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. If you have questions, suggestions, or need help, contact the webmaster.
Privacy: 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 to receive consideration on 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 disputed photo, it will be removed without contest. Photos with individual people will only be posted if they are a "part" of the overall context of the event. 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 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.
A quotation by Louis Pasteur in an 1854 lecture also applies to photography: "In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind." Prepare your mind for a great photograph by pre-establishing where there might be a suitable photograph, get in the right place at the right time, and carefully (or sometimes quickly) compose it. Great photographs (even snapshots) result from the ability to recognize what a great photograph is, or will be, in a current or pending situation.
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.
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.
(update 5-14-2-16) The webmaster needs a general assortment of stock photos of Club related activities to use in various places on our website. This has become more important in that the new Outdoors.org relies on photos for each trip listed on the ActDB. If we do not supply one, they use a stock photo which not particularly flattering. Photos should be sent to the webmaster full size. No need to reduce them. An easy app is available on the front page in the Photo Albums as Easy Photo send Form. And please, horizontal photos preferred if you are using your smartphone camera.
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. The newest photo albums and in other pages where photos are viewed in full, a photo's width will be auto sized to the window (except in the IE and Foxfire browsers). Since full computer screens are in horizontal format, the photos look best that way.
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 5-14-2-16) As mentioned above, it is preferred for members to send in full size photos, un-edited or cropped.
If you are going to email your photos to the webmaster, you should be aware that ISP's have limits on the size of files you may send through email. So if you have really nice camera with a high megapixel sensor, you may need to reduce the size of the photos before you send them. 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. Contact the webmaster that you have photos, and since you will not be able to attach photos to the webmaster form, I will send you a reply with a proper email address. For single photos, it is much easier to use the form Easy Photo send Form located on the front page in the Photo Album section. And please, horizontal photos preferred if you are using your smartphone camera.
This is my preferred option for transmitting large batches of full size photos to our website. 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. You can move gigabytes if needed. Our paid hosting plan allows us 100GB of space and we only use about 2GB for the website. 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, or if you need help using any of the programs. If you do not know how to use an ftp program, I have included help pages on how to use the programs mentioned below. My recommendations (see below) are WhizFTP for Windows users and Cyberduck for Mac users.
The most popular free FTP program is FileZilla which uses two panels to setup the file transfer, one for your computer, the other for the ftp server. It is a complicated and thorough program, probably overkill for just sending photos to our host site. There are versions for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.
For Windows users, a two panel program, less complicated, is DeluxeFTP. My recommended "so simple" single panel program is WhizFTP which uses drag and drop to transfer files.
For Apple Mac users, the commercial program Classic FTP is free for non-commercial use. A version for Windows is also available. It uses a nice simple two panel format. For the simplest recommended program, try Cyberduck which is a single panel with drag and drop for file transfer.
In case you are curious which FTP program (and File Manager) the webmaster uses to support this website, you should examine Total Commander. It is fully functional and free with a nag screen, or you can purchase (recommended) the program to remove the nag screen. Without this program, our Narragansett Website, not only in file management, but in file transfer and manipulation, would be very much more difficult. I would have quit years ago.
Update: Members may now post links to their personal photo albums on a new page titled "Off Site Photo Albums". This will allow members who wish to share their activity photos with others in the chapter. The conditions below still apply to our local photo albums. These links go offsite so other privacy rules will be applicable.
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. 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.
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."
The argument for Chapter photo albums residing locally on our website is to preserve the presentation style, conformity, uniformity, and navigability of the photos. Links provided by members to their off site social photo websites will be on the "Off Site Photo Albums" page. In contrast to off site albums, the webmaster believes 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, 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.
Additionally YouTube videos which can be easily embedded in our site. An example on how they will be handled is seen in this page. So if anyone wants to start experimenting with video clips, let me know.
Email Webmaster
Michael Krabach
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.