• Nov. 26, 2023, 4:07 p.m.

    The Landing Site (the-photo.org/) has a new set of pages - Portfolios - the-photo.org/portfolios.html

    This is where you can display your best (or favourite) works. Just send me (alan.dprevived@outlook.com) up to 12 photos with some explanatory words and I will create a page for you. If you also wish to add something about yourself, then that can be added.

    If you want to do multiple sets, then we can accommodate that too.

    At the moment, it's one page with my pictures on - for future stuff, each person will get their own page.

    Let me know if you like it and want to join in.

    Alan

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  • Foundation 1222 posts
    Nov. 26, 2023, 6:39 p.m.

    Great idea!

    Once the page has been created, will the subject be able to edit it?

    David

  • Nov. 26, 2023, 7:09 p.m.

    No, sorry. At the moment, the web site is a read/only site for users.

    Alan

  • Members 1662 posts
    Nov. 26, 2023, 9:59 p.m.

    I like the idea and think it has some real potential!

    At the moment I'm not quite sure how it would be implemented, if several people had a portfolio like that. I feel like in that case we would need to see more than one at a time... so it's likely impractical to show all images at once, but rather an overview with a couple of them + a title and link to the portfolio.

    Here's my suggestion:

    ThePhoto_LandingPage3.jpg

    I don't think it's a viable long-term solution to send images your way via email @AlanSh so I would rather suggest, that (at least for now) these portfolios could be created as threads in their own forum section. This way users can - at least within the options the forum software supports - manage the layout, presentation, description etc. themselves and you only have to take three shots + title, put them into a box like that as an overview and link to the respective thread.

    If anyone wants to make changes after the fact or finds some mistake, they can easily fix it themselves and won't have to reach out to you. It's also automatically possible to a.) like the portfolio and b.) comment on it, as it's just the initial post in a thread.

    ThePhoto_LandingPage3.jpg

    JPG, 592.7 KB, uploaded by simplejoy on Nov. 26, 2023.

  • Nov. 26, 2023, 10:52 p.m.

    You certainly can create a portfolio in a thread - we could have a whole forum just for that. I was just looking at a different way of displaying them.

    I agree- long term plan is not to email photos to me. But at the moment, I can't think of another way. If you think about it, normally photographers create their own web site for photos - so there is no need to send them to someone else. But of course, if they hire someone to do that, they still need to get the pictures to them somehow.

    I could (if I worked on it), give interested people an FTP upload area so they could upload their own pictures and then the galleries would just look there to pick them up rather than a folder in my site. But they'd need to remember the username/password etc. and it's probably not going to work for many.

    The end result for me was to make the landing site more interesting. If people don't want to use it, that's fine. But let's see what happens.

    And yes, your picture does show the sort of thing I was planning. I only put my pictures on the main page because that's all I have at the moment. Once we get more, I will create cards like you are showing and then put each set of pictures in its own page.

    Alan

  • Foundation 1222 posts
    Nov. 29, 2023, 6:52 p.m.

    As it says somewhere, this is "The community-run digital photography forum", so having pages where members can post the most recent photos of which they are proud is an excellent idea. I dont know how the programming would work, but it seems to me that a member should ask for a portfolio page, and one would be assigned. There might be space for a specific number of photos. The member would have access to posting and changing the photos and descriptions at will (just as I can edit my own posts in normal threads and change the photos there). One should be able to link from normal threads as we can do within the threads at present. There ought to be no need for an extra password, as the user would already be logged into the site.

    A few portfolios could be linked to (automated in turn) from the front page as a means of showcasing our members. We would also need a page listing those members with portfolios, so other members can find them.

    I would be comfortable in paying a small annual fee for this service, to support the site costs.

    I consider it important that this should work with minimal intervention by staff.

    David

  • Nov. 29, 2023, 9:06 p.m.

    David,

    This is something I could do, but the upload area would need to be segregated (so users could only access their own area) and I can't do that with the existing upload area (we don't own the server). But we are looking at a lot of enhancements and that could be one of them.

    For now, if people want to highlight their works, I'm happy to receive pictures and I will put them in as good a light as I can. At the moment, no one has taken up the offer so it's not a great burden.

    Alan

  • Members 625 posts
    Nov. 29, 2023, 10:58 p.m.

    Hi Alan
    I'll happily send you 12 shots in a day or two :-)
    Trevor

  • Dec. 1, 2023, 4:15 p.m.
  • Members 474 posts
    Dec. 3, 2023, 11:10 a.m.

    Can you grab the photos also from the uploaded photos we posted?
    Sort of random gallery options from the user upload?

  • Dec. 3, 2023, 11:22 a.m.

    I could, but I'd rather you told me which ones you wanted me to put there. And if some are stored elsewhere, it's much harder.

    Alan

  • Dec. 4, 2023, 11:05 a.m.
  • Members 618 posts
    Dec. 4, 2023, 12:15 p.m.

    Alan, I'm planning on joining the portfolio crew, but I'm still having trouble getting my full photo library back and functional (after switching Linux).

  • Members 886 posts
    Dec. 4, 2023, 8:06 p.m.

    I like the idea of the portfolios but I have a concern. Many of my photos are sold as fine art prints. Even posting them at lower resolution and smaller sizes would concern me. What security does Portfolios have?

  • Dec. 4, 2023, 8:20 p.m.

    To be honest, none at all - any pictures uploaded to public areas can be downloaded. It's an issue with every web site. If you can see it, you can get at it.

    Alan

  • Members 886 posts
    Dec. 4, 2023, 8:44 p.m.

    OK, I have tried things like writing Proof across them but auto fill makes this too easy to sidestep as well.
    I think this problem negates the potential of a high-quality gallery feature.

  • Members 625 posts
    Dec. 4, 2023, 9:25 p.m.

    Hi Mike
    I see the portfolio page here as a showcase for my work. I have many shots that I consider to be fine art prints and adding (only) 12 of them to make a nice display here seems worth the "investment" posed by the risk of them being downloaded and used ilicitly. ´

    If you like the portfolio feature and want to use it, you can chose which images you want to add to it & you can chose the resolution of the photos you send in and perhaps add a watermark.

    As Alan said any image on the internet can be downloaded and used, but this feature is a very nice advert for samples of your work

  • Dec. 4, 2023, 9:35 p.m.

    Like Alan said, currently there is none and there can't be one.

    Unsplash has no limitations, most likely authors do not sell those images - or use that site as (free?) advertising medium.
    Flicker has no limitations (or I have not seen any; I haven't almost never browsed it).
    Stock image sites use extensive semi-random watermarking - this is not suitable for photo galleries.
    Some posters on some sites add nice frames and signatures to images - this doesn't avoid downloading, but some work is needed to "clean up" such image.
    Hidden watermarks (steganography) are possible, but those can only be extracted and checked from unprocessed (or not heavily processed) digital images - no one will try to find them on t-shirts or on other printed media.
    We could in future make portfolios accessible only by logged-in members (optional of course) - but this does not help against someone creating account, downloading images and using them in other places - you even won't know that.
    We could exclude images from web scanning by search engines - but this is only hint and won't help against direct download.