Image Gallery?

[Lightbender]

Why not have an image gallery like in other forums?
The "image sharing" threads are now very long. It takes a long time to go page by page to view images, and i may not be interested in all the comments.

[goamules]

Very good point.

[rich815]

If you view using a smart phone or tablet use Tapatalk to access the forums. That way when you open one of the image sharing threads you open one image and then can swipe left to right and view just the images and no comments.

[Ralph Barker]

Why not have an image gallery like in other forums?
The "image sharing" threads are now very long. It takes a long time to go page by page to view images, and i may not be interested in all the comments.

Imagine all of the image-sharing threads merged into one, with the first thousand, or so, images being of a subject matter you're not interested in viewing. ;)

[Tin Can]

Imagine all of the image-sharing threads merged into one, with the first thousand, or so, images being of a subject matter you're not interested in viewing. ;)

+1000

Change nothing

[Lightbender]

Imagine all of the image-sharing threads merged into one, with the first thousand, or so, images being of a subject matter you're not interested in viewing. ;)

Thats just silly. There can be more than one gallery of course.

[Tin Can]

Lot's of the images are lost. Either from dead links or forum updates.

All the big images are outside links and ephemeral.

[Ralph Barker]

Thats just silly. There can be more than one gallery of course.

It is true that a community gallery could co-exist with the (subject-oriented) image sharing threads. My point, however, was directed toward the issue of time consumed by scrolling through the existing image-sharing threads, compared to a conglomeration that isn't organized by subject matter.

Then, there is the issue of what format the community gallery might take. Some people, for example, find nudes to be offensive. So, if a community gallery was organized by subject matter in some manner, we would end up with essentially what the image-sharing threads already provide. Most of the "gallery" packages I've seen also allow for comments in some manner - either with the image, or within some form of sub-menu selection. Comments also add another layer of administrative activity - i.e., removing comments that the OP finds offensive (e.g. "that image sucks" or "your choice of film was stupid").

vBulletin supports "Albums" for individual members, but doesn't directly support a community gallery as such. Thus, additional software, perhaps a vBulletin plug-in if one is available, would be required to support a community gallery function. You can view individual member Albums by clicking on the member name in a post, view their profile, and then scroll down to their Albums. Albums can also be used as image repositories for attachments in discussion threads, so the use of Albums can help to reduce redundant attachment storage.

It is also important to remember that we operate on donated resources, both server space and network bandwidth. Thus, we try to be reasonably conservative on the amount of server resources (processing power and disk storage) and the amount of associated network bandwidth that we consume.

[Winger]

PhotoPost is a fairly good gallery plugin that plays well with vB. While there are ways to have separate galleries with different subjects, it's not as simple as starting a new thread. When you go to the gallery, you usually end up at a page that shows all the most recent additions, not by category.
It's separate software that needs updating separately from vB as well. It also introduces a different set of bugs where it doesn't play well with either the vB version or the server or something else.
It does allow the viewer to just look at all the images, however, and only click on the ones they want to see bigger. In some ways that's much easier than scrolling through several pages of comments that are sometimes hard to attribute to the right image. It's also possible to set PP to not accept comments on the images.

[Ralph Barker]

Thanks, Bethe.

[mdarnton]

Funny, I think of the images here integrated better than they are in any other forum I visit.

For one thing, they're organized by subject very well, because I'm really not interested in wading through a bunch of things that have no interest to me.

Second, they always pop up in the current posts view, so I know when something new is added to something I follow. Everything that's going on in the whole place is immediately visible and sorted.

Third, I don't have to open a series of pages to get to each one (some forums offer one photo per thread!)

I really can't imagine a better way to do it!

[Tin Can]

Agree, I always use 'Today's Posts' and it is easy to keep up and view it all.

[Argentum]

Yup. regular members see all the images as they are posted in their respective topics. All a gallery becomes is an archive which very few people would ever trawl all the way through.

[Wayne]

I regularly peruse a small fraction of the image threads here. I look at Portraits, alternative, paper negatives and nudes regularly and 2-3 others sporadically, and once in a blue moon I'll look at an image thread I never otherwise check just to see if I'[m missing something. I can't remember the last time I perused the galleries at APUG. Its probably been a couple years at least.

[jp]

If you just want images, spend time at Flickr. Many of the photographers here use it. Friend/follow them and log into flickr and see pages of photos with minimal text.

I like the mix of photos and discussion here. Learn to use the forum software and you will not have to scroll through zillions of pages to keep abreast of the discussions and sharing.

[scheinfluger_77]

Funny, I think of the images here integrated better than they are in any other forum I visit.

