Photo Sharing for a Photography Group

[Columbarius]

I’ve mentioned my U3A photography group before in the forum, I’m looking for some more advice on the best way to run certain aspects of the group.

At our monthly meetings we review and comment on members’ photos submitted during the previous month, often related to a theme. At present the submission procedure is to email the images to a member of the group who adds then to a private Flickr Album. A couple of senior members then review the images, and reorder them ready for discussion during the meeting. Finally a link to the album is emailed to the whole membership.

This is a pretty cumbersome procedure.

Ideally I would like members to be able to upload their images directly to the “set” of images for the month, and for the reviewers to be able to look at the images and select those for comment. The images will be private to members of the group.

I don’t see how we could do this in Flickr because, although we can set up a Private Group I don’t think we can easily have monthly “sets” within it.

If anyone has an idea how to address this need, I’d be grateful for your feedback. It doesn’t have to be Flickr, any other PhotoSharing vehicle would do.

Thanks for reading & your feedback.

[Tigger]

Re: Photo Sharing for a Photography Group

why not a closed FB group - only members will be able to access and upload images - if you have some members that hate FB its only a case of getting them to set up a basic profile and they can then join the group

[bobowen]

Re: Photo Sharing for a Photography Group

Conforming Ian's comments - my Art Club uses a closed Facebook group for displaying Art Work, Photos & General Information. It works really well.
One or two members won't sign up because they 'don't like' FB, but it's really a matter of educating them otherwise!

Bob



Bob

[Columbarius]

Re: Photo Sharing for a Photography Group

Thanks for the replies Guys. I don't think Facebook will do what we need. Yes members will be able to post images in a closed group (note our images are all high-resolution - not sure if Facebook copes with that) but there is no mechanism for creating "sets" which can be reviewed, re-ordered, shown and commented on at our monthly meeting.

The sharing could be achieved in Flickr, and the setting by use of Private groups. But every member would need to need to re-register for each monthly group, which is clearly not a realistic approach. Unless of course you could automatically enroll all members of the Group (say) January, when the administrator sets up the Group Feb and so on.

[Tigger]

Re: Photo Sharing for a Photography Group

Whilst I do use FB a bit I'm no expert, but I'm sure most of this can be done. All the photos I post are high res Jpegs, normally around 10meg, collections could be started and allow all to post images into it. Viewing would be a case of just using a PC, which is what I assume you do now, not unless you pay to get them printed, which can't be a cheap option..

you do come unstuck when it comes to re-ordering them within the collection, but surly the easy way around this is the main admin could start a new collection / discussion and pull into the winners, so not that bad really ..

Of course if you wanted a site where members could upload all this could be done with a bit of coding or buying software to run on your own hosted webspace, but then your talking about spending money, where as the FB option has a couple of compromises.

[Colin]

Re: Photo Sharing for a Photography Group

Facebook won't do what you want and it compresses the images, just try downloading one after the upload and you will see what I mean.

Does your U3A have a website of its own? If they do then I would suggest something like Coppermine Gallery, which is free, and just needs a webserver with php and mysql to run.

[Columbarius]

Re: Photo Sharing for a Photography Group

Thanks Ian and Colin for your thoughts.

or buying software to run on your own hosted webspace,

I was coming to this conclusion. It may be that Coppermine Gallery does what we need. I'll take a look - thanks Colin.

[Tigger]

Re: Photo Sharing for a Photography Group

Thanks Ian and Colin for your thoughts.



I was coming to this conclusion. It may be that Coppermine Gallery does what we need. I'll take a look - thanks Colin.

if you need space setting up message me I use a company for cheap hosting its £20 for 2 yrs inc name

[Columbarius]

Re: Photo Sharing for a Photography Group

Thanks Ian.

[rcarca]

Re: Photo Sharing for a Photography Group

What about trying Dropbox? Free (up to a certain amount - and the more people you invite to it the better) and you can set up unlimited numbers of folders. Not everyone needs to have it on their own computers.

Incidentally, how high a resolution do you actually need for viewing on a computer anyway?

[Columbarius]

Re: Photo Sharing for a Photography Group

Thanks Richard, I've been checking out Dropbox too. I think it will enable us to capture images from members if we send them a link to "this months" folder. I need to test whether or not if a person is granted access to a folder all the sub-folders beneath it are accessible too. If so that would be really useful.

We will still need to download the images into (say) Lightroom for our monthly slideshow & discussion, but that's easy to do.

BTW the reason we have high res images is that we print & frame them for competition & exhibition.

[rcarca]

Re: Photo Sharing for a Photography Group

I need to test whether or not if a person is granted access to a folder all the sub-folders beneath it are accessible too. If so that would be really useful.

BTW the reason we have high res images is that we print & frame them for competition & exhibition.

Yes they can

Makes sense!

Good luck!