NH FAIR is here!

[Mike Barskey]

I am creating a website to act as a repository for liberty-oriented media: NH FAIR (New Hampshire Freedom Activism Image Repository)

There are so many events and activities happening in so many places around the state, it's impossible to be at all of them. This a fantastic problem to have as a liberty activist, but what about meta-activism such as reporting on those events? If you're the Ridley Report, for example, or the New Hampshire Free Press (or Free Minds TV, The Keene Free Press, the Kira Report, the LCL Report, etc.) and you cannot be at an event, how can you obtain images (or videos, or audio files) from the event in order to report on it better? And what about non-liberty media entities, like the Union Leader, Keene Sentinel, Keene Equinox, Boston Globe, AP, etc.? They have even less opportunity to obtain images from liberty activism events.

NH FAIR to the rescue! This site has one purpose: to be a repository for such images/videos/audio files to make it easy for anyone to use them.

The site allows multiple levels of tagging, so each image/video/audio file can be tagged with event names, activists' names, and/or any other free-tagging words you can think of (like what is happening in the picture, the location the event is occurring in, the name of the cop speaking in the audio, etc.). Also, each image/video/audio file can have a title and a description. Coming soon: a way to share URLs as well.

NH FAIR is still under construction! It is very ugly and is a little confusing to use at the moment, but I thought it was important to get it up as soon as possible since there is so much activism going and people are struggling to obtain images.

Please check out NH FAIR, email me (admin@nhfair.com) any questions or suggestions, start uploading your pics (and download any that you want to use), and tagging your own pics and those of others as appropriate (to make it easy to find appropriate images/videos/audio files in the future).

Thanks for your participation. I hope you find this site useful!

[Fluff and Stuff]

Will this site have a way for people to be untagged, like facebook does, for example?

[AntonLee]

Mike, this is yet another fantastic idea and thankfully you had the legs to push it forward.  Thanks for that.  I can't wait to upload activism pics to it.  First thing I have to do is get rid of the stupid virus plaguing me right now and I'll be all over it.

[Kat Kanning]

Wiked awesome dude! 

[Mike Barskey]

@Fluff: Kind of. Currently, anyone can use any words they want as tags. So in the "Activist" section (or any section, really), anyone can type in "John Smith" as a tag. If John Smith does not want to be tagged, he can email admin@nhfair.com and I can configure the website to prohibit a tag called "John Smith" (and can delete current tags called "John Smith").

@Anton: Great! I love your pics. I'm glad you'll be willing to share them.

@Kat: Thanks! Credit where credit is due: The name was Russell's idea.

[Russell Kanning]

cool

and if i take pictures of people, there is no way that fluff can hide

if you ever run for office, I will destroy your candidacy with tapes from various camping events and the hidden cameras i set up at Dale's place

[K. Darien Freeheart]

Do you want high-res images, or low? I'd think that given the reason for the site, high-res would be more useful with printing. At the same time, it takes up a lot more space.

For instance, I tried to upload a gaggle of images today from the Jailhouse Jamboree but the upload is limited to 1Mb and total storage space per user is at 2Mb. Each picture I have is 2.1 megs. :S

I could re-size them, but that becomes tedious.

[Mike Barskey]

Do you want high-res images, or low? I'd think that given the reason for the site, high-res would be more useful with printing. At the same time, it takes up a lot more space.

For instance, I tried to upload a gaggle of images today from the Jailhouse Jamboree but the upload is limited to 1Mb and total storage space per user is at 2Mb. Each picture I have is 2.1 megs. :S

I could re-size them, but that becomes tedious.

I think a medium resolution would be the most we'd need. Almost no purpose should need more than 150dpi at print size, so a 3-megapixel image (which is like 1.5-2MB) should be plenty.

I thought I configured the site to allow a max upload of 5MB per file, but it looks like I'll need to check that. Also, I think I may have the site allow larger uploads but automatically downsize them to "medium resolution" (to save the users from having to resize their own images).

Thanks for the input. I'll be working on this over the next couple days.

[Puke]

You don't need or want large files.
I imagine this stuff being used as journalism material, not art posters.

And if someone does want a giant res image then they could just contact the creator.

[AntonLee]

plus transferring those huge files is a wicked pain.  It'd be a good site especially for when people get arrested and whatnot, so no one has to scramble to find a crappy digital pic of, say Sam for example.

[Russell Kanning]

for the newspaper Kat uses 200dpi ... but if we need a pic, we will ask the author for a good one
otherwise I would only want and will upload small files 

[K. Darien Freeheart]

Lindsay worked in printing for a while, and considers 300dpi to be the minimum for good quality prints. I did the math, and apparently my camera would take shots at about 8x10 inches... Likely not needed.

If you had a way for the system to automatically downsample the images, that would rock the most!

Thanks for doing all the heavy lifting on this, Mike!

[Lloyd Danforth]

cool

and if i take pictures of people, there is no way that fluff can hide

if you ever run for office, I will destroy your candidacy with tapes from various camping events and the hidden cameras i set up at Dale's place

I looked in my collection and decided that my favorite image of Fluff is when he got drunk and nodding off and people were making a stack of coffee cups on his head.....no.....no! Maybe it is the one where he got drunk and.........

[Kat Kanning]

For resizing photos, I downloaded a program that will take a whole directory of photos and resize them however...print size, dpi.  The one I'm using is Fast Stone Photo Resizer, but there are many others. 

[Mike Barskey]

I worked in printing, too. 300dpi is great for high-quality printing. I imagine, though, that most of the images downloaded from NH FAIR will be used for very low-quality (respectively speaking) printing, like Newspapers. And for the web, an even lower resolution should be adequate. And you can, of course, contact the image owner and request a higher-resolution version if you do need one.

I am working right now to make the website automatically downsample all images.