Comments About Site And Pictures
PICTURE SIZE AND MONITOR RESOLUTION SETTINGS:
I started this site in 2001, and it has
gradually grown to its present size. At that time, 17 inch CRT monitors were considered fairly large,
and that being what I had, I started setting the size of the pictures for intended Web viewing
with the then commonly used monitor resolution setting of 800 x 600. Also, since most of us were using slow dial up Internet connections
at that time, I attempted to keep the picture file size as small as possible consistent with reasonable quality, and larger
pictures require larger files to obtain the same level of apparent quality, which necessarily slows down loading
of the pictures.
However, since then, particularly with the proliferation of
reasonable cost flat panel monitors of larger sizes, it is increasingly common
to use higher resolutions, which is fine except that you will see the pictures in a smaller
size than intended. And if you decide to
spend some time looking at the pictures, I would recommend temporarily
lowering your resolution a step or so, provided your monitor's graphics quality does
not degrade unduly when it is run at slightly less than its "native resolution".
• Update November 2009: About a year ago, I saw site statistics indicating
that although a few people were still using 800 x 600, the most commonly used computer graphics
resolution setting was 1024 x 768. Since, for the most part, I also was using that setting for general browsing,
my conclusion was that despite the proliferation of wide screen monitors, the average person
was still using a "square monitor", and if it was a flat screen they definitely were not using
it at its "native resolution". After some experimentation, I concluded that if my picture
heights were about 500 pixels, the pictures would fit well in a browser window at a vertical
resolution setting of 768, and yet if someone were using a higher resolution (e.g., 1280 x 1024)
the pictures would still be sufficiently large as to be usable on all but the smallest monitors.
The 1024 pixel vertical number is also fairly near to the maximum available vertical number of
pixels on all but the largest flat screen panels when run at their native resolution.
A poll of acquaintances suggested that many people were not running at the full 1280 x 1024,
but were trying to go down at least one "step" (e.g. 1152 x 864 for square monitors) if their
monitors failed to perform satisfactorily two steps down at 1024 x 768 (or equivalent for wide
screen monitors). Since just increasing the size of an existing picture does not provide
the same level of detail that starting with the original large file scans and re-cropping does,
I have gone back to work on the original picture files in nearly all cases. The process of starting
with the original scans and re-cropping, fixing color balance, removing dirt specs, attempting
to minimize film grain when visible, etc., is a very time consuming activity, depending upon the
condition of the original film picture (and scan). As a result, I have just now completed
the resizing process and all full size scenery, animal and flower pictures are now either 500
or 550 pixels high. Unfortunately, there is no "right" size that is going to be optimum for
everyone.
If you are using a
flat panel monitor, please read my Flat Panel Comments.
And if you are not familiar with checking or changing your PC video resolution settings, please
go to How To Check Or Change Your Video Resolution Settings.
THE SITE CONTENT:
The content of my site reflects my interest in photography, coupled with my nearly life
long love of nature, and particularly mountains and their scenic beauty.
THE PICTURES:
The pictures on this site were mostly taken in the Rocky Mountains and, until June 2008, started
in the form of 35 mm slides. These pictures were taken primarily in the various national
parks that are listed on the front page of the site.
Since it became available, all scenery and most flower pictures have been
taken with Ektachrome E100S because of its relatively fine grain and neutral
color balance. Before it became available, I used the various forerunners
that led to this film. Experiments with several Fuji transparency films,
including the three generations of Provia, that although appearing to have
slightly better dynamic range, were unacceptable for my purposes because
of their characteristic Fuji "warmth" which led to an unacceptable reddish
cast in many pictures where color accuracy was important (as in flowers with
any purple color content). No amount of cyan filtration seemed to provide
acceptable correction in these cases. For animal photographs, I have attempted
to use a faster film (ASA 200) and I originally used Kodachrome 200, because
although it was rather grainy, it still seemed to produce quite sharp images.
However, with the advent of Ektachrome E200 which has both good sharpness
and much finer grain, I have used it almost exclusively for these applications.
The film was all processed into slides by commercial labs, and with the
exception of a few Cibachrome prints which I made with great effort about 15
years ago, the pictures remained in slide form. However, with the
availability of relatively inexpensive inkjet printers that will produce high
quality prints with reasonably good print life expectancy, I became interested
in producing prints digitally. Therefore, I have had a number of slides
scanned to digital format. I started with the then much hyped Kodak Photo CD's, but
the typical failure of Kodak to properly support their products led to investigation and
use of other scanning procedures. The scanned images have then been manipulated using
various versions of Adobe Photoshop.
