IMHO this stuff must be optional. Privacy is a big deal.
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I don’t know, if you don’t want to give a name/handle, email, and a social media, then maybe the page isn’t exactly what you want. I don’t mean to sound exclusionary, but I don’t think we should post a bunch of photos to showcase free software without some attribution.
Wow, this sure has moved on from the simple ‘page of links’ proposal I originally floated!
I think we should go back the original idea.
Two prerequisites…
- Only those who are members here can be represented,
- As a sign of attribution, websites should be required to promote FOSS photography on their profile/blog/about page - eg: “Gimp, my software of choice (+gimp logo)”.
It could still be categorised into genres, like 'scapes, portraits, architecture, etc…
That way the page is easily administered by the mods, and things like privacy can remain in the hands of the photographers.
“KISS - Keep it simple, S… (I’ll let you work out the rest)”
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Why not extending these pages, not only to photographers, but to illustrators and/or developers or FLOSS tools ?
The line between photographers and illustrators is sometimes fuzzy, and developers deserves to appear in such pages too 
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Well, we already have the software page for that, so I would not duplicate the contents…
As for illustrators, maybe we could include a “photo manipulations” category in this future “FL/OSS showcase galleries” page?
On the other hand, I think that drawings would be a bit out of scope here…
But the pages we are talking about here are not about the software but about people, right ?
I’d see them as a kind of directory of people contributing in a way or another to FLOSS photography, either by producing nice pictures, or nice software.
If illustrators use FOSS, they have their own website, are members of this site and are happy to promote FOSS on their site, then I have no issue with adding them as a category on a links page.
As for developers, I feel you are already well represented here. Sorry, that’s not meant to offend, you all do an awesome job and we’d be really lost without you. But this way both the photographer (who uses your software) and software itself get better exposure.
I was thinking the new pages could be set up as a kind of ‘tribute’ to people contributing to FLOSS photography and graphics everyday, one way or another. Of course there are already software pages, but they don’t talk about the people who are working behind. For a photographer, that would be a bit like showing a picture gallery without giving information on whom shot them.
Personally, I’d be more interested by the profiles of the different people themselves (background, tools they use, description of their workflow, etc…) than having a gallery of one hundred pictures they shot without any further explanations. And in that case, I think including other people than photographer could be great too.
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I’m willing to help shape these pages into something easily doable. I’m comfortable enough (I think) with the website code to hack on this a bit sometime in the near future.
A sample markdown page for a photographer could look like this:
---
name: Alvin Guy
website: aguy.com
twitter: @aguy
flickr: anotherguy
social media_n: aguy
lede-img: ./landscape.jpg
lede-attribution: "Fancy Image Title"
type: "biography"
collection: directory
layout: photographer.hbt
---
<figure>
<img src='IMAGE.png' alt='Alt-text'>
<figcaption>
This is a caption for my image!
</figcaption>
</figure>
A long bio here.
You can see the site wiki page on authoring: website/WRITING.md at master · pixlsus/website · GitHub
You can also fork the repo and add your changes.
Once I see what you have, I can put together a page template.
So a kind of directory of people who use and contribute to free software? I like that idea.
If these gallery pages are restricted to display the works of pixls.us members, why would thry need to carry more information than the user’s handle (or a link to his/her profile)?
The user profile on pixls.us is somehow limited. I’d love to see more information for a lot of users here, like interviews, or video presentations maybe 
.
For instance, Krita has a really nice “artist interview page” on their website. That’s the kind of things I’d love to see here on pixls.us for instance.
When will we be able to read interviews of @Ofnuts, @houz, @Fotonut, @Carmelo_DrRaw on this site ? 
Being late to the party I would like to add two remarks:
- As I see it the idea for such a showcase is to showcase that free software is totally capable to help you make nice images. So the samples shown should be solely edited with free software. Parts of the process like operating system, file copy utilities, firmware of your wifi router, … that didn’t actually edit the image should be free to be non-free.
- In the past I have seen many showcase sites (for example on a big English GIMP forum) where the majority of the specimen shown was not exactly prime quality. While I understand that beginners might be eager to show what they achieved and that the own children are always the prettiest it might make sense to curate the things shown to not have an adverse effect. (Note how I weasel out of being represented there
)
Of course those are just my opinion and discussion points.
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Names to my PM 
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Oops, didn’t mean to include “Name” in my clipping!
