forum AV

[Guest damor]

Hi,

I don't think I have to give my personal reasons for wanting to say this, but I know we all feel the same way for wanting world peace.

After reading some of the seasons greatings all this became clear, WE, want to do something. So lets show the world how we feel. How? Simple. If every forum member was to submit a maximum of three images that symbolise peace, we would produce a members AV and show our message to all Nations. ( not graphic images of violence but every-day living, culture and human kindness etc. etc).

Lets have some "chocolate box" landscapes etc, its up to you use your imagination and creativity.

this is just an idea for now but one that WILL come to fruition very soon, as soon as all the logistics and web hosting are sorted. Al has already offered his site. So come on guys and gals get the dust of your camera and your **** (Butt) out of that computer chair, Then give us a commitment here. and watch this space.

Dave.

[Alan Lyons]

Hi Dave,

Sounds like a good idea. Lets have the image size ect and I will submit. We could also submit sound bite mp3s which could be the basis of the soundtrack. We did a sequence here in Ireland a few years back about diversity and used public voices to support the images.

count me in,

Alan

[alrobin]

Dave,

Count me in too. I would suggest the usual image size of 1024x768, but if someone else prefers a different format, please let us know.

And if anyone has any ideas about how to go about putting the whole show together, please let's have your suggestions.

IMO, this should be a cooperative effort, to demonstrate how people of different nations can work togather on a project, towards the ultimate goal of world peace.

Thanks, Dave, for coming up with this idea and getting it off the ground.

[Ken Cox]

damor says

Al has already offered his site.

What are supposed to do fwd picts to alrobin with some background data

damor says

Lets have some "chocolate box" landscapes etc,

would a larger version of my sun shot avatar qualify

ken

[Ed Overstreet]

I will be happy to provide three images in whatever size at whatever website you designate, just give me the link. I think this a wonderful idea, and it is more meaningful to me than the competitive things that are run with AV (I have numerous and major issues with the whole concept of competition in photography or in any other art form which I won't inflict on you here).

I would also be happy to contribute to a collective effort to pull the show together. Our photo club has an annual show in which all members are welcome to contribute a limited number of their favourite images they took in the past year, then three-five "old AV hands" pull it together. I've participated in pulling several such shows together, and I know JRR also has some experience and ideas in doing this. No doubt there are others. Perhaps a group of people can produce different segments.

At minimum, my three images will be a sequence and will have a short sound clip to go with them, so even if I don't get involved in producing the end-product, whoever does can just insert the segment wherever it fits, with my permission to doctor (within reason) the first and last images in the sequence to make them blend better with the segments in which they're imbedded, or to use copies of same to produce composite images with copies of images from the other segments, to ease a transition from or into a new segment, if that seems to work better than doing a "straight" transition. (We've done this lots of different ways in the above-mentioned shows.)

Obviously the main wrinkle will be using a sound track that works with the images, sort of, and for which we don't have copyright issues. My sound clip (which I won't insist on being used if it's a problem) will be something I've recorded myself (waves breaking on a beach), so that won't be an issue with my part of it. However picking music for a "composite" show such as this can be challenging.

Maybe there's a famous recording artist out there (even one who monitors this forum?) who might be inspired by this idea to donate his/her/their piece of music for us. I know, for example, one of our club members (a professional AV producer) who did an excellent production for fund-raising for a local hospice, who got a famous folk singer (whose name I won't mention because I don't have permission) to grant permission to use one of his songs off a CD at no cost, and the recording studio also agreed. There actually are artists and companies out there who aren't greedy about wanting royalties for worthy causes ... maybe this could be one such project that might inspire such generosity. If anyone reading this forum personally knows a likely candidate (alas, I don't) and is inspired by this project, maybe they could pursue that for us ... just a thought.

[jevans]

I would be happy to contribute three (or more if required) pictures. Living and walking in Northumberland I have quite a large section including coast, towns and villages and the wild moors.

[davegee]

Count me in!

Once you have the logistics sorted out (where to upload etc) I will respond.

DaveG

[Guest damor]

WOW !

I'm over the moon with this response, However there is so much to be done,

1, Al have you got the space to upload the images to? if not, where and how?

2, I'm certainly not experienced enough to compile the AV myself, I would be grateful if one or more of the experienced members could have the honour.

3 There is a "not" insurmountable glitch with copyright on audio. Eds suggestion on his music friend sounds good, can you speak to him Ed? or how about our national anthems? surely they are roalty free?

