Gallery

[Garry Blackburn]

Although I've collected one or two nice images, night photography is an ongoing problem to me. I wondered if it would be possible to set up a gallery where members could upload images of their work for us all to view and compare.

Thanks

Garry

[Eden Lights]

I am in the process of having a Web site built for Edenlights.com and I plan on having such as page. It would be great to have it here: Photos attached to a post for everyone to review and commment on.

[sitelights]

I will speak to the Site Administrator about posting images.

[sitelights]

This capability is now a feature of the site; see "Chat Group?" in this forum for details.

[Garry Blackburn]

Test

Sitelights, I've attatched an image to this post just to see what happens.

[Garry Blackburn]

Sitelights

Yes, Its working fine. Just one point. Is there any way these images can be secured, to stop downloading / saving.

Garry

[sitelights]

Your image came through perfectly and loaded instantly at 7.5" X 5.75" on my 17" monitor.

I will put your question about securing images to the site administrator.

He states (01.08.04) that it is not possible to prevent a down load of images. You could add a statement to the posts that have attached images stipulating no reproduction without permission. My web site has that stipulation along with a few others (see the bottom of the sitelights.com contact page) but that didn't stop a CA college student from stripping all the ID clues and cloning my site as a "term paper"; I suggested that I might have to contact his department administrator and the cloned site disappeared from the web in two hours.

I have given away many project photographs and, more recently digital files for reproduction in trade and regional/national upscale magazines (without payment but for one-time use only); I ask for, and sometimes receive, photo/image credit not to me but to www.sitelights.com

Look at it this way: one has to be a member of lowvolt.org to to post; an image cloned for commercial purposes from the site by a designer/installer member and added to their own commercial site would be accessible through their "locator" URL. ("Gotcha!") If a member or guest down loaded one of your images for reference or study you probably wouldn't care. As a radical solution you could put an ID banner across all of the images you post. I don't think the odds of having an image cloned for commercial purposes warrants any protective devices. As for myself, I'm a full-disclosure type (witness all my detailed posts revealing my "secrets") who doesn't care.

[Garry Blackburn]

Obviously, I wouldn't care if a Low Volt member downloaded and used my images for "reference or study", but given the amount of time and effort spent in producing these images, I would object strongly to them being reproduced and used for commercial gain without permission.

My web designer has protected images on my site, where if you attemt to download it brings up an advertising banner for his services. Maybe he's got different software to the lowvolt team.

Once again, thanks for the facility, and I'm looking foward to seeing more images.

Garry

[sitelights]

Garry, your digital image (which looks professional) reminded me somewhat of my own garden in the gritty city of Reading, PA USA. I have since moved to a semi-rural location.

Bear with me while I reminisce. This was the first low voltage outdoor lighting job I ever did. In 1982 an interior designer friend noticed that I had a few home-made lights in my garden (ad-libbed off of the shelves of an auto ignition shop) and she gave me a lighting kit that had been gathering dust in her garage. It was an Intermatic "Malibu" LV1076T 6 spotlight set complete with a 78w transformer/timer and 100' of 16/2; as a "bonus" the kit also came with a mix of R/G/Y/B colored lens covers. If you look closely you can count the six spots. I still have the carton which survived all these years as a container for moribund files; the carton outlived the contents by about 20 years.

This was also my first attempt at combining 120v overhead lights with 12v landscape lights. This is most noticeable illuminating the tree (Sophora japonica) top.

1983: Nikkormat EL 2.8 Nikkor 20mm lens 100 ASA 30 seconds at f:8

[Garry Blackburn]

Sitelights

Yes, there are similarities.
I used a Nikon F50 (4 seconds at F5.6), that was the best of six of the same shot, using different aperture and exposure settings. You've also posted some nice images. I'm looking forward to the spring and summer when I can get out there and get some more decent shots, as it certainly helps to sell the product.

