Re-revisited: photos per thread limit?

Hi, Tom here from NWH. We thumbnail every picture posted (no matter where it's hosted) and host the thumbnails on our server. Thumbnails average less than 15K each so even with 20 thumbnails the page loads pretty fast for dial up users and doesn't blow our bandwidth or server space. Some people get a little crazy and post more but it still isn't that bad. I'd be happy to supply a mod that would thumbnail pictures posted with the IMG tag. That way you could increase the limit to i.e. 20 pictures (if hosted externally) while still limiting those hosted on the TAY server to 3 (you should keep the latter limit IMO because it will eventually wipe out your server space if you don't). We also display captions under the thumbnail at NWH but that's really tricky to do, so I would just recommend thumbnailing stuff posted with the IMG tag as a quick fix.

I don't consider photos as filler. They can be, but many of us spend a lot of time taking the photos we take IMHO. It can take as much effort to get a good photo as to write a good TR. Many on this page don't even take advantage of posting three while some do. It's a personal decision. Some of us are better photogs than writers. Plus its hard to limit yourself to three, when say, you were on a 3 day climb/ski?

I do like the thumbnails, but I wonder if you could make them 400 pixels wide and limit photos to 6 or so. The thumbnails idea is nice because there is uniformity in the size of pictures. 

I'd be reluctant to move from big pictures to thumbnails only. One advantage of big pictures is that you can sub-divide them into thumbnails if you want. Here's an example in one of my 2007 reports:

April 6-9, 2007, White Pass to Stevens Pass

I like opening and/or closing a report with a nice big shot that captures some highlight of the trip. But you can also throw in a collage of thumbnails if you want to show vignettes of parts of the trip. All of this can be done even with the existing 3-photo rule.

As an aside, I always post my photos on my own website, then link to them. I like to I maintain a little more control over my photos that way. If I got into a snit for some reason, I can pull photos from my website and they'll disappear from any forum where they've been posted. I hate the way telemarktips, biglines and other forums put their website name on photos posted there. I wouldn't post a photo on those sites with a ten-foot keyboard.

It seems to me that it's a trade:
-The larger photos and limited number, when used by someone savvy like Lowell, is obviously quite flexible and allows much aesthetic control.
-On the other hand, there are a lot of people who can't seem to even resize a photo. For them, thumbnails would be quite enabling.

I don't really have an opinion either way. Carry on.

I'd be reluctant to move from big pictures to thumbnails only. One advantage of big pictures is that you can sub-divide them into thumbnails if you want.

Another option is to create a separate tag, i.e. [thumb]LargeImageURLGoesHere[/thumb], that would allow flexibility to choose which images to display as thumbnailed with a link to the larger size. You could still have a limit of X large pictures with the option to thumbnail Y more pictures. This trip report is a good example of one that would benefit from thumbnails instead of blind links for the rest of the pictures.

I agree with Tom, a certain number (3-5?) of large pictures are aesthetically pleasing, and then thumb nails for more.

I would like an increase in dimensions to 1024 x 768, and increase file size considerably (300 KB?) so they could be higher quality and show more detail. This would reflect the changing internet landscape where more of us use DSL/cable, and have higher resolution monitors. Perhaps we could even have larger shots (panoramas) which would require a thumbnail and a file size warning.

I do agree that some limits are needed to deal with people who don't know how to re-size or edit.