Ken, I love your avatar, images like that are so hard to find over here. I would say anything goes as long as it reflects peace in any shape or form, Be it animal, vegitable or mineral, institutional, international, national Costume, domestic or industrial, rural or urban, natural history or human history. its not my show guys. BUT SOMEONE HAS TO CO-ORDINATE No committee or Boss Its OUR show so....Ideas please.

THANKS everyone.

Dave

[Ed Overstreet]

or how about our national anthems? surely they are roalty free?

Dave

Though national anthems (the words and music) are probably in the public domain, the specific recordings of them aren't usually Maybe we could all submit recordings of one or more of us singing a few phrases of our respective national anthems, if the viewers of this show don't mind the less-than-on-tune singing that will result (at least in my case)

On "sober second thought" (my fellow Canadians will recognize from whence that comes ) I'm not over-keen on national anthems for something like this. National anthems, at least some of them, strike me as rather nationalistic, which is sort of counter to the thrust of this idea -- it's hard to have world peace with everyone waving national flags and singing national anthems, if you get my point. Maybe Alan's idea of individual voices saying something peace-like is a better one; or maybe we can find a royalty-free recording of the music/words to the last movement Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which I think is pretty-well-internationally recognized as an anthem to world person-hood ("brotherhood" back in Beethoven and Schiller's politically-incorrect days). That music has had international connotations for me ever since I heard it sung during the televised memorial service at the UN when Dag Hammarskjold died (boy am I dating myself ). Also the music is long enough, yet structured with sonata-form theme, development, recapitulation etc, that we would have the option of either using the whole thing or truncating it, depending on how many images we get, without the music sounding butchered or cut off (I'm a big fan of using pieces of music relatively intact in AV, but that's obviously a matter of taste).

[Ken Cox]

maybe Barry or Guido wll donate the music from their royalty free collection

ken

[cottage]

maybe Barry or Guido wll donate the music from their royalty free collection

ken

and as always, I will be happy to provide hosting space and send out email notifications from my site if it would be useful to the group.

Bill

[Ken Cox]

Bill are you saying that we could send you individual pictures for this project, note's music etc [ in a zip of course] and when same was all collected the "put together crew" could download the package, put the show together and send it back to your site for access by all ??

ken

[ronwil]

You can count me in on this wonderful extravaganza. There might be an image on my website which the nominated editor(s) may find suitable.

On the composite theme music I might even sing a few bars, such as

"Bring me up a nail and a hammer

And a picture to hang on the wall.

Someone to bring up the ladder

And another in case I might fall.

Someone to bring up the beer

And another to drink to my health,

And I bet you I'll hang up that picture

If someone will drive in the nail"

Sorry about that

Ron [uK]

[Ken Cox]

Bill

is the Cottage upload facility working again ?

ken

[alrobin]

What are [we] supposed to do - fwd picts to alrobin with some background data?

ken

I suggested to Dave that it might be a good idea to open up a temporary membership with Kodak's free image upload facility to avoid having to send a lot of images through the mail. My site is available too, so if Kodak's site was not suitable for longer term storage, then I could offload them periodically onto my site for members to view and access. We could give anyone interested the password to the Kodak site to facilitate uploading.

Bill (cottage) has also volunteered Beechbrook. Zipped files could be uploaded to Beechbrook in the usual manner, containing images instead of shows, and I could offload them onto my site and display them as images if necessary. However, uploading actual images to a site like Kodak's or PBase (someone would have to pay to set up an account if we choose the latter) would be more convenient. Maybe it's possible to get a free temporary PBase account??

Regarding the music, perhaps someone would be able to contribute some royalty-free music to go with the images. Or, perhaps it would be possible to cover the music under the present UK arrangement with their local licencing organizations?? There has never been a problem in the past in getting popular music artists interested in projects such as this in promotion of a good cause. Any ideas here?

As to what we do with all the images, there are several possibilities. One would be to have everyone who is interested in participating create a slideshow of all the images submitted and post it on Beechbrook or their own site for people to download. Then we could all vote to determine the most popular show and this one would be selected as the culmination of our efforts.

Or, we could nominate one or a few producers to come up with a compilation of all of our images in the form of a slideshow.

Or, we could have many different shows, all promoting peace, and leave them as created by the individual Forum members. Which ever method is selected, the objective of having AV creators in many different countries, all thinking and working on a project promoting peace in the world, would be accomplished.

I'm interested in contributing, but at the moment I don't have time to do any coordination. Maybe someone could get in touch with Dave and help him out with the coordination role.

[davegee]

Since it was Dave's idea originally, perhaps he could give some direction as to which way he thinks the project should go, given the ideas already suggested.

Personally I would vote against the idea of everyone downloading the submitted pics and making their own shows. I have seen that idea elsewhere and have not been over-enthusiastic about the results.

