Stills

Storage isn't a problem. I've bought a lot more server space since Stills was first set up.

My 750 pixel shots on 'Today' are turning out to be about 50% bigger when properly compressed etc than the 650 pixel shots. The thing to watch would be too many photos on the front page which were more than, say, 200kb. The front page of Stills loads slowly for me as it is - I suspect that I have the slowest connection of the group. Actual speeds here are usually not much above 50 kb per sec.
 

matt - I love the self portrait with a twist here.
 

For subject matter close to, without details in the distance, I think that 650 remains suitable. I know I thought that 650 was rather too small for Borth but, having moved it to 800, it could have easily been, at the most, 750. It did come in at under 200kb. Your connection is slow Colin, and I thought that we were behind the times out here! Stills loads in a flash!
 

Your connection is slow Colin

It is only recently that 50 kb/s became technically possible. We are at the end of a very long wire. The (Scottish) Govt. had to subsidise the hardware and even so I think that BT makes a big loss on the service. There is a BT engineer in the village so often that most people know him by name.
 

That BT has to carry the loss (or be subsidised by the Scottish Parliament) is an interesting angle on privatising a previously public service. I think that BT were secretly hoping that rural outposts in Wales could be left on dial-up because they set an incredibly high bar on small villages being switched to BB. We had a very energetic guy who rallied the requisite number of signatures (we needed 400 out of a population of around 900) and I went round distributing leaflets. But what an insult - if London gets BB then why shouldn't the Orkneys?
 

I will comment on the image but cannot resist joining in on the BB discussion!

I am sure that when I went to a remote bit of Harris I went in a museum and they had BB there at an amazing bandwidth. There seems to be an island BB microwave subsidy that they enjoyed.

I had someone that worked for me who got told by BT that his village would never get BB. I told him to try and get a satellite BB system in the village because I'd read that would unlock BT. He got enough villagers to make a single satellite installation and a wifi economic and got to the point of signing the contract. BT heard about it and upgraded their exchange to BB in time to stop the satellite deal. He now gets a reliable 8Mb/s service. Funny that!
 

In the US at least, the limiting factor in connection speeds is often the long run between switching stations. Even in towns of 100K plus people, the propensity of Americans to spread out means the telecos never had to accomodate a high density environment, which means they spaced the switches too far appart for traditional DSL runs. Which is why things like cable broadband are so competitive here.
 

if London gets BB then why shouldn't the Orkneys?

Generally the islands are fine. They count as 'remote' and get funded accordingly. There are a few bits of the mainland that similarly qualify, but I'm not sure that I'd swap having a road for having better telecoms.

I'm happy with the services we get. Stunning really for such a small and not-officially-remote place. Our telephone exchange serves so few people (and like Matt says, very dispersed people) that people give their phone numbers by using the last three digits only. If there are fifty lines I'd be surprised.

The reason why the Scots parliament had to subsidise the hardware is that the exchange wasn't simply upgradeable. At the time we didn't even have the basic digital services like dial back or 1571 (answerphone). It wasn't quite the case that there was an operator putting plugs into sockets but it wasn't much more modern than that.
 

A good portrait. Is the other man a relative - he looks a bit like your father? Your inclusion in the photo is one of three options: full inclusion with this pose (seeing more of the photographer), exclusion of the photographer and engagement between the photographer and subject (your father is looking at you). I think that the latter would be the most interesting.
 

I like the opportunity for the larger image, I'm posting at 760 wide, which seems to work well with my own blog also.

Nice image of your dad with whom I am guessing is your Mom in the reflection as well? Just distracted by the clutter on the table top, which I guess makes the image a little more documentatary.
 

The alignment of people receding in the background is very good. I also like the self-portrait bit. I am not so sure about tonalities, but that's just me.
 

Stephane, I struggled with the tonality of this, and I'm still not entirely certain I got it right. To my eye, the shirt doesn't seem quite right, but I'd appreciate hearing what doesn't work for you, if you wouldn't mind elaborating.
 

Matt, hard to explain, but I can kind of show you what I mean. Bring the jpeg that's here on the website in PhotoShop. apply to it a Levels with the three input levels being: 15, 0.85 and 246.

Now, in words it would go like: there are no white nor black points and the gamma is a bit flat.

I am not trying to express any of this as facts. All this is a matter of taste and, in my view, has very little to do with the intrinsic quality of your photo.
 

Matter of taste or not, I like the result of your levels adjustment. Thanks.
 

What I find most interesting about this scene is the arms. Some encroach, some relax, some look less relaxed and others are playing at being tripod legs. The fact that you cannot clearly see much of your mother's arm in the mirror is why I find its encroachment bottom left a plus rather than a minus. Added to all the arms are the UFOs which then add a further element (disjointed?) to proceedings. Plenty going on and more than enough to keep me from wondering about the tonal range!
 

A fine natural looking portrait with lots of "bonus" material. Seeing the arm in the right corner, I immediately went to the mirror to connect it to the woman, and from there the rest of the mirror, where I found the photographer. Nicely done.
 

Is this the first 'click'?

I have discovered that some of my 'best' portraits are those that are the first click. They are the images where the subject looks natural, relaxed, at ease, and not self-conscious. On the second or third click they become aware of their smile, the camera, and their body language then becomes stilted.

So I like this portrait because it looks like a first 'click' image. The rest is just environment or even clutter; the important bit is your dad. (*3)
 

Matt -I'm not sure what is causing it, or whether it is only happening to me, but I am getting an intermittent presentation of pictures: increasingly, new ones are not appearing when I access Stills and only appear because I access them direct from an e-mail comment. As of this moment I do not have 'by invitation only' or 'hummer'.
 

Also, comments go missing on pictures: at the moment, for instance, Doug's last comment on 'path not taken' came by e-mail but is not under the picture.
 

John,

No it isn't just you - and it isn't anything to do the with the template either.

I can add to your list of Blogger woes - inability to post pictures, inability to log in reliably and random stuff going out on the RSS feed.

Still, it seems more stable this morning.
 

I'll take back what I said about it being more stable this morning. Grr!