Photo Gallery Tips and Best Practices
- Give your top level album a meaningful
name. The best name would include your user name or real name to help
us identify you on the Web or on the air.
Album Name Examples:
» Omnislash's Album
» John Smith's Gallery
» Mike's Photos
You can also add sub-albums in your top-level album... so feel free to separate your photos in different ones.
- Give your photos good short names. The default names when you
download your photos from your camera or store them on your computer
usually aren't so hot. You know... like IMG2020.JPG. Ugh!
Photo Name Examples:
» Lulu the dog
» Billy taking a nap
» Lightning over Redondo Beach
- Add a description to your album and photos and let us know where you're from or where the picture was taken. Be creative and descriptive... they don't call it a description for nothing!
Album Description Example:
» Pictures of my pup playing at Santa Monica Beach, Summer 2007.
Photo Description Examples:
» Lucky, 5 months old, from Port Charles. Parents: Luke and Laura.
» Uh, oh. Rover's attacking a great white shark... and winning!
» Tornado touching down near Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles on Friday, August 15, 2008.
- Tag your photos. Very important! Tags are keywords that help
describe an item and allow it to be found again by browsing or
searching. You can click the tags below to see individual examples, or check out the tag cloud.
Tag Examples:
» Baby photo? Tag it "baby"
» Dog photo taken while travelling in Africa? Tag it "pet, dog, travel, africa"
» Flooding photo from Redondo Beach? Tag it "weather, flooding, redondo beach"
- Explore the options. Yeah, there are a lot of menu choices within
the gallery. Do you have to worry about them all? Nah, but some of them
can be really useful.
- Rate and comment on photos in the gallery and let people know what you think.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Hey... if I sign up, are you going to spam me with all kinds of stuff I didn't ask for?
Nope. That's not what this is for. The only e-mails you should get from us are messages specifically related to this service, like account creation confirmations, password reset e-mails, and so on.
- Is there any legal mumbo jumbo I need to know?
Short answer: If you didn't take the photo or the person who did take it didn't give you permission to post it, you shouldn't post it. If you post it, you're giving us the right to show it on the air or in any other manner we choose.
Long answer: See the Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and User Generated Content Policy that we follow.
- I posted a photo or comment and now it's gone... what gives?
» If we see a photo where the copyright or ownership's in question, we'll yank it.
» If we see a photo or comment that's potentially offensive or just plain nasty, we'll yank it.
» If we see something that we think qualifies as advertisement, we'll yank it.
» When we have any doubts, we'll ask questions later.
- I signed up for an account and created an album in the Member Galleries. I hadn't uploaded anything yet... I just liked seeing my name there. Now, it's gone.
Empty albums will be deleted after a while, but don't worry. All you have to do to recreate it when you're ready to upload something is click on the Your Album link under the page header after you've logged in.
- Can you let me know if you are going to use my image? Can I get a copy of the show if you use it on the air?
Sorry, no.
- What's the best size to use when uploading photos?
We currently have the gallery set to resize images to no larger than 640 pixels high and/or 640 pixels wide. If you try to upload something larger, it's okay... it will be adjusted accordingly. If your images are small, you're still welcome to post them... we most likely won't be able to use those on the air, though.
We'll be adding more gallery tips, best practices and information here as we go along... so feel free to check back!