DaveG

[Guest damor]

Hi,

my original intent was for a combined Av that included at least 3 images from each contributor.

As I have preveiously mentioned, I dont think I am experienced enough to put it together myself so I hope that two more experienced users would have the honour. however, I could put a somewhat basic presentation together, but would need someone to "do the text work for me. it would consist of a music theme and peaceful scenes. Personaly, I wouldn't like to see a form of competition take place, but rather everyone who contributed have pride in seeing thier images displayed in noble gesture for world peace.

I dont live very far from Davegee, so perhaps I could liase with him over the phone and the rest of you over the forum pages for any help I will certainly need (technical) and anyone else UK based via the phone.

As I see it The main object is to keep it simple, Music and and images plus text are needed. a place to upload the images ( Al has aready given me a lead and beechbrooke will host the presentation).

As soon as I have opened an account I will notify everyone and you will be informed via e-mail how to upload. and given the information, i.e, username and password.

Thankyou, all, for your valued support and encouragement to date.

Dave

[jevans]

Just a comment amongst all the ideas for a show. I think there should be some thought given to what we are going to do with the finished article, i.e. where would we post it and how (and to whom) would we advertise it ? The end location and use might have an influence on how the show is put together and what its content might be.

I don't know too much about this, but I have seen presentations in my photo club (which I think are associated with the National Photographic Society) which have slides from many different countries - some type of international competition. Perhaps I could find out a bit more detail about this. Then maybe the final show could be passed to this organisation for international distribution as an example of international co-operation.

Regarding the content, I think the original idea of a few photos from each country (and maybe each region of a country) showing typical scenery is a good idea. Then perhaps a few introductory slides with an accompanying message stating what the show is about. Maybe the first step is for photos to be submitted to a central point and then get the best ones selected (by a member vote for example?)

Jeff Evans

[Ed Overstreet]

A couple of comments, to reinforce one by damor: I too vote against competition, either among multiple shows or on what images get included. If this is another competition (in either sense), I won't participate. (I stopped participating in photo club single-image and AV competitions a while ago for reasons I won't belabour here.)

As someone who has produced group AV shows, I appreciate there are times when a producer would sometimes prefer not to use a couple of images, but that should be because they don't fit with the other images in the show, not because of some judgment "this is good" and "this is not good" (unless we're talking of matters of public morals and generally-accepted standards of good taste in depicting certain kinds of content). In my experience, if the producer has been given leeway in editing or compositing images for transitions, "it doesn't fit" usually means "the producer isn't imaginative or skilled enough to find a way to make it fit." The last group show I worked on used 250 images (none of which had originally be taken with AV in mind) from 50 photographers on a huge range of topics, and by gosh my colleagues and I found a way to work every single one of them into the show and our audience loved the result.

I think the intent is for this to be a collective show by multiple photographers with multiple viewpoints, not a unified production governed by a monolithic vision or some arbitrary and often specific-culture-bound "standard" of what is "good" photographic composition and technique or "bad" photographic composition and techique. I won't vote on which images are "in" or "out," and if there's going to be a vote, I won't submit images. Sorry for the screed, but this is a very sore point with me.

A couple of other suggestions:

it would be nice to have some credit slides at the end identifying the photographers by name and country; that could be part of the file-naming convention for the JPGs (e.g., "Ed_Overstreet_Canada_sunrise.jpg") which would simplify the logistics;

it would be nice if the title and in any credits the words "photographers" and "music by" were multilingual, either in the official languages of the UN or perhaps more practically in the languages of the photographers who participated, in which case perhaps those photographers who don't speak English as their daily language could provide you the translations of the title and the other words into their own languages;

it would be nice to give people the option of submitting three images intended as a specific sequence, in which case I would hope the producers would respect that sequence and not break it up; an easy way to deal with this option is to ask people to use the numbers 1, 2 and 3 in the file name if (and only if) they firmly want their images displayed together in that sequence; people who don't care whether their images appear in a unitary sequence or are split up at the producers' discretion, can just not use those numbers in the file name. If the file names are numbered, the producers use them together in that sequence (or they don't use them at all), IMO. (If I were the producer, I'd want to know whether the photographer will or won't object if I split the images if I think it makes sense to do so, because my preference would be to reserve the right to split images when I see a really neat transition with someone else's image, but only if I have some assurance that splitting won't put the photographers' noses out of joint.)

[JohnFeg]

Hi,

I don't think I have to give my personal reasons for wanting to say this....

Excellent idea Dave, will try to get some images ready by the coming weekend.

And a very Happy New year to everyone.

