Might it be useful to have a gallery for images taken with the OFM?
I know there is an Openflexure Gallery on Flickr but this seems to be mainly shots of the microscope and components.
I thought a microscopy gallery with some pretty (or disgusting) photos (& videos) may help, both in getting the word out, and showing what people (and the OpenFlexure) can do.
That would be great - we have tried a few services but never found one that was right: various gitlab-based things proved not to be very user-friendly, and the Flickr hasn’t been widely used. I feel like developing our own platform is cracking a nut with a sledgehammer, but I’m not sure what the right answer is.
If you know of a platform that would let lots of people share photos, ideally one that would let us integrate a “share on XXX” button into the software, I’m all ears. Even more so if you’re volunteering to send us a MR for the share button, but that’s a bit much to ask 
If Flickr lets people submit their own images, maybe it’s a good start?
Hmm, good question. I’ve used a number of photography services, but until now I’ve only been looking for one to many & one to one. I’ll look into many to many sharing…
I truly appreciate how you presented this idea. It will encourage members of the community to contribute not just microscopic photographs, but also builds, mods, and other items such as the “microscope on tour.” Microscope on Tour - General - OpenFlexure Forum
In my opinion, Flickr is a good option.
I absolutely love the Microscope on Tour series - very well done.
I’m no Flickr expert (and as a photographer, traditionally not much of a fan, which is perhaps why I find it hard to navigate), but ColleenM’s response here seems appropriate:
Flickr accounts are for individuals. The photos in the account must be taken by the individual who started the account.
On Flickr, each photographer needs to have their own account. You can then add the photos to a group that everyone belongs to. Or people can create galleries of other people’s photos.
Apparently subgroups - which would IMHO be the best option aren’t possible. So I’d suggest that we experiment with setting up a series of groups (OpenFlexure builds & mods, one for OpenFlexure Microscope on Tour, one for OpenFlexure Micrographs) vs one group with multiple threads.
We’ll presumably also need a YouTube collaborative playlist for OpenFlexure Videomicrographs & at least one more for videos about OpenFlexure.
To me the most important thing is that it’s easy to just scroll through a glorious feed of micrographs & videomicrographs - it can be quite therapeutic.
I’d be happy to set any of these up, if we can wait until after COP28.
Every website that manages photos online requires users to log in. To be honest, I think Flickr is the easiest. You can set up an OFM site on Flickr, where users can submit their photos. Pictures can be labeled and organized into different topics. The drawback is that some effort must be made in order to “moderate” the photographs.
A similar process can be done creating a YouTube channel.
Would love to help set this up - I think we maybe want three galleries:
I think we definitely want to feature the microscopic images front and centre on our website, to respond to a couple of users who found our website and thought we were some kind of scam that’s never actually been built!
I recently discovered that Flickr only supports up to 1000 photographs before it begins removing them. @Martin is the expert in this field. Can you suggest another site?
At £4.66 per month for unlimited full res uploads when you pay 2 years up front, I wouldn’t be at al concerned. If I can take out an account and host OpenFlexure as a project, I’d be happy to. All of the systems I have used or looked at cost multiples of this for unlimited storage. I imagine the unlimited offer will end soon (if it isn’t already written out in the T&C’s) but I’d be shocked if we used more than the real limits.
YouTube’s a no brainer for videos - if we’re happy paying in advertising. I use Vimeo for my professional video hosting, but YouTube is where people can find you.
Might Instagram or Pinterest be the equivalent for photos? Again I gave them a wide birth when they started & I was a semi-professional photographer (for IP reasons that wouldn’t port well to an open source discussion) and I’ve never really taken the time since to catch up.
Open Source galleries could be great @tkircher but galleryproject.org’s latest build appears to have been released in 2013, so I’m a little concerned that it’s not being actively developed. Even if someone could propose one that was, I’d suggest that unless we already have a hosting plan with excess storage, we’ll be paying more than Flickr Pro & having to maintain it.
Are there any Instagram or Pinterest users here who could advise if we could embed photo streams like we could with YouTube playlists? And if there would be many disadvantages to that approach?
Latest release of gallery is 2021-11-14, version 3.1.5.
@Martin, I completely agree. I’m also in support of a premium account, which will almost certainly allow for more features. I will also contribute.
This, too, should be crowdfunded and monitored, in my opinion. This may be a lot of work for the OFM team, so they could designate someone from this community to operate the site while still maintaining complete control. If at all possible, I would like to propose a method for supporters to make small contributions to projects like this. Patreon, gofundme or any other platform.