Website Technicalities
'Dreamweaver' is the website editor and ftp agent. All webpages are in site root but pictures are scattered around in various folders (dis-)organised by date or subject. Pages are written to a transitional xhtml format and always optimised for very fast download times. Few bytes are wasted on padding or page structure. At the last count on the PC
there were 1597 files. Of these, 172 were web pages and most of the other files were large and thumbnail pictures. There are a few 'housekeeping' files, such as are used by Dreamweaver, Paintshop Pro and another graphics program.
The navbar makes best use of available space with minimum graphics and loads only once on first visit to the website. The rollover buttons are entirely generated in CSS. Some harmless cookies are set by the stats link. JavaScript prevents page hijacking and displays a clock in the status bar. Modern browsers all work well. The alternative text menu system is a nod in the direction of 'accessibility' and useful for small monitor sizes and mobile devices.
Page navigation starts from the navbar and each level within sub-menus has 'back' arrows to the next level up. Not ideal but it works. Pages cannot be bookmarked directly as they are within a frames structure. This might change. Links to other websites open in a new window. The guestbook is an external website.
Just to prove that I can write in a different style, have a look at a Trade Union website that I look after - Unison. Not very inspiring but the content is given to me. I am also registered keeper of a student website that is too embarrasing to link to but I have not written any of its pages so far.
Server
My ISP (Madasafish) allows me 100MB and the website is using about half of that. Part of the broadband deal was that I get a domain name registration thrown in free, so I didn't need to do it for myself. Friends at Eskia Computers have allocated me a nice big chunk of server space which I mostly use for media files. They can sometimes be quite large. The largest one is about 7 to 8 MB, from Yorkshire Day 2006.
Photography
I am aware of copyright issues and so nearly all pictures are my own; early ones from a Kodak DC280 and later ones from a Panasonic 'Lumix' DMC-LC80 camera of 5 Megapixels. I am now (July 07) using a Canon Powershot A640, which has much more control over settings and boasts 10 Megapixels.
There are a few scanned prints and some from visitors (suitably acknowledged). All have been tweaked with Paintshop Pro. Most of the large pictures are 600 or 620 pixels wide and thumbnails usually 200 pixels wide. As time goes on and people buy better systems, the pictures look smaller. Picture quality has been variable as I suffered eyesight problems in my one good eye. After a cataract operation in 2006, it is mostly cured now and you might notice improvements in quality.
Why Digital?
In 2007 it has become a silly question but when I originally started this website it was a novelty. Some digital manipulations are near-impossible with film, like perspective or colour corrections.
I can take a picture, tweak it, resize it, make a thumbnail picture and put it on the website in a matter of
minutes. Film is obsolescent now in the UK, as digital cameras
are cheap and more people use computers.
High Street printing is cheap and on proper photographic paper which won't fade as quickly as inkjet prints. Clark's Chemists do fifty 6x4 prints for a fiver and the quality is excellent. When you can store hundreds of pictures on a 10p CD and print out cheaply at the chemist's, why bother with film? You can save hundreds of shots on the memory card and delete pictures you don't want. A cheap and re-usable memory card will easily hold 100+ pictures.
Photographers might be interested in my tweaking. This picture of Penistone Camera Club's meeting place (Wentworth Arms) is an example from the early days. I lifted the very dark shadow details using careful area selection and gamma correction. Then I tweaked perspective in both horizontal and vertical directions (a bit too much), cropped the resulting trapezoid, reduced it in size and sharpened it. Then I tweaked the compression for the website. I don't usually take so much trouble and I have discovered a better method of adjusting the tonal range of borderline photos, using histogram correction.