• August 2005 Update on Film and Kodak: Early in 2004, Kodak announced that they were replacing
the E100S in favor of their new "improved" E100G. This was not yet available to me
in the summer of 2004, but by May 2005 the E100G was all that was available, and so after some
testing, that is what I used beginning at that time. It does indeed seem to have the advertised
lower grain, but I do not see the alleged improvements in neutral color
balance and exposure dynamic range that the film supposedly has. But after getting the film from my
summer 2005 trip processed, I made an astounding
discovery; at the same time that they were releasing this film, they were making plans to stop manufacturing both their
slide projectors and the slide carousels to use with them! I made this horrifying discovery when I attempted to
purchase more slide carousels in July 2005 and was advised that they were no longer being made.
I cannot conceive of how a company can be so mismanaged. Why expend company resources developing a new film
if you are going to eliminate the equipment required to use it with? This also leads to questions
concerning the continued future availability of E6 processing for slide film in the United States where most people
use the Kodak type projectors with the round slide carousels, as opposed to the European projectors that use rectangular
slide trays.
NOTE CONCERNING PICTURES OF WATERFALLS:
Pictures involving moving water such as waterfalls and cascades, when taken by professional photographers,
nearly always seem to involve using a fairly long exposure time (typically 1/4 to 1 second) so
that the water has a veiled or "gauzy" appearance. This seems to be the preferred type of picture
to provide an "artistic" look for use on calendars, in magazines, etc. However, I much
prefer that my pictures of these subjects appear, as nearly as possible, as they actually appeared
to me; not with some fake artistic look, and therefore I take my pictures of flowing water
at a faster shutter speed when possible.
THE SITE FORMAT:
I chose a light gray background for the picture pages because a number of the pictures
have either white snow or clouds running out to the edges of the pictures in spots, and I
wanted a background color that was "neutral" and that would insure that the edges of such
pictures would show properly. When a picture is opened from a link, I did not
want the picture to appear against a white browser window for the above mentioned reason,
and I also did not want it to be automatically resized by the browser window, so, with one exception, I put
each full size linked picture on its own gray background page to prevent these problems.
This scheme also has the advantage that the full size pictures can be made to open in the middle
of the browser window, rather than jumping to the left side. And since I have repeatedly
strained my eyes trying to read normal weight text on colored
backgrounds on other sites, I used bold type in an attempt to avoid that problem with my site.
COMMENTS ON HTML CODING OF SITE:
When I started this web site in 2001, I was using an ISP that provided free web space and FTP uploading
(provided the user had FTP software). So, I soon felt compelled to
learn how to make a web site. After some rather unsuccessful
attempts to work with free Web page generating software, I
purchased a book "The Complete Idiot's Guide To Creating A Web Page"
and started doing my coding directly in HTML
by typing the code into Windows Notepad. I found that doing it that way gave me
much greater control over the results than I could get with the free
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)
Web page generating software that I had been attempting to use.
The author of the book, although explaining how to
use a couple of fairly costly commercially available WYSIWYG programs, emphasized that
he did his web site coding by hand. Eventually I discovered
the free software "HTML-Kit" which is an HTML text editor that provides a variety of useful features for
writing HTML code, in addition to providing line numbering. An indication of line numbers
is almost essential for finding and fixing errors
after doing a W3C validation check, which I have done for the home
page and for each of the pages directly linked to the home page
(e.g., this one, which validates as HTML 4.0 Transitional).
As I have experimented with various formats, the
site has gone through a number of revisions in its basic design before
I settled on the present one.
When I first started my Web site, I was viewing it only in Internet Explorer in Windows.
However, I soon came to realize that IE did not necessarily adhere to HTML
standards, and that as a result, the site did not appear the same
when viewed in other browsers, so I started checking it in Netscape,
and made the changes in coding necessary to obtain essentially similar appearance
in both browsers. A few additional changes were indicated when I started using
Firefox in Windows. Then, when I switched my site to an independent Web
hosting service in March 2005, I noticed that my site statistics indicated that it was
beginning to attract a number of visitors each month who were using
the Linux Konqueror browser. And with the recognition that Linux was
rapidly increasing in popularity, I made some modifications to the
coding so that, hopefully, my site would be presented in similar fashion
with that browser and operating system. In early 2006, I switched
to Linux for virtually all my own on line activities (browsing and email), so I now
check the site appearance with Firefox and IE in Windows, and Firefox, Opera and
Konqueror in Linux, and it generally appears in similar fashion in each case,
with minor variations, depending on the fonts installed in a particular
operating system. Since I do not have access to a Macintosh computer, I have no
way of knowing how the site looks to Apple Safari users.
If you have reached this point in my site, you have presumably spent some time here and I hope
that you will send me an email to let me know how you found the site
and whether you were looking for something specific, in addition to any other comments or questions
you may have.
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