a temporary directory/folder that is used to hold photos that are pending installation on the web site. The photobin can also be used to upload large text files or stories for inclusion on the web site. You can even ftp whole folders to the the photobin. Once set up (simple installation and configuration), you can transfer photos with as little as 3 or 4 clicks of a mouse. It is actually easier than emailing. Contact the webmaster for the username and password if you want to use this method of contributing photos to our site. If you do not know how to use an ftp program, I have included directions on how to use several free ftp programs, depending on how computer literate you are. The most popular free ftp program is FileZilla. There are versions for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. Another less complicated program is DeluxeFTP, and a "so simple it's stupid" program is WhizFTP. Both are for Windows computers only. Another method using the IE6 or 8 browser is similar to WhizFTP. If you have a Apple Mac you should try Classic FTP for Mac for OS X version 10.5 or newer. Take your pick, or try all. If you have problems, contact the webmaster.
Some members have photos that they have uploaded to one or more of their social photo sharing websites.
This includes flickr(Yahoo), photobucket, kodakgallery, snapfish, picasa(Google),
webshots, smugmug, various blogs, and many... many more. I will not choose and pick individual photos off a social photo web site. If the photographer takes the effort to upload photos to their photo sharing website, and also wants to share their photos with our Chapter, they should donate a little effort to assist the webmaster, and upload them to the Chapter web site or email them to me. Some photo sites allow bulk or batch (ie zip) downloads. For those I will make an exception, because I don't have to pick and download photos one by one. So far the only site that has been used with zip downloads is Skydrive by Microsoft.
To demonstrate the problem, several observations are quoted below from an article in Windows Secrets newsletter.
Snapfish - "One of Snapfish’s limitations is its lack of a download tool. Suppose you’ve posted images to Snapfish and now you’d like to download a few and send them to your home printer. Snapfish warns that the downloaded images won’t be the high-quality images that are used for creating the mugs, cards, and calendars you may order online"..."You can download a low-resolution photo from Snapfish just as you would any image on a website: view the photo in Snapfish, right-click it, and select the Save picture as option. This isn’t very helpful if you want to download an entire album of photos you’ve stored on Snapfish or print a few high-quality images on your own printer."
Flickr - "You can download pictures from Flickr, but it’s a pretty cumbersome photo-by-photo task. You display the photo you want to download, click the Action arrow in the top left of the image, click View All Sizes, click the size you want to see, and click the Download link. That’s a lot of work, especially if you want to download whole sets of images."
Shutterfly - "Once you upload your images to Shutterfly, getting them out of the service (if you’re a free account user) isn’t an easy matter. There’s no simple command that lets you download an entire album. As with Snapfish, you can only right-click on an image and choose Save picture as."
Photobucket - "Photobucket is the clear winner in the photo-download department. It’s as easy to pull images back down to your PC as it was to upload them. And you can use the Download Album link to quickly grab groups of images"....."Of the four sites, Photobucket is the only one that included enough advertising to truly annoy me."
All photos albums reside on our website to preserve the presentation style, conformity, uniformity, and navigability of the photos. There will be no linking to someone's social photo sharing website for trip photos. I believe that our Photo Album pages are among the fastest loading, and the easiest to navigate when compared to any of the social photo sharing websites. They are unadorned, without advertising, and without kitschy framing or trendy themes. This policy also offers the webmaster the flexibility to add maps, special links and other features which are difficult to control in external social photo sites.
Exceptions to this are YouTube videos which can be easily embeded in our site. I have looked at several options for putting video on our site, and technically this seems to be the easiest way to handle short videos. An example on how they will be handled is seen above on this page. So if anyone wants to start experimenting with video clips, let me know.
Send to:
Michael Krabach
747 Nate Whipple Hwy
Cumberland,
RI, 02864-3354.
All photos uploaded and placed on this web site are to be considered licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.