John

[alrobin]

Further to Ed's comments, I believe that the producers should also have the right to edit images in order to make them fit better with others in a sort of montage if that is considered to be the most effective way to use them. I would also be in favour of allowing them to use all of the images in whatever order seems to be most effective, and should have the sole right to decide on the sequence for all images.

I would go along with having several persons take on the role of producing the show, but I believe that the images (and perhaps the music) should be made available to anyone who wants to try their hand at assembling them into a show of their own, which they should then be free to publish via Beechbrook or their own page if they so wish. I don't favour a competition, either, but sometimes that is one way to get people to submit their work.

IMO, we should definitely have a credit slide or slides at the end with the names of all contributors - not necessarily credits by image, but simply to recognize those who contributed. The emphasis should not be on any one particular person's work, but on the fact that this is a joint effort on behalf of the PTE Forum members.

And, if PTE 5 is out by then, this would be a fitting project on which to launch it.

[Ed Overstreet]

I agree with Al about letting the producer have some leeway in editing or montaging images if that's the best way to fit them, though I would hope the original image as submitted would eventually find its way onto the screen at some point, if only for a few seconds. For example, the producer might make a duplicate of a particular image and change the copy's colour balance or some other aspect of it to ease the blend from the preceding image in the sequence, bring that edited copy up briefly then fade into the original image, then proceed ... or do the reverse, if editing a copy of one image makes fading into a new one easier.

If people are contributing what they think peace means to them visually, I'd be reluctant to take many liberties with their images, certainly not the liberties I sometimes take with my own images, hence my suggestion that if liberties are taken, the original image still appears somewhere in the show if only briefly. There's a fine line in a group show between how much the show belongs to the producer and how much the show belongs to the photographers, and I think that line should be crossed very carefully. The show isn't about specific photographers, but neither is it about specific producers. It's about all of us and respecting each others' points of view, which is a big part of what I think peace is all about.

I still think if someone has what they think is a specific sequence it should go in that way, but in my own case it's probably a moot point, as the more I look at what I thought was going to be a three-image sequence entry, the better I like some other slides I'm thinking of putting in which don't need to go in any specific place or order. However I think the option should be there for others if they want to pull together, or better yet shoot specifically for this show, a three-image sequence.

So far the only posts I've seen on this thread are from English-speaking countries; I dearly hope some of our many friends in other parts of the world are seeing this thread and are planning to contribute some images

[davegee]

I echo Ed's comments earlier regarding "competitions" etc.

I have 3 images which I could submit but I'm unsure how the music thing is going to work?

I don't see how a piece of music for each 3 image section is going to be fitted together easily.

PUTTING THE COPYRIGHT ISSUE ASIDE FOR ONE MOMENT (!!!!!) the ideal piece of music for the PROJECT would be something like John Lennon's "IMAGINE".

The various slides would then have some sort of common theme to work to.

We still haven't established:

Image sizes, file sizes, where to upload etc. etc.

Best wishes,

DaveG.

[Guest damor]

I have contacted Canon uk today and out lined our intentions and needs. and asked if they would kindly host the images for 3-4 months free of charge.

I think it would be wise to hold on to final images sizes untill we know how much space we would get for "docking" the photos. tho I susspect that the usual size will prevail without starting a secondary debate.

I do hope that I will get a respons from them (favourable) ( Canon uk) by the end of the week.

Obviously I will keep you posted.

I have looked around a few places that offer "albums" but am yet to find one that I can understand,as to whether or not the upload and dowload requirements would be available on a shared basis.

importantly, most seem to be money orientated, or work on a refferal system (cookies) and spyware!

advertising.

As they will pay upto, eg 300 dollars, if you refer someone and they open an account. so how do they make money?

Perhaps we could appoint three or four members who woul act as recipients for the images. down load and save to a disc and then post them on to the authors. just a suggestion wot do you think?

Dave

[JohnFeg]

I agree with the general gist of the suggestions made by Al & Ed. In particular, that the project should not evolve into a competition or that National Anthems should provide any component of the music.

With regard to the matter of image "modification", this can be got round by agreeing a format in which images are to be submitted. Personally, I would prefer to leave "order of appearance" and whether, or not, a picture is included, to the judgement of the member/s that we entrust to achieve, for this undertaking, an honourable and artistic end result. In any case, I would be very surprised if the need for sensorship raised it's head. There cannot be amongst us anyone unable to grasp the concept of what is acceptable to people of all ages and of all nations.

I suggest, for the background music, a list of what royalty free stuff is available be posted, upon which members can express personal preferences.

If we get this right, it will be a thouroughly noble achievement.

John