Benchmark Gallery - Information

[+Black Dog Trackers]

The introduction ....

I really like going through the benchmark gallery each day, checking out the scenery. There is one frustrating thing about the gallery and collectively we can fix it.

 

The lament .....

When I look at a picture, I like to be able to know generally what part of the country the place is. Almost always, I have to click on "Visit the benchmark" after I click on the picture in the gallery. Only then, when I look at the details page for the benchmark do I find out where the place is.

 

Strangely enough, even in the description field, people rarely put where in the country the benchmark is!

 

The fix ....

If everyone would put in the "*NAME:" field something like "at XX1234 Whackamole County, Virginia", it would make the benchmark gallery a lot more interesting in itself. I checked up to 120 characters (I don't know what the limit is), so there's plenty more to use for the Name field that shows up on the benchmark gallery. For instance, there's plenty of room for something like "at XX1234, Whackamole County, Virginia, showing the benchmark's strange location on a birdbath in Looneybin Park" and it would show up under the picture in the benchmark gallery

 

[This message was edited by Black Dog Trackers on September 22, 2002 at 10:02 AM.]

[ArtMan]

This has been been suggested before (by me among others). The PID is automatically placed above each picture in the gallery. I label my closeups 'Closeup of HV0000, Washington, DC,' but in other views I don't include the PID or locational information since I think it's redundant.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

I do the opposite. For the closeup, I figure the PID is enough. I never really look at anyone's benchmark closeups on the gallery - they're boring and am considering not uploading any more closeups unless there's something particularly unusual about them. The scenery is what's interesting to me, and I assume others too, so I put the location on the 'scenery' picture.

 

Maybe the compromise is to put the location on both kinds of pictures.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

I do the opposite. For the closeup, I figure the PID is enough. I never really look at anyone's benchmark closeups on the gallery - they're boring and am considering not uploading any more closeups unless there's something particularly unusual about them. The scenery is what's interesting to me, and I assume others too, so I put the location on the 'scenery' picture.

 

Maybe the compromise is to put the location on both kinds of pictures.

[Jeremy]

The solution is to add a tiny map on the page letting you know (visually) where the benchmark is. I'll address this once we have a map server in place.

 

Jeremy Irish

Groundspeak - The Language of Location

[rain theory]

That sounds like a great idea. I am fairly new to BM hunting, but I will now make it a point to take some great pics of the scenery (i currently don't due to memory on my Digital Camera.) and post those pics as "(pid), county/city, state". and the closeups as I normally would.

 

I hope this idea catches on, it would be great to see pics in gallery and know immediatly where they are.

 

- - - rain theory - - -

[+GEO*Trailblazer 1]

I will try and do a little better myself on logging the whole detail.This map server seems very interesting. You know best on that, as I am still new to alot of this too!!And thank Jeremy for the great strides to make this all good for everyone, keep up the good work guy's 'N' gal's America needs us more than ever.

[Cholo]

That's a good idea. Have a location on at least one of the photos of a set.

 

When I first started to put photos on a log site I didn't realize that all the photos would end up in the gallery. Oops...guess I'd better be more careful on what they look like. No more aerial views from LostOutdoors.com, unless necessary. I still think there should be one close up photo, if only to show the condition of the marker.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

Lots more people are putting locations in the name field!

 

However, I saw a bunch of nice benchmark scenery pics this morning on the gallery by several people, but no locations in the name except stuff like "looking East", "looking across", "nearby", "looking down", "at the top".

 

It's a lot more interesting to see things like: "Nicetown, Iowa, looking East from the station", "Deepdark Forest, California, looking across Bear Lake", "Glacier Peak, Montana, at the top" etc.

 

When you upload your pics, please consider putting something in the "*NAME:" field that provides a location of where your scenery picture is. It makes your picture much more interesting!

 

[This message was edited by Black Dog Trackers on September 28, 2002 at 06:52 AM.]

[ArtMan]

I'm adding this note just to get this thread back into play. The benchmark gallery is much more interesting when pictures are labeled with the place where they're taken.

[sixthings]

if you look at my photos, they're all named with the PID, and nothing else. not even the designation. i'm changing that starting today to make it more enjoyable. i'd never even looked in the gallery before today, and now i agree wholeheartedly with Black Dog Trackers.

 

my question is this:

can there be a way devised for me to change the names of my pictures without deleting them first? i can edit the text in my post, it would be nice to rename my photos as well.

 

i also like the little map idea. but it would have to be an awfully little map, and maybe not informative enough.

[+Airnut]

I don't see a need to post the PID. It is automatically listed at the top of the picture. The same with your name. It is at the bottom of the picture. I have been putting in a location for a while. It is usually the county where it is located. I will list the city if it is in a city. I post the Designation even though it shows on the closeup picture. We should still take closeup pictures. We should have a record of what these disks look like in the database. But some scenery shots would be nice too.

[+Webfoot]

quote:

---

Originally posted by rain theory:

That sounds like a great idea. I am fairly new to BM hunting, but I will now make it a point to take some great pics of the scenery (i currently don't due to memory on my Digital Camera.) and post those pics as "(pid), county/city, state". and the closeups as I normally would.

---

 

When I got my digital camera, I hadn't thought about using it for benchmark hunting. I was more interested in it at the time to document our travels in looking for caches.

 

My dad always needs a Christmas list for gifts, so I sent him mine as per usual. Two days later, I get this call from him asking about that 32MB card for my camera. He asks me if a 128MB card will fit in it. Uh, SURE DAD!

 

About two months after Christmas, I went out with a friend to do some benchmark hunting and it was really nice to have that nice memory card. The original 16MB card would not have done the job adequately. Now I'm thinking about getting a second 128MB card for when I go out for a long time period (camping) and won't have access to my computer for the duration of the trip.

 

Webfoot

 

Tromping through the underbrush looking for Ammo cans, Tupperware containers, & little round disks.

[+Kurt in MI]

I read this thread recently and I agree with BDT that the County, State location info may be helpful. Therefore, I will be posting images of BMs with the location info in the NAME field. In fact, I just finished with today's BMs.

 

When I photograph BMs, I think about the people that may want to use photographs to locate a BM. I loosely follow the convention for naming image files that is specified on the NGS website in their Requirements For Digital Photographs of Survey Control (designation, PID, date). I put this info directly on each image.

 

It seems photos with designation, PID, date would be helpful for a surveyor to carry in the field. Perhaps surveyors will use images posted on www.geocaching.com if we can agree on a common method of identifying survey stations on geocaching.com.

 

Here is a sample of one of my recent BM finds and documentation.

 

[This message was edited by Kurt in MI on June 10, 2003 at 03:28 PM.]

[Rhonda_Siminian]

whoa! Great job, Kurt in MI! Looks like a lot of work, though

[+Kurt in MI]

Thanks, Rhonda. That set took me about 45 minutes to prepare for upload...probably more time than the average BM junter is willing to spend. I enjoy editing the images however. Besides, I think adding details to the images makes visiting the benchmark easier for anyone else that decides to use the images.

 

I use Paint Shop Pro (PSP) for editing photos. PSP is packed with features similar to Adobe's PhotoShop but PSP is a lot less expensive and easier to learn (IMHO). PSP's learning curve may still be a bit steep for the average user but if you like to play with software, you might want to try an evaluation copy. It's a HUGE download though.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

For putting arrows in pictures, I use Microsoft Paint that comes with Windows. The arrow characters are the f, g, h, i, j, k, l, and m in the Wingdings 3 font.

[+BlueDeuce]

bump