As requested, here are some ’stills’ of the whales and pelicans. Most, if not all of these were taken by my wife, as I was busy with the camcorder.
When I place photos directly into a post like this, I try to make them a little more suitable for web viewing, by lowering the quality and size. As a result, you don’t get the best ‘experience’ so I’m thinking of placing higher quality images into a flickr account, so that those of you who may like to view them at a larger size, may do so. What do you think? Does it matter to you?
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Added Commentary
By Glenn
on 20.09.07
They look great Armen and Melanie!
I would be interested in seeing larger sizes….but I am interested in why you would choose flickr to host them?
By Armen
on 20.09.07
Glenn - Why flickr?
The main reason is because there is a plugin which allows you to place your recent flickr images on your website in a nice way.
Is there a reason why you asked?
By Kyle
on 21.09.07
I’m more interested in where you seen those headless pelicans in photograph 3? Or have your photoshop skills improved again?
By Armen
on 22.09.07
Kyle - Yeah, they’re funny aren’t they? They act a little headless too!
By Glenn
on 27.09.07
Why did I ask?……It’s really simply because I never really liked the Flickr viewing experience, for want of a better way of saying it.
I have been toying with putting some of my photos on an online gallery, and have therefore looked at a few…not in great depth… and I think it is mainly the white background, and the slightly cluttered interface, which puts me off Flickr.
I like the look of Smugmug ( but don’t particularly like the name), also Zenfolio, and Pbase. I just haven’t looked enough into it to see which features each has, and to see which I would prefer.
I like the idea of having password protected folders, restricting who can see them…although I don’t know, in reality, just how secure they would really be.
That’s why I was interested in your reasons for choosing Flickr.
Have you looked at any others?
By Armen
on 27.09.07
Glenn - I suppose flickr is the first choice for many, simply because it’s got the monopoly of users.
pbase.com is good, but it costs money and I might as well set up my own gallery for the price of it.
Smugmug is even more expensive, and if you were thinking of going that way, you could easily have your own website with personal domain name for around that price.
Zenfolio is one I’ve never heard of, but after checking it out it seems to be one of the best. It’s still as expensive as smugmug, but it appears to have more features.
The advantage of flickr is the size of its community though. I mean, if you have an excellent photograph and it’s picked up, it could end up being viewed by tens of thousands, easily. It’s like YouTube. It may not be the best option, but its monopoly of users makes it difficult to ignore.
By Glenn
on 28.09.07
Appreciate your quick summary Armen!
I see your point about flickr…mmm, you say you could easily have your own site & domain name….would it be easy to have similar features, ie: slide-shows, password protection…even facilities for selling images?
By Armen
on 29.09.07
Glenn - I’m sure there are many options and I’m looking at what’s available. Something like Smugmug would be one of the most simplest options, but it has its limitations too.
You could have a WordPress blog like mine, except have it as (what they call) a photoblog. The main content could be a lot wider than mine so you could have larger images (maybe 640px wide), and the design could be dark. Photo’s could be placed in different categories such as landscape, portrait, black and white, etc to organise them.
You could do this, and have them hosted at flickr, linking the flickr image to your blog post so you don’t have to upload them twice, and you would save on bandwidth.
This would allow you to have your own personal site/portfolio at ‘yourname.com’ and would allow people to comment on your photos (only if you want) and they could purchase high resolution versions by paying a certiain amount (set by you) through PayPal quite easily. At the same time you could enjoy the community aspect of flickr, and if you watermarked all your images with ‘yourname.com’ then it would help advertise your website too.
The only thing I’m not sure about (just yet) would be integrating a slideshow. I’m not sure why you want password protection, but if you wanted to password protect an image, just don’t upload it to flickr, but upload it directly to your WordPress blog, and you can password protect it from there.
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