Hi:

We just had our 50th reunion and many folks took pictures. There is a differing of opinion among us 3 admins. I believe people should be free to upload their own photos. The other 2 admins think this would cause chaos (which it did not before when we allowed individual uploads) and want all pics sent to one (lead) admin to upload. I don't think this 'control' is necessary and I would like to get your opinions as to how you handle picture uploads.

Thanx so much in advance.

Mickie
Bayside60

I'll let the Admins weigh in here, but this is precisely why we built the Community Photo Gallery feature, to allow all Classmates to participate in uploading reunion photos to their own space. It has been highly successful for numerous other classes.

I wish I had that problem. My classmates were so busy visiting, they forgot to take pictures!

It is after all a web site for classmates, so let them take an active roll.

I say let them all add their own photos, I have said over and over again to my classmates, this is their site, not just mine. If you don't take part of something, you have no investment and very little interest. And in my personal opinion, control is the key word here, someone wants to be in control. There's one in every crowd.

Congratulations Mickie, on your successful Reunion (and a belated congratulations to you also, Vickie!)
How about giving them the option of uploading their own, or someone (any admin) uploading them with their name on the gallery!
The new gallery features are outstanding, Brad! Thanks so much!
Options are much preferred over "control" any day, in my opinion and the gallery feature is so wonderful, once they try it, they will love it!
Our picture challenges sound similar to Vickie's...I gave my camera to a few, but if I had it to do over again, I would have stopped everyone as they entered to at least get an initial picture to capture the moment! Instead, there was "interruptions of conversations,etc" and getting pictures late in the evening was somewhat disruptive, as I began to panic that many were not "caught on film"!
Unfortunately, I relied upon others to capture the moments with their cell phones,etc..."Next time"!
So, please try to convince the others that many love to upload their own photos, while others prefer you to do it, and we have the wonderful option of doing them both!
Congratulations once again!
And thanks again to Brad and crew for the great photo gallery options! They make us look "like we know what we are doing" and in my case, that's a minor miracle in itself!!

kris

The Gallery will AUTONATICALLY give creit to the one uploading. I have many classmates that uploaded for our recent 50th Reunion. It is a CENTER now for remembering the wondersul times we had. Of Course, let everyone upload their pictures.

Hello,
We just had our 45th reunion. I had a friend take over 100 pictures and only 4 people sent me pictures to put on a CD which we sold for $15. I have now created the Photo Gallery and am letting everyone upload pictures that they took and want to share with the rest. I don't think at our age we need to be overseen. But I did put a note to make sure that the pictures were for everyone to see and nothing that would embarras anyone. Try that idea.
Connie Hope
Metuchen High School

I encourage them to upload pictures into the gallery. Only one person has done so. But I made the gallery approved first. Just in case someone uploads something that is inappropriate. I would like to think they wouldn't, but who knows? After they are in the gallery for a month or so, I load them into an album in picasa. We are limited on memory so when I need more memory I can delete them.

There are two ways to look at this and different reasons for both options. My class has opted for classmate uploads with photo approval with some good and bad effects. We had a great turnout for our 25 year reunion and great participation in uploading photos to the reunion gallery. The negative of this is that the newer cameras take HUGE photos with HUGE file sizes (2-5mb). Although the gallery automatically re-sizes the photos to fit your page, the original file size is what is deducted from your storage capacity. 2/3 of our storage capacity was used up in less than 3 days after the reunion. For instance, I took approximately 225 photos throughout our reunion events. Before I uploaded these pictures, I used an editing program to down-size the photos to the width restrictions of the website. This editing took what was a 3mb file size photo to a file size of around 200kb (about 1/15th of the original file size). The photos look just as good. They just aren't as large when uploaded but are as large as they can be displayed on the website to begin with. After uploading all 225 of my photos to the website gallery, the amount of storage capacity used was much, much less than the 100 or so photos uploaded by fellow classmates with the original photo file sizes.

By having photos sent to one admin and then uploaded, your admin team can ensure that you don't wind up with duplicate photos (we had 3 or 4 people pose for a picture and 2 or 3 different classmates would snap the same picture), ensure that you don't eat up a huge chunk of your storage capacity, etc. Furthermore, your admin team can still give credit to each individual photographer by using the "Upload Photos for Classmate) option.

Just a few things to keep in mind.

We just had our 50th reunion. I'm asking classmates who took pictures to email them to me. Then I go through, removing duplicate shots, removing inappropriate ones (just as a picture was taken, one guy liked to put his hands where they didn't belong! Funny, but the women did not want them on the website) I have limited vault space.. So, I'll put as many as I can in the gallery, then make a slide show for the rest.. We also took individual pictures of each person or couple at the reunion, I'm going to make a slide show of those photos.

Greetings All and Congrats on your successful reunion... reunions!

Our reunion was three weeks ago. I returned a bit under the weather and extrememly tired. If anyone has seen a post by me about our reunion, please tell me where it is. I can not recall if I did one inbetween pushing to get things done and the daily naps.

On the topic of classmates posting their own photos. Here is another thought...
Maybe one or more of your co-admins do not want their photo online. I didn't. Yes, me... the one and only working admin with the final say. My first thought was to delete each one. Then I looked at the group shots. Due to the fact the "I'll get a photographer" did not come through, there is not one really good photo of all 130+. I grumbled to myself. Thought of all the gruff I may receive from one classmate if I did remove photos of myself. At that, I let it go. If someone wants to focus on me... let them be scared!

So that is my two cents. Your point certainly backs up my thinking. Treat it like a business with one person as the 'manager.' I ask opinions of others. Most do not want to even think about it. I'm trying surveys with little participation. All of you know the final result...our classmates will be fine with whatever we do. Why? Because they love the site and do not want the work.

My initial reply was pushed to the bottom. It was: This is a no-brainer... let 'em upload. As others have said, "the site is for ALL classmates." I've repeated those six words several times regarding the reunion and site and will not back down. It is for ALL our classmates. So there. (Oops...now we need a graphic to show this admin sliding under her desk.)

Have a beautiful day!
Gwen
P.S. I had fun with the smilies in this post. Thanks CC!

Correcting one thing above, the original large image uploaded to Gallery Creator is NOT retained by the system. Only the resized and recompressed version is. So you are actually not using up File Vault space unnecessarily, and furthermore resizing images in a third party program prior to uploading unfortunately just amounts to a non-good use of time, as the system is just going to do it for you anyway no matter how large or how many photos you upload.

Touchy issue...

Some people might upload scores (hundred?) of images, others might limit it to a handful. Could be some duplications in one persons uploads or similarities between photos taken by different people.

I guess in the end it's better to allow anyone to upload images, perhaps with a notice on that album:

"Due to space limitations and similarities among photographs, we reserve the right to edit uploaded photographs."

Thanks for this suggestion, John: "Due to space limitations and similarities among photographs, we reserve the right to edit uploaded photographs."

It is now in my 40th Reunion gallery. One classmate prides herself in taking as many photos as she can. The problem with that is we are getting close to our limit and there are many photos out of focus, backs of classmates (no reason for the photo) and so on. I really appreciate it!

Gwen