Garry

[sitelights]

Garry, it was partly the chair and partly a gridwork screen of half-lapped 1"X1" cedar just out of the frame on the left. I have been scanning some old 8"X12"s from my portfolio that I never use anymore. Bracketing is the key and I often shot a whole 36 exposure roll in a wide range of apertures and shutter speeds on a single set-up.

My Nikon is in retirement and I now use an Olympus 3.8 megapixel digital and an accessory 55 mm 0.8X wide conversion lens. I've been using the services of a professional since 2001 so all of the more recent images are credited to Andy DeAngelo. Since the "window" for an ideal dusk is only about 15 minutes, each set-up takes a separate evening. This really adds to the cost of producing good images.

The technical data accompanying the images is to help others in this difficult task. I have not yet found the optimum camera settings for night work with my Olympus; the damn menu is 8 layers deep.

[sitelights]

It occurred to me that the topic of a portfolio as a selling tool was commented upon in the Book Review forum at "book reviews redux" as a post "pictorial essays".

Posts on camera techniques for dusk photography would be a valuable resource.

[sitelights]

This is another view of the garden described and illustrated in a previous post on this thread.

Five years have passed. It is now 1988. The Malibu junk is gone, replaced by Hadco floods and spots; an Escort "Toadstool" is to the left of the tree. The two (of six) visible path lights were made of short cedar posts with white acrylic diffusers crafted to my specifications. The overhead 120v floods were "on" at about 75% in this photograph. These 120v 75w halogen floods were controlled by a photocell and were usually operated at about 20% (15w) from dusk to dawn.

The low voltage lights were also on dimmers; a rare thing in my work. The system consisted of two Lutron low voltage dimmers, two Acme 500w Pool & Spa transformers with remote timer/photocell, two 10/2 loops of about 100' each and an ever-changing mix of fixture types and quantities. It had at least one each of everything used in my installations; a kind of ongoing reliability testing. For many years this was my "showroom" and every imaginable lighting technique was demonstrated.

This was a city garden in a rather downscale neighborhood and what was not enclosed by the blank brick garage walls was protected by an eight foot high (the code allowed 6') cedar plank fence. I was burglarized four times in 20 years and reluctantly moved out of the city. This garden has been completely trashed and is now filled with piles of debris and weeds.

Another view from the opposite direction is shown in the next (427b) attachment below.

[sitelights]

This post contains only the attachment.

[steve gass]

I just thought I should jump in and clarify that, while there are tricks to make it slightly more difficult to download images from the web, there is no way to prevent it - such is the nature of the beast.

The saving grace is that most images available on the web are not suitable for printed reproduction, so the chances of anyone actually realizing a profit from your images are quite slim.

steve

[Garry Blackburn]

And there was me thinking my website images were secure...... (I assume you took this from my site during the past few weeks Steve).

I take your point about quality and reproduction. It's just that I would prefer not to spend hours often 50+ miles away from home, taking photos for someone else to download and use them on their own site. They may not claim the image to be their own work, but the implication is there all the same.

Maybe I'm just getting old and bitter.!!

Garry

[steve gass]

Well, age and bitterness aside ;), I think that's a perfectly reasonable sentiment.

Since there is nothing to prevent others from appropriating images posted on the web, my philosophy is to encourage it, with the stipulation that those who use them provide proper attribution and, especially, a link to your site. The more links there are to your website, the higher it will rank in search engines. So, although someone else may benefit from your hard work and/or expense, you will get something in return -- more traffic to your site.

[and I will take this opportunity to encourage all those with websites to provide a link, somewhere, to lowvolt.org so that this forum will continue to grow.]

Garry, I hope you're not too bothered by my little demonstration. I have to say that I am quite irked by website designers who sell "magical" stuff. I downloaded your image, yesterday, in the usual way -- by right clicking on it. The security which was provided to you simply doesn't work on my browser (Mozilla), and even if it did, it would still be trivial to bypass. Sorry . . .

Steve

[Garry Blackburn]

Steve

No worries. I'm glad you pointed it out to me.

At the moment we don't have a links page on our website, but I will have one added, abd make sure "lowvolt" is on there.

Regards

Garry