Q: But why do you keep so many?
A: I throw out the obviously bad or duplicate ones, but beyond
that, you never know what people might want a picture of. And keeping
them all isn't hard, so why not? And besides, having a lot of
pictures helps tell the story of what happened, rather than just
telling about what I thought was interesting.
Q: Why don't you use flickr or something similar?
A: I like my stuff -- it's simple, easy to work with, and
doesn't shrink down the pictures smaller than I'd prefer.
And album is
simple yet rocks. Of course, the downside is that you can't add
comments and do the other things that flickr or similar services let
you do. I did once have a comment setup that linked to facebook, but it
was almost never used and I disabled it.
Q: Why are things so slow?
A: It should be reasonably fast, but if you're downloading full
sized picutures the download speed of those are throttled to prevent
bots from bringing the site to its knees.
Q: Can I get larger versions of the pictures?
A: Sure. Click on the thumbnail for a 1024x768 (or so) version
of the picture, and then click on that to get the original. The
originals are typically 4-25 megapixels, depending on which camera was
used.
If you want to download a few full pictures, no problem, just do it. If you want to download hundreds, let me know -- I can probably make them available more easily without sucking up all the bandwidth of the site.
Q: Can I use/link to/inline link/copy your pictures somewhere else?
A: For non-commercial use, yes. Just give me credit if
appropriate -- you don't even need to ask, though if you're doing
something neat by all means let me know. Don't link directly to the
large versions of the pictures, they use too much bandwidth
(seriously, it's about 15x as much!) But linking to the 1024x768
versions is fine, at least at the current levels of traffic ...
For commercial use (a few have asked) send me an email. But do keep in mind that I don't get model's releases for these pictures, and you may need these for any commercial uses. More on this here. But I often know who the people are (or could ask around) and they could be asked after the fact ...
If you want to print a picture, be sure to get the full sized version -- it'll come out better.
Q: I don't want my picture up on the Internet! (or I just don't
want THIS picture of me on the Internet!)
A: Well, I don't want to put up any pictures of people who
don't want their pictures up, so just ask and I'll generally remove it
or blur it or something.
Feel free to email me, or if you see me taking the picture let me know then.
Q: How are you adding location data to your pictures?
A: Some cameras (like recent GoPros and phone cameras) add GPS
location data automatically. For others, I make sure that the
camera's clock is exactly right, and then I have written programs that
use that time and my GPS tracks to determine exactly where the picture
was taken and it adds that to the picture.
Q: This picture's location is wrong!
A: Tell me. If I make a mistake (like if I forget to adjust a
camera's clock), I can get the locations wrong for an entire group of
pictures and not realize it -- but if you let me know, I can usually
fix it.
Some of my earliest pictures lack location data, but 99+% of my
pictures have it and it correct to within 30 feet or so.
Q: How do you figure out the address for a given location?
A: I use Nominatim, part of OpenStreetMaps. Google Maps provides a similar service, but I like Nominatim better. It's not *always* right, but it almost always is or at least is close.