AW Photo/Video 101
by Matt Muir, StreaMaster
last updated 8/31/2009
Thanks for coming to American Whitewater to share your great paddling photos with the world!
This is a set of instructions for raw rookies who are trying to upload photos for the first time into the AW Photo/Video Archive. If the instructions are unclear–if I've left anything out, or you've encountered other problems–please email me. We want this to be an easy and useful tool for all paddlers!
How to add photos or videos to the AW site:
- Once you are logged in simply mouse over “My Account” (on the right in the top menu bar) and click on Manage Photos. (Some users don't have that “Manage Photos” as an option in that menu. If you don't see “Manage Photos,” try going to http://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/Photo/add.)
- Then, fill in all the fields, browse your hard drive to select the file you want to upload, click on “Upload Photo/Video” at the bottom of the page…and your photo is out there for the world to see!
- Please note: If you're logged in, you should see an “Add Photo/Video” icon in the top left corner of the photos page. If you don't, your login may not have been verified recently. We ask registered members to verify their login and email address periodically, to keep our database current and correct. In the main AW page, you will see a “Please verify your email address. Click here” in the right-hand frame if you haven't been logged in regularly for several months. After you've verified your e-address, you should see the “Add Photo/Video” icon in the photo page.
Some brief guidelines:
- The site will accept any format of photo, but we prefer high resolution jpg images. It's helpful for us to have high-resolution images that we can use in the AW Journal or print for other outreach purposes.
- Images that illustrate the whole rapid, as opposed to a close in shot of an individual paddlers are especially helpful for showing the character of a run. Photos that show the scenic context are also very useful when telling the story of individual rivers with agency staff and elected officials who may not otherwise get to see the river but are responsible for important decisions affecting management. Images of put-in and take-out areas are also very useful.
- Since your images will be related to a river make sure to input the specific river section or “reach” ID number in order to have the photos show up as a link on a river reach description and to be available for searching by river name or state in the AW database. For instance, the URL of the Great Falls description is http://www.americanwhitewater.org/rivers/id/741/. The AW Reach ID is that last number in there: 741. Type this number in and it should, within a few seconds, give you the name of the reach which you can click to select. You can also use the lookup tool. Just type in the name of the river for example “Potomac” and this should pull up a list that includes the reach you are looking for (give it a minute to search the database).
- Video: the site will accept video up to 8 MegaBytes (MB). If you try to upload a video larger than 8 MB, you'll get an error massage. If you get this error massage, you may have to figure out how to upload a smaller file, using a smaller format, smaller compression setting, or making a shorter video. The usual video formats are acceptable: .mov, .wmv, .avi, and .mpg/.mpeg.
- Please note: your video may not play properly on others' computers if it is decoded by a proprietary codec. That means, for e.g., some Mac videos may not play on Windows computers. It's best to use older, more standard forMatts (QuickTime 5 or 6 seems to work well, as do the older AVI formats. MPEG is a good standby but produces crappy video). Our server will also support open versions of the newer formats such as MJPEG/XVID/DIVX/MPEG4/H.264.
- Upload multiple photos using 1 report
When you take a number of photos on a single river trip, please upload them the AW website via a single report for that trip. When you create a new report for a river trip, you enter the state, river reach, and date information and also some description of the trip. At least it is nice if you enter some descriptive information. The reach information is important as that will link the report to the correct river. Reports and photos will not automatically link to a river if you do not enter the reach info.
You can create a new report from several locations on the AW website:
- The photo page: Menu: Library/Photo Video Near the upper left corner of this page are 3 buttons on of which is “Upload Multiple Photos”. Clicking this takes you to the report editor.
- Your personal photo page: Menu: My Account/ Manage Photos The same buttons are available on this page.
- From any river page, go to the Flow Info tab and look at the bottom of that page. Click on the button for “New Report”.
At the Report editor, fill in the appropriate information about the river and trip. Then click on the button at the bottom of the page that says, “Add Photo”. This opens a pop up window / sub window where you can browse for the photo file and add info specific to that photo. Click on the “Update Photo/Video” button and wait for the upload to finish. After the upload is finished a thumbnail will appear on the right side of the report editor. You can again click on the “Add Photo” button. You can add all the photos from a single trip to the same report, since most of the information will be the same for all of the photos.
Note: It is important to note this means one report per River trip.
If your day (or your weekend or your week . . .) included different rivers, or even if it included different sections of the same river, a different report should be created for each, so the photos will be attached to the correct section.
(Thanks to Regional Stream Team Volunteers Paul Martzen and Rob Smage for the instructions re. uploading multiple files and creating a Report.)