If you would like to put some pictures in our gallery, contact:
 dave
The Cameras Underwater website is popular, and so there is a
good chance that your pictures will be seen. Your pictures will
be accompanied by your by-line, contact details, and a link to
your website if you have one. Your e-mail address will be given
as a GIF image, so that only humans can read it (unless you particularly
want an active mailto so that junk-mailers can find you). |
 Please include
some information about the picture, e.g., date, location, subject,
etc, and give it a proper filename (not the one generated by
the camera). |
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A terse but informative caption to be used as the "Alt"
tag will enable the picture to be indexed by Google Image Search. |
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Since many of
the people viewing this gallery will be interested in photographic
technique, it will be appreciated if you include some equipment
details; such as the camera type, port and supplementary lens
or filter details, lighting configuration and camera and lens
settings. We can get some of this information out of the EXIF
(if it's still in the file), but it's a lot easier if you simply
tell us.
 Pictures do not
have to taken using equipment supplied by Cameras Underwater.
Underwater photography
is the primary interest, but there is no requirement that all
photographs have to be taken underwater. Good general interest
photos are also welcome in moderation, especially if they are
related to other photographs (dive location, resort, boat, additional
scientific information, etc.).
If you want to
add human interest by including a picture of yourself and a short
biography, please do so.
The only claim
we make upon your pictures is that we may point links to them,
e.g., as an example of the results obtained using particular
equipment. The copyright remains yours, and all enquiries about
using the pictures will be forwarded to you.
If you would like
us to crop, adjust, or resize the images for presentation, please
say so. If cropping or adjustment goes against your artistic
intentions, please say so.
If you are happy to edit your
own images, here are some guidelines:
 Advisory
maximum width is 550 pixels in landscape format to fit on
a normal web page. If you exceed 720 pixels significantly, your
picture may have to be resized.
Advisory maximum
height in portrait format is also 550 pixels. The viewer's
minimum probable screen resolution is 1024 x 768, and so, although
there is no practical limit on picture height, about 720 pixels
is a sensible limit. |
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After resizing:
With the image resolution set at 72dpi, put your by-line in a
bottom corner in a 12pt or slightly larger type size (Arial regular
gives high legibility at small size). Choose a font colour so
that the text is legible, but not so invasive as to distract
the viewer's attention. |
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 Legibility may
suffer if an image is resized after captioning. See advice about
maximum image size above. |
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Use RGB JPEG compression
at about 50% quality. Less than 40% quality is not good enough.
Greater than 60% quality and the files become too large. About
40-70KB is a sensible size.
 Do not use GIF
or PNG format. The restricted tonal rendering is not appropriate
for full-colour photographs.
The files have
to work on a Unix server. Please try to use ISO9660 filenames,
i.e., filenames having only the characters a-z (upper or lower
case) 0-9 - (hyphen or minus) and _ (underscore). There should
be no spaces in a filename, use underscore _ instead. |
Editorial Policy:
Commercial image libraries often deface web-pictures with an
enormous copyright notice right in the middle of the field. The
object of the exercise in such cases is to invite the viewer
to see or use the clear image upon payment of a fee; i.e., such
images are technically advertisements. Please do not send heavily
captioned images for inclusion in this gallery. Links to commercial
photo agencies can be given on the gallery
main page and in the author's contact details; but it is
not our policy to include actual advertisements. |
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 Acceptable. |
Unacceptable. |
Copyright Issues:
I have been asked if I can prevent people from saving or copying
the images appearing in the Gallery. Here are my thoughts on
the subject:
As far as I am aware, the only
way to stop someone copying a picture is not to send it to them.
I can include a Javascript to disable the right-click / 'save
picture as' function; but it won't work in all browsers, and
when it does work it will only stop users who don't know how
trivial it is to get around this restriction. If the image can
appear on the monitor screen, it can be saved to disk - that's
all there is to it.
I am inclined to the view that
550x550 pixels max. is too small to be useful for anything much
besides web presentation and school homework assignments. I have
also only ever had problems with product pictures, which appear
from time to time on other commercial websites, and when I discover
such abuses I contact the persons responsible and ask them to
desist (we keep production provenance for commercial pictures
to facilitate proof of origin). For other pictures, I just get
courteous requests for permission to use them. I usually just
ask for links or acknowledgements, and perhaps a courtesy copy
if it is a book, but there's no reason why others can't ask a
sensible fee. Any bona-fide commercial organisation which prints
pictures without getting proper permission is taking a huge risk,
and incidences of deliberate abuse are rare in my experience
(accidents - misfiling of pictures with 'copyright owned by the
company' material is another story however).
My recommendation: If you're worried
that 550x550 max is too big to give away free for non-commercial
use, go for a smaller size, say 270x270 (two-column format).
I have standardised at 550 because it prints at a decent size
on A4 paper at 72dpi. The print quality is very poor at that
resolution, but it's good enough for a book or magazine editor
to consider. Images for high-quality printing are usually submitted
in 300dpi generic CMYK format, and that's probably what you will
be asked for if someone really wants to use one of your pictures.
DWK August 2006. |
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