How to Contribute to Slideshows
The Slideshows section of the group website is the place to find pictures of the latest group events. In order to have a range of interesting pictures, we need all camera-carrying group members to share their best shots. This page (hopefully) shows how easy it is to contribute...
Step 1: Get a Flickr Account
Flickr is probably the biggest photo site in the world. Millions of photographs are stored, shared and accessed from on their servers every day. It makes sense for us to tap into their technology and processing power, and it also makes life easier for would-be contributors to use such a widely used system. You can get an overview of how Flickr works by taking this tour.
In order to start sharing your photos via flickr, you need to set up an account (actually, it's a Yahoo! account because Yahoo! own flickr). Basic flickr accounts are free, though you're limited in the number of pictures you can upload or store. If you find yourself needing to do more, you can upgrade to a "Pro" account. A basic account is all you need to get started though.
Step 2: Join the Leicester YHA Group
I know, you're already a member of our wonderful group, but the group I'm talking about is our Flickr group. There are thousands of groups within flickr - places where people can share photos that have something in common. Ours is for pictures of our events taken by our members, and you have to join it before you can contribute any of yours. Once your application has been approved (which may take a day or two), you'll be ready to send us your pics.
Note: Obviously, you only need to sign up for an account and join the group once. Once you're in, you can keep uploading and sharing more pictures.
Step 3: Upload your Pictures
You've taken some great photos on group events (haven't you?), so now it's time to share them. Flickr offer a variety of ways to upload your pictures to their site. Pick one that suits you and start loading. You may find it useful to organise your photo into sets, but it won't affect how they're shown on the YHA site.
It's possible to set privacy limitations on your images, so that only your friends can see them. You can also hide them from public searches and other sites' API searches. It is important that you do not do this for any photos that you want to appear on the YHA website. All photos that you want to share with the group need to be publicly accessible.
Step 4: Tag your Pictures
Pictures within flickr can be given one or more "tags" which identify keywords associated with the picture. For example, if you take a photo of a cat, you could give it the tag "cat". Then, when somebody searches flickr for the word "cat", they'll see your picture (along with the other nearly 4 million moggy photos on the site!)
For the purposes of our site, we allocate a special, unique tag to each slideshow on the site. Any picture with that tag, and which is sent to our group pool (see next step) will appear in the relevant show on our site. So you need to find out what that tag is, and add it to your photos.
If you want to add photos to a slideshow that's already on our site,
it's easy to find the tag - it's the last bit of the page address. For
example, if you wanted to add some pictures of our
snowy visit to Corris in 2010, you'd
note that the address of that page is:
http://www.leicesteryha.org.uk/slideshows/corris10. The tag
you should be using is thus "corris10".
For new slideshows, you need to contact the webmaster to find out which tag to use, or to suggest one that you're already using. So long as everybody uses the same tag for the same event (and only that event), it doesn't really matter what the tag is. Remember that you can give each photo as many other tags as you like if you want to.
There are several ways to tag an image. You can do it at the same time as you upload them, you can edit each photo one-by-one, or you can use the batch organize facility to tag many photos at once.
Step 5: Send to the Group Pool
For pictures to appear on our site, they need to be sent to the "pool" of pictures belonging to the flickr group you joined in step 2. The simplest way to do this is to use the batch organize screen to send a bunch of photos to the group.
Once you've done that, all you have to do is sit back and wait for your work to appear on the YHA site. Be aware that it may take a few hours, or even days, for them to work through the system - especially if you haven't posted any pictures before. Thanks for sharing your work with the group!
Notes
Although we place no limit on the number of pictures you can post for an event, there's probably a limit to the number our visitors want to see! Also, if you have a free flickr account, there is a limit (currently 200) to the number that you can store. So it makes sense to edit your pictures a little and only post the best ones, rather than all of them. It's up to you though!
Another consideration is photographs of people - be they other group members or random members of the public. I don't think it's necessary to obtain a formal model release for any photo including a person, but show some discretion in using such images. In particular, if a picture shows somebody in an unflattering or embarrassing pose, don't put that photo on the internet - unless you get their permission first. Remember, also, that the slideshows are intended to attract people to the group, not scare them off!
Hopefully that gives a thorough guide to sharing your photographs with us. Please feel free to get in touch if anything is unclear or missed out. I look forward to seeing your pictures on the site!