Submitting Photos for Publication on the NCPS Web Site

We want to encourage our members to make our site a valuable resource not just for ourselves, but for people who may be interested in joining NCPS. Part of that involves sharing our photos. This page will give you the information you need to know in order to submit your photos for member galleries, photo shoots, annual shows, or member news. Please note that on February 1, 2004, we started brand new galleries, and deleted the old galleries.

Do I have to submit photos to have a gallery? No! If you want, you can simply submit a thumbnail to be used for your link to your existing gallery on the Internet. Some members do not want to maintain two galleries, and that's fine. Simply send us the thumb, and the link to your web site.

How many photos can I have in a gallery? In you only want to link to an external gallery, you only need 1 -- for the thumbnail. If you want a gallery on this site, you may submit up to 150 photos.

Preparing your photo
If you use Adobe PhotoShop, the best way to get your photo ready for the web is to follow these steps:

1. Resize your photo to 72 dpi, and no more than 640 pixels wide or 640 pixels high. Remember, not everyone sets their screen resolution to 1280 pixels wide. About 35% of all viewers use 800 x 600 resolution, and another 45% use 1024 x 768 pixels. That means that an image no wider than 550 pixels and no higher than 500 pixels will not require scrolling for everyone to see. You have to decide whether the smaller size is worth it. Please click here if you need more detailed instructions on resizing your photos.
2. Do your final sharpening, if required
3. Use Photoshop's "Save for Web" feature under the File menu. This will bring up a dual panel, showing the original file on the left and the compressed file on the right.
4. Use the slider to make the photo 150k or less. Usually, setting the slider at 70% will give you perfectly good quality at a low size.
5. Before saving rename the file to one with a format shown in the text file description below.
6. Remember, your photo must be a "jpg" file! Don't submit photos in Adobe's "psd" format, "gif" format, etc.

Submitting your photo
You can send your photos to Webmaster by email. Make the images attachments to your email. In the email, include a text file that looks like this:

         jd01.jpg=Waving Palms ©2004 John Doe
         jd02.jpg=My Dog ©2003 John Doe
         jd03.jpg=Holiday Lights ©2002 John Doe
         

Understanding this file: The first part (jd01) represents the exact file name of your image. Note that the name is case-sensitive. The first 2 or 3 characters are to be the photographer's initials. The following 2 digits (00 to 99) are a sequence number. This file name will appear under the thumbnail of the image. Please make sure the file name does not exceed 5 characters! If you give me file names longer than that, I will rename them, but I prefer you work out your own numbering system for your file names. The second part after the "=" sign is the caption that appears below the image. Note that this should contain the characters:  ©, along with the year your photo was taken, followed by your name. The characters, " " will put a space between the caption and the copyright symbol. The characters, "©" will insert the copyright symbol (©) in the image caption. Important: don't use the actual copyright symbol (©) to try to make things easier. Always use the characters "©" to produce the copyright symbol.

Note that the file names above are all in lower case. It doesn't have to be that way, but that's definitely the way I prefer it!

Please do not submit more than 10 images in any single email!

Portfolios
If you want, you can set up your gallery page with individual portfolios. If that's the case, you must also send me the name of each portfolio (less than 30 characters, please), and which image belongs in which portfolio. For example:

         Portfolio: Landscape
         jd01.jpg=Waving Palms ©2004 John Doe
         jd02.jpg=My Dog ©2003 John Doe
         jd03.jpg=Holiday Lights ©2002 John Doe
         Portfolio: Portraits
         jd04.jpg=Self ©2004 John Doe
         jd05.jpg=My Mom ©2003 John Doe
         jd06.jpg=My Dad ©2002 John Doe
         

Do I need to put a copyright notice in my images?
That's entirely up to you. Images without such a notice are still copyrighted. The copyright conventions provide extra penalties for people who willfully remove copyright notices; that's the only difference. If you have more questions about copyright, please visit this great copyright resource page.

What about protecting my images?
The only protection you really have against someone stealing your image is to register them with the Copyright Office in Washington, and to keep your images at no more than 72 dpi for Web publication. There is no reliable way to prevent people from taking an image from the Web, and the people who do this for profit know how to get around all the "tricks" people put on their web pages.