Hello everyone, just thought I'd take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Tonia & I reside in Tucson, AZ. I'm an x-ray tech by day & in my spare time I like to wonder around the desert w/ my camera. I am not a 'herper' per se, but I do love all things considered creepy-crawly. My question is as I understand you can't upload photos directly from your PC, that you have to use a photo-sharing web site, right? Does anyone have any recomendations? One of my concerns is how secure your images are once they are on that site. Thank you in advance for reading this & maybe providing me w/ some answers!

I use Picasa (Google) web albums, because it's free
I have to admit I don't care that much about the security of my pics, but I'm sure others will have more to say about that.

Hi Tonia, I sure could have used your help earlier this week. I spent 2 days trying to find a Vet in my area willing to x-ray a rattlesnake with a HUGE prey bolus in its stomach, possibly an armadillo judging by the feel of it. I didn't get any takers close enough for me to drive the distance unfortunately

Most people here use flickr. Flickr allows you to keep your rights to any photo you post and if you are concerned about people redistributing full size copies you could always resize them in advance. I usually just copy the image url from things I post on facebook because I'm lazy and facebook resizes the images so they are appropriate to post on the forum

Thanks for the info, I will have to check those sites out! As for the rattlesnake x-ray in my avatar, that was a fresh road-kill Tiger Rattlesnake that I snuck into my clinic. I personally would have no problem doing that as long as the boss isn't around. The problem is I have no way to print the images. (For the avatar, I had to photograph the screen & then delete the image).

Photobucket is another one. I believe you can make those sites private and not share with the public but still use it for uploading to sites like FHF. I've heard that some of the photo sharing sites have small print that says something to the effect that they can use your photos though. Someone else might be able to chime in about that part.

Cool avatar pic!

Good to have you on the forum. Yeah photobucket is what I use as my photo hosting site, and they do have a private setting to lock snoopers out. I use the private setting, I believe photobucket has something in there small print about them being able to use any of your photos, or something like that.


Whoa, that must have been a huge Rattlesnake. What species, adamanteus? I'd like to have seen that.
Oh wait, you work w/ Timbers don't you?

-Dell

Welcome to the field herpers forum!

I diversify in the winter. Yes, it was adamenteus.

Lucky.

Are you at liberty to share any photos of the event?

-Dell

I would be except my Nikon is damaged and the lighting was nowhere good enough for the trusty camera phone

Thanks again everyone for the warm welcome & the suggestions!

Welcome to the site, Tonia! I recommend Flickr as well... Compared to Photobucket (where I used to keep all my photos), Flickr has much higher-quality compression, so when you post resized versions of your photos on the forum you don't have all those weird compression artifacts. Flickr keeps the images looking vibrant and crisp even when they're compressed, though I've heard from many people its user interface isn't as intuitive as Photobucket's... I didn't have much trouble when I switched over, but it did take a few days to get used to.

Hmmmm? Natalie, what is a compression artifact, I guess I don't know what one looks like.

I understand that Flicker is used by more professional type photographers then photobucket, and I have to say I didn't notice a difference in photo quality good or bad from both sites. I did find Flicker a little more difficult to use, or clunky, if you will. I've always read from forum members here and others that Flickers photo quality is always better then the P. Buckets but I could never tell a difference, so I use P. Bucket.

-Dell

Compression artifacts on photos are slight visual disturbances that occur when an image is made smaller (compressed). They generally manifest as splotchy softness around edges and lines in compressed photos, and can really make an otherwise high quality photo look bad. All the photo-hosting sites use various compression methods, and some are better than others... I've tried lots of websites, including ones that don't require an account and ones that do, and have found that Flickr uses the best compression by far. Barely any noticeable compression artifacts. For an example, I uploaded an image to my Photobucket account (which I haven't used in a couple years) to demonstrate:

Photobucket:


Flickr:


There is a huge difference between the two images, look at the texture of the wood - the Flickr version is much crisper and more vibrant (which is how the original file actually looks on my computer) because it doesn't have horrible compression artifacts. The Photobucket version looks like I misfocused or my lens was dirty. For a lot of people this won't make a difference if they're just uploading mediocre snapshots from a party or something (especially if Photobucket is more user-friendly), but to a serious photographer who wants to show his or her images properly, there's a huge difference.

So I ended up going w/ Flickr. Natalie's tree comparison helped pursuade me! Thanks everyone!

Tonia

Welcome aboard! Have you been over to the NAFHA Arizona Chapter forum yet? Here is the link ...

http://www.fieldherpforum.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=4

We'd like to hear from you!

Dave Weber
President
AZ Chapter
NAFHA