Photograph Submission Guidelines
If you have photos you would like us to post here, there's a few guidelines that we would like you to observe.
What kind of "stuff" do we want? Anything you care to send!! It doesn't have to be actual photos, we have scans of old play programs, newspaper articles, etc etc. If you can fit it on a scanner, we want it!
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT SEND US YOUR ACTUAL PHOTOS OR OTHER STUFF!! SCAN IT! We cannot be responsible for your precious, irreplaceable "stuff".
First and foremost, we absolutely do NOT want anyone to spend $money$ to have photos scanned professionally! Nowadays, most public libraries have computer centers that are open to the public, and probably most of those have scanners and helpers that will work with you to scan your photos and other paraphernalia, all for FREE.
If you plan to scan them yourself, you should be aware that typical scanners are set "out of the box" to produce images that are more suited for printing rather than to be displayed on a web site. What this means is that the DPI (Dots Per Inch, also called Resolution) may be very very high. This is NOT the same as the dimensions of a photo! A typical photo that is about 3" x 5", when scanned at a high resolution, 600 DPI or above, can produce an image file that can be ENORMOUS, well over 1 megabyte or even more. I call this "weight'. A photo that size is totally unsuitable for web use, because anyone who is on a dial up connection will struggle to show the page that contains such an image. I'm sure we have all gotten such images in email--they fill up the entire screen and you can't see it without significant vertical AND horizontal scrolling. It also HEAVILY (and negatively!) impacts the amount of space I pay for on my website. If your ginormous files "pop" my limits, I will not use them until you fix them and send them back.
All images should be scanned or converted to be a .jpg file. Here's a memory trick to tell the difference between .gif and .jpg files: any file named whatever.gif is a graphic, NOT a photo, and you can remember this by noting the file extension, .GiF = "Graphic File". These typically are small, colorful, cartoonish images. Photos, on the other hand, with an extension of .jPG, can be remembered as "PhotoGraph". If you do not see these extensions, please either change your settings to show extensions, or ask someone to help you. Depending on your computer, you may be able to right click on a file and select "Properties" and it should show the full name. Whatever.PNG files are also OK to use, if your software allows you to create those. Whatever.BMP or Whatever.TIF are NOT acceptable, they don't work correctly or at all on a web page, and/or may be too "weighty" anyway.
If you have photo editing software, also note that simply "dragging" the corners of an image that looks very very big does absolutely nothing about the "weight" of the image. Depending on the software that you have, there should be some kind of setting that will let you reduce it significantly in "weight". A good point of reference it to try to keep the "weight" of an image well below 1 megabyte if possible. Do note that it is perfectly fine to send an image that may look quite large on the screen, yet be very small, "weight" wise. I can make those look better on the screen quite easily. Graphic editing for many of us, including me, is more of an art than a science.
Please try to keep your photos to a reasonable dimension, as well as the "weight". For best results, images should be less than about 700 pixels WIDE and less than about 500 pixels TALL. Again, let me know if you need assistance with this. Please note that if it is larger than 800w x 600t, it will almost fit an entire old-style monitor screen.
There is also freeware out there that can resize your images quickly and easily. Click here to google a number of them.
A word about naming your photos. Please understand that there are a lot of folks out there that use very old browsers, or relatively obscure ones, and some of them cannot handle any kind of address, including links to images, if they have spaces in the them. Here's what I mean:
1. You named an image "Photo of John and Jane Doe.jpg" (see note above about file extensions)
2. When you see a link to that image in your browser, if the file name contains spaces, as above, those older browsers may think that the first space is the end of the address, and break the link. Most modern browsers can handle it because they are now smart enough to recognize that a space is an actual character. However, it will change the spaces to something that it understands, in this case, "%20". So the link may now look like this:
"Photo%20of%20John%20and%20Jane%20Doe.jpg"
Please name your image this way before you send it to me:
"Photo_of_John_and_Jane_Doe.jpg"
Big difference in legibility! You can also simply "run" the words together like PhotoOfJohnAndJaneDoe.jpg if you prefer, anything other than a space. If you forget to do this, I will do it for you, but if you sent a lot of photos like that, your ears WILL burn :)
I will create the small "thumbnails" that show up on the initial screens. I use free software that creates them en masse in about half a second :)
Do not hesitate to email me if you have any questions!! I know these instructions will be a lot too techie for some folks, but hopefully you can get the basic info.
If you have old photos or programs or ANY other memorabilia of ANY kind
about dependent or any other activities at Toul-Rosieres AB during the early 60's, please
let us know know!
We will work with you to tell you how to get them scanned and will post them here!
PLEASE! DO NOT GET YOUR PHOTOS ETC COPIED UNTIL YOU CHECK WITH ELAINE FIRST!!
There are a number of FREE alternatives that are available in most communities,
and there are certain guidelines we prefer you to follow in the sizing, etc of the photos.