For one thing, they're organized by subject very well, because I'm really not interested in wading through a bunch of things that have no interest to me.

Second, they always pop up in the current posts view, so I know when something new is added to something I follow. Everything that's going on in the whole place is immediately visible and sorted.

Third, I don't have to open a series of pages to get to each one (some forums offer one photo per thread!)

I really can't imagine a better way to do it!

I really have to agree. The forums here... ain't broke, don't need fix'n'.
Slang aside it is much more enjoyable to peruse photos here.

[Mick Fagan]

There are good points and not so good points with regard to placing all images into one gallery or a group of galleries.

I access the forum then select, “new posts”, then I scroll through the new posts and click on various threads, some of which are image based. I always click on Show us your Large Format Camera, which was started by someone named Sheldon years ago.

One of my current threads has been “Foma Film” images, quite the eye opener. Became more interesting when I picked up some Foma film last year. Then there is “Landscapes,” some really brilliant stuff, often inspires one to get out and do it.

The monthly “Portrait” thread is a kaleidoscope of portraits, formal looking, official looking, off the planet looking and with about 7 billion possible subjects, endlessly interesting. Every now and then a breath taking image comes up. The questions and answers about how, why and with what, are as entertaining and educational as anything out there.

Some time ago I needed some ideas for bridge pictures, so I sourced “Bridges” or whatever it is, great source of ideas. Then there is “Paper Negatives” started by Gandolfi, now running under his real name, Emil.

With some of these threads the commentary is most helpful, like the comments in the paper negatives. If you read through enough of them, it is virtually a tutorial on making paper negatives by osmosis.

Maybe a change could be good, if so, I do hope the powers that be, tread carefully. This site is very accessible, and, very good as it is.

Mick.

[goamules]

To me, a gallery would be just photos. A thread is discussion ABOUT those photos, with sometimes a page or more of text discussion before the next actual picture post. Also, the duplication when someone quotes a picture is irritating. Some months in some of the threads you will page (scroll) through seeing the same image 5-10 times, as everyone piles on with basic "I love this one!" comments.

A GALLERY on the other hand, would be just thumbnails or tiled images. No duplicates, no scrolling through pages of text to see the PHOTO, just.......photos. Organized some way, of course. It's a place to see the best (limited number per person) LF shots, quickly and easily. Not the current "hunt, scroll, try to discover" method.

Seems like a no brainer to me. But this forum has a lot of paralysis by analysis.....so this could be discussed and argued for 6 months or so.

[goamules]

Here is a quick, no administration troubles solution: Create a members only LF Flicker group. I created this Petzval group years ago and it was a showcase of LF and wetplate...until the Lomo quasi-petzval people took over: https://www.flickr.com/groups/868027@N25/

But here is another example. Again, this could be set up in minutes, and be for LF Forum members only. example: https://www.flickr.com/groups/pictorialist/

Visit, and in seconds you see dozens of LF photos all on one screen, and can click on ones that interest you.

This is a gallery (The Pictorialist flickr group). What we have are threads and comments about the occasional posted photo. Forums are for discussing photos, galleries are for viewing them.

https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7199/27277712872_6d61442362_o.jpg

[Ralph Barker]

Note that flickr is a commercial venture, where system resources and staff are paid from advertising revenues.

[Argentum]

here's a good idea which should satisfy both sides of the argument. Setup a sub fourm for posting images which people can post their images to. You can start a topic asking for images on any particular subject type or technique of your choice. Then what you get is a sub forum of topics with a lot of images related to each topic title. Its then very easy for anyone wanting to look at images, to just scan through the topic titles in that sub forum and view them. It would serve as a self categorising image gallery via the topic titles. You could call the sub forum "Image Sharing".

Hang on a second, there are already a couple of sub forums called "Image Sharing" which makes finding images on any particular subject matter pretty easy. So why would we need a gallery when you can just do a topic title search on those two forums or even a full content search withing those two forums which would give you the bulk of images of what you're looking for? Seems like it would be duplicating whats already there at the cost of introducing more platefulls of software.

So for the Ops benefit, all you need to do is go into advanced search, select the single content type search tab, enter a keyword phrase such as "still ife", and then lower down select the two "Image sharing" forums, hit the search button and you will be given a list of topics related to still life containing still life images. The functionality already exists. And if you subscribe to those two forums i think you will be notified as any new post in them happen so you get to see any new images posted.

OR even easier is to just list todays posts and scan down the right side of screen looking for new posts in the image sharing forums and go look at them. Not all posts in there are images but most of them seem to be. It's just a question of understanding how this particular VB forum is set up to work and then its much easier to find what you're looking for. i.e. images.