Photos on the forum

[Andrew G]

Having seen the number of hits the Tour pictures thread has got it's clearly been grabbed in google searches etc. I think the thread has also been linked to from other places on the web.

I may be being over sensitive here but some of you got some excellent one-off photos, and technically they're the copyright of the photographer. If the photographer posts them then they are clearly happy for them to be seen on this forum, and if they get grabbed in a web search so be it, but I don't think we should provide links to them from other places on the web where they can be "stolen" without checking with the photographer first.

Sorry if this seems over the top but I don't think it's unreasonable, it only means sending a pm.

Cheers,

Andrew.

[Sylv]

Agree that if you post them you implicitly accept that others could be using them.

One useful thing could be like many do, to stick your name or addiscombe.org on one corner of the picture, but I don't have the tools to do this.

Another other thing is that most pics posted on the web are heavily compressed and of not good enough quality to be printed in any than tiny size. But yes they can be used on another website. This happened to me when I noticed one of the pics I took at the singlespeed words in Sweden had been posted with an online article on dirtragmag.com! I think the guy did contact me soon after that and I said I was happy with it and they did add the credit.

One thing this has made me conscious of is that whatever you post there are many many eyes everywhere that will be reading you. So better think twice before you write anything.

Am I wrong in thinking there was a time when this forum was technically not coming up through search engines? I seem to recall marco saying that but I don't know how it would have been done (maybe you had to be a member to even look at it?). There certainly seemed to be a lot less spam at the time. I don't think the T-shirts helped on that side ...

[Andrew G]

The photos are still owned by the taker and even though they can be linked to or nabbed I just think it's good manners to ask first. (There are tools/plugins for increasing the size with negligable loss of quality too).

Linking the forum in to other sites does open us up to more spam, and also I thought this was an Addiscombe members forum. The wesite is our "public" site, I always thought the Digest and Forum were intended for members. Have I got this wrong?

Sorry if I've upset people or opened a can of worms here, that wasn't intended.

Re watermarking I don't know if this is any good (I have photoshop) but it's free [url]http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Multimedia_and_Graphics/Misc__Graphics_Tools/uMark_Lite.html[/url]. I'm sure none of us want to watermark photos on the forum, I was only raising the issue of linking to the forum from other non-ACC websites.

[Mike I]

A low-tech 'solution' might be to include a note when posting photos that others are welcome to use them, but that the source - whether individual or ACC - should be acknowledged. Some will ignore it, but many won't, and the club's profile may get raised a bit further still.

Of course, if you have any pictures which you think might be worth something, sell them commercially rather than post them.

Here's some good pics someone else took. I particluarly like Goudhurst (is there a Grauniad typo in there?) and Bethersden (just down the road from where I was)...

[url]http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/gallery/2007/jul/09/cycling.tourdefrance?picture=330161322[/url]

[Andrew G]

Well done on the typo Sean .

By public I just meant that that was the one with the easy to remember url that people are first pointed towards. I thought we only pointed people actively enquiring about the club, or members, to the Digest and Forum. Not that the others were behind any kind of shield.

It didn't mean it as a case of thinking we might be robbing someone of a fee for their pictures, just suggesting permission is requested before linking to them from somewhere else.

I've not used any of the watermarking software so they may be removable. I only know that with photoshop I'd create it as a different layer and then flatten the image so that they become one new image. This may be the same in some of the software you get with your digital camera.

I'll shut up now as this appears to be something that doesn't bother anybody else.