With the valuable input and suggestions of our top image uploaders, the Digital Seas Image Moderator’s team has completed an extensive review of the Image Quality Guidelines for Digital Seas. The new Guidelines are a little bit more relaxed, for example on bow and stern shots, and encourage a limit on multiple uploads for the same vessel. We felt that such a limit was necessary so all uploaders can follow equal rules and some disappointing situations can be prevented.
As always, image quality is most important and will always be the determining factor!
We hope the new Guidelines will make it easier for you to choose your most fascinating images for sharing on Digital Seas!
The changes in summary:
More liberal attitude to images – Bow and Stern shots are now allowed
A cap (maximum) on the number of photos a member is permitted to upload of any one vessel
A suggestion as to the optimum image size and shape to make images more acceptable in appearance when viewed full screen
Guidelines that are easier to understand to members whose first language is not English
Clarification of the site’s attitude towards modified (HDR) photos
See the Guidelines in detail on the FAQ page: http://www.digital-seas.com/faq_quality
Ship spotters at work in Antwerp! Our esteemed Digital Seas member Stevo kindly organized and hosted a ship spotters’ weekend and Digital Seas user meeting during the Tall Ship Race from July 9th to 10th. 24 people met on board the MONTIS 10 in Terneuzen to pursue their love for ships.
Ship spotters at work.
After a 10-hour trip from Rostock to Terneuzen and a much too warm night at the hotel Lars and I were excited about the things to come. Saturday was a pleasantly warm and sunny day. The ship spotters joining us on board came from Britain, Holland, Belgium and Germany. Cold drinks, sunscreen, good conversation and an incredible close-up view of the large and small vessels passing the MONTIS made for a relaxed and enjoyable trip where new friendships grew. In the evening we had ribs and tasted some Belgian beer specialties with Stevo and Ian. Rob joined us the next day for breakfast and we talked about future plans for Digital Seas. Lars and I returned with many good photos, new friends and a decent sunburn.
Thanks you very much Stevo! It was a great time. See you next year – at the latest!
Using the rainy day here in Rostock for some programming I decided to get rid of the two years of voting on our great images. People and their beloved photos are a very emotional and personell subject.
I always disliked the idea of taking images and getting in some kind of contest, due to the rating system. So why not simplify our lives and transform it into a way of still having the chance to express my “Favs” and leave all other images alone.
Almost 30.000 votes got converted to a more simplier system of: “like it, or leave it”. The vessels image thumbnail now has only one star left to honor the photographer. Show, that you are a fan of the photo. Thanks to the help of our friend Marcus and a little bit of AJAX you can also decide later on about your decision :-)
It will take another day of hacking to count the results and display them inside the stats icon, so hang on.
Let us know, if you like the new way here:
UPDATE: we replaced the STAR with a THUMBS UP icon (Stevos suggestion)
today we released a way to comment on user images.
I wanted to express my opinion on images I like and a way to do this right here on the site.
Would be glad to exchange opinions, experience and ideas about spotting ships.
Everybody is welcome to do the same now.
See for example this interesting shot of Miraflores: the Tug ATLAS II
just to give you a short update on our developments in the new year 2009:
commons: more then 20.000 Users registered,
more then 50.000 vessel entries in the database,
more then 10.000 vessels with over 20.000 image-uploads, new AIS Sources every month (Malmoe, Helsinki, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Dover, Athens)
new global AIS vessel traffic – KML with our complete coverage is now available,
content:
restructure of menue: Tracking/Regions to reflect new AIS sources,
permanent up to date overview of our AIS coverage,
new topic in forum section regarding image copyrights,
brand new sharing server, new webserver,
loads of code fixing in the website and the AIS section of the site,
lots of conversations to possible partners,
Please let us know in the Forum Section about your experiences and whishes with Digital-Seas.
(or comment right here :-)
Thanks to all of the users,
great cheers to our sharers and
all the best for the new Year 2009!
Now you can get a piece of Digital-Seas and your contributions also onto your own website. We start with a gallery of the latest vessel images of our database.
Just copy and paste the code for your site and get some fresh content to show.
And meanwhile we continue to program even more widgets for you like: – a “tiny fast uploader” and “all your images on DS” .
Any more wishes here from you ? Please Comment.
Remarks:
To use all of the widgets you need an account on Digital-Seas. After you have logged in you will find a new section in your “My Digital-Seas” area called “My Widgets”.
Here you can copy the HTML-code which you need to be paste into your homepage.
