Christmas disc

[firkin@netconnect.com.au (Alastair Firkin)]

G'day LUGnuts,

I have a collection of the BBC Wildlife Magazine Wildlife Photographer of
the Year Books and have been to 2 or 3 of the exhibits. I love these books
and their spectacular images, each accompanied by a brief snippet of
personal and technical information. I am sitting listening to Beatle
outtakes and it has reminded me of an idea. Each year the Beatles would
record a special Christmas record for the members of the fan club. I
propose a concept for our group to combine these.

If there is enough interest, I suggest that each of us has the opportunity
to submit a number of his/ her favourite images of the last 