Mr. Florin,

You have undoubtedly posted photographs to the railpictures site, and I've been working to post some photo work my father created back in the 1970's. I'm sure you are familiar with Adobe Photoshop and its little brother Adobe Photoshop elements. I've been resizing some scans using "Elements" software and am sizing them to what I "believe" is around 900k, which I'm assuming is 0.9MB. (I'm probably incorrect, eh?) Barring any creative issues, the photos are being rejected under the banner of "does not meet minimum pixel requirements". Any ideas or suggestions about how to remedy the problem?

My second question: I'm sure a lot of us Twin Cities fans who subscribe to this board have many photographs of railroading in the Twin Cities area that for one reason or another do not qualify for posting at our hobby's most prestigious railroad picture portals. To use myself as an example, I have several "location" photographs taken in the early 1970's that may be of interest to folks out there to provide a "then and now" perspective. Since there is nothing but track, buildings and standing cars (or locomotives) in the photographs, there's really nothing in them that a big picture site would find interesting. But to someone who is a student of local railroad history (or who is a discerning modeler), they might be of value. Is there a way to share photographs on this forum without using an inordinate amout of bandwidth? I'm always looking for old (and new) photographs of our railroading area that depict physical plant and related environs.
There's a large picture at the Newport Club of the west end of Dayton's Bluff Yard/St. Paul Yard taken sometime in the early 70's that, while not featuring a single train, per se, is an amazing overview shot of railroading. I'm sure you (all) know which picture I'm referring to. If there is any way we could share our non-traditional pictures, that would be cool. If not, that's cool too. We can always e-mail 'em.

Ben

This is what I use and ALOT of truck forums use, as it is free and you can have up to I think 300 pictures before you have to pay, then its like 1,000 pics.

http://www.webshots.com/homepage.html

so far the only problem I have had is that webshots will not load any of my scanned pictures, but anything downloaded from my camera will I think it is something with my computer saving the scans as something differnt.

If you look down in my sig, you will notice that there is a link to my pictures, its in a different color, that is my webshots page.

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A BNSF fan by default.

Your scanner might be saving them as bitmaps, if you have a photo program, open them up and resave them as jpegs.
Thanks for the tip on the Web site, I have some photo's that I really like but for one reason or another they are not up the RP standards.

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MyPhoto's
More of myPhoto's

Yeah, no offense to RP.net- they have their criteria for photographs, and that's both important and good. But there is so much more in the way of railroad photography out there though that we don't get to see. It would be nice to have a web outlet on which to exhibit the creative, more daring side of rail photography. And then for us nerds out there, a site full of location shots and various other modeling-oriented oddities known only to the railroad genre.

I've been saving them as JPEG's after scanning. Where I'm running into trouble is the sizing information that windows and Adobe photoshop elements gives me. I save the files in a folder in the "my pictures" folder, and when I keep the cursor on the thumbnail, it gives me the "size". (say 950K) When I open the same picture in Adobe, it gives me a completely different number, which is is measured in pixels. After scanning, the pictures are far too big to post to RP, so I use Adobe to resize them. Trouble is, I never know how small to make them. Resizing and going back to the folder in "my pictures" each time to see how big the file is is both cumbersome and annoying. So I'm thinking, there must be an easier way to do this. I posted a couple of things yesterday to the site, and they were rejected as being "too small", even though the file sizes were in the 650-675K range (I'm not actually sure what that translates to in terms of overall size in MB). Perusal of the message boards at RP provided little help in remedying the problem. AGain, there must be an easier way to make sure pictures are the proper number of megabytes for submission. Any further suggestions are much appreciated.

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The railfan side

My pictures

BenjiBee and forum:
Thank you for bringing this up. Knowing that this is a question pondered by most members here, I have played out many possiblities in my mind since the creation of this site. The long winded answer...

Previously I have advised members to locate (free) web space (i.e. Yahoo! Briefcase) and link images or URLs to the forums. While this may be out of the knowledge/comfort of some, I offer help. Xrayguy previously posted photos , but has encountered problems preventing him from doing so. I have been unable to rectify this problem. Linking is, and will, always be a choice; yet, I understand less desirable. Therefore, I have stepped up work on solutions.

While the urge to create a site similar to RailPictures.net mixed with other styles of enthusiast "communities", the cons outweigh this pipe dream.

Let me explain. Between this site and my first (the now defunct busyemt.com), my web presence has been based on my endless dabbling in Photoshop. All that changed when I picked up the camera and began taking railroad pictures. Soon HTML plus a couple of javascripts weren't enough to catalog and show my large portfolio of photos. Enter PHP & MySQL (like RP.net). It only took about 6 months to get TwinCitiesRailfan to where it is now with help from online PHP forums, tutorials, and library of 10 books. (I still struggle with advanced functions and recognize the problems with stability of going too far.)

But that wasn't good enough for me. I like to offer help, and slowly add resources to enrich the site. It has taken over 2 months to devise a TC Field Guide (I promise, it is still coming! ). And as I dream up more items to add, I want to bring in more "contributions" or contributors.

But, in reality, this means more detailed coding. By allowing members and log-ins to the general site, security becomes a problem. As it stands, this is a hobby for me - not to belittle what I have done or the desire by others to make this site even better. But in this day and age, even professionals who make security their expertise, struggle with safeguards.

I realize I can get past this concern. Hey, I have come this far and only plan to further.

This leads to my next quandary - bandwidth. You mentioned this in your question. Bandwith could move this site out of the realm of hobby by requiring advertisements. Yet, this is a concern for the future.

You have given me some ideas - which are implementable - but will take some time to come about.

Now, to everyone: What are some ideas from you railfans? How would you like to submit photos regarding Twin Cities Rail interests? I have some ideas, but will wait to read what the general feeling is, and how it fits with my ideas.

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The railfan side

My pictures

Aaron
I may be opening a can of worms here and I don't now enough to be knowledgeable only dangerous I assume that bandwidth means dollars, hence your statement on advertising. I, for one, would be willing to cough up a few dollars to have a site I could post my pictures. I've discovered I simply do not have the time to maintain a site of my own, hence my willingness to pay.
I have no real idea how this would work, and it sounds like there might be financial risk to the person owning the site, but I only bring it up as food for thought and hopefully input from other members.
Thanks
Paul

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MyPhoto's
More of myPhoto's

I like the webshots, obviously. I will still continue to post some of my pics on there. like stated before bandwidth is everything, and if it get to be too big then it starts to cost money. I would assume that a small link takes up very little bandwidth I realy dont know as I am lucky I can scan my picture to the computer.

as for security, I would assume its more for you (aaron) then me???

In the end I think its up to you. if I have a peticulay picture I am proud of I will just post a link to it, granted its a lil more work to look at it, but it keeps things cheap and easy.

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A BNSF fan by default.

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The railfan side

My pictures

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http://home.comcast.net/~dellwoodtim/rr.html

Ya, it would be neat to contribute a photo hear and there for the site aaron.

Alec

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Wisconsin Central 1987-2001
EMD SD40 1966-1971