But…the general purpose of this page was stated to be a way to showcase the results that FOSS software can achieve and to give exposure to photographers that use FOSS tools. I’ll add this: exposure to photographers as photographers, and anything further should be the choice of the contributor. This is why I am suggesting that any social media contact information needs to be optional. Many, if not most, people use at least some of their social media accounts to post much more than just photography-related material. Anyone that wants to include every social media account they have should be free to do so. But if they want to omit an account where they ramble on about their aunt’s gallstones, they should also be free to do that.
Having said all that, @patdavid may have been thinking that absolutely everything on his list was optional in the first place!
What about something along this lines:
- with a link to the discuss.pixls.us user profile so that each user can put what he wants as personal information
- with the list of FL/OSS editing software typically used for the images in the gallery, with links to the respective homepages
- maybe the link to a page with an example of step-by-step edit using the mentioned tools, if the gallery owner has the time and will to make such a tutorial
What do you think?
Ok, I suppose here is as good a place to chime in on some thoughts that I completely failed to document somewhere so others will know what I’m thinking… (while simulataneously making notes in irc as well.
-
To @fotonut’s original idea:
Yes! I would love to have a page that can serve as a directory of artists in the community and perhaps how to see more of their work, learn more about them, or contact them (hopefully to hire? ). -
We would have to consider if we want to allow anonymous representation in the list, though my first inclination would be “no” due to the nature of proper attribution and open-ness.
-
Free Software use will just need to be taken at it’s word, I think. I’d rather not have to worry about policing it, and I think we’re mostly open about using F/OSS around here. Note: that I mean this is for the directory of photographers/artists, not the the “showcase” idea which I’ll get to shortly.
In short: a directory of artists/photographers from the community that use Free Software tools, and how to find out more about them if you’re so inclined. Yes, much of this information is certainly optional, but I would imagine that at the least a name and some selection of ways to find out more would be good, whether it be a personal website, portfolio site, or one of the social channels like Flickr, 500px, g+, FB, whatever. I would say that at the very least a name + someplace someone can go to find out more about you would be required (otherwise why are we adding them to this list?).
This could also include software creators, by the way. I’d be happy to include either a special badge or signifier for those that create/maintain projects in some way, or to include it in the bio/info text.
-
To the Showcase idea:
This is also something I love the idea of! I would like a place to show off all of the great works that I know are floating around out there from members in the community.
I agree that these images should be created in Free Software, and I would envision them serving as a means to display to the world the level of quality and finish that is possible using a Free Software workflow. This is a chance to put our best foot forward, so let’s use it wisely!
There are still a few questions: -
Who will be responsible for choosing these images?
Should we make it a vote?
Should we allow someone to curate the list?
What about a rotating curator + list? So every month or two a new curator chooses images from the community and shows them?
These are all questions that will lead to some heated debates downstream, I think. -
To the interviews/community idea:
This was also something I’ve had in mind for quite a while, but haven’t gotten off my butt to do (yet another thing). The intention was to have some interviews with prominent photographers and folks in the community to learn a bit more about everyone and share some great works. For instance, I had originally reached out to a few photographers about being interviewed, and they were very receptive to the idea (Kev Cool was one for instance).
I still want to do this very badly, and to possibly expand things to cover various projects and states (like G’MIC and more). It would be even cooler if we were able to get some nice photography of the subjects as well involved. An opportunity to stretch our photojournalism legs a little bit and have fun with it (but I don’t know how close everyone might be to each other).
Could we possibly get at least a few people lined up and maybe divvy up the interviewing and work involved in writing? I’m happy to pick back up with Kevin or even @RileyB again and try to put something fun together!
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Think this is the most pragmatic solution to what can be a theological battleground.
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I love the idea of rotating the curators - as with any art photography is subjective - so this would get around the issue of a few people not being “in-to” a certain style.
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I have a suggestion. Let’s use the existing Showcase subforum. Members are invited to post what they thing are their best works there. Images that get some minimum number of likes (hearts) in that subforum will then be put into the new gallery, with attribution to the forum member (using their forum name at minimum, and other names if they want it). That would alleviate the pressure to have a “panel of experts” judging images, since they would, in effect, be judged by the community. This model seems to work ok for other communities like r/itookapicture, etc., where highly upvoted images get “featured” on their instagram feed. Only difference is that I think we are a little nicer, and all of our images will be done with great FOSS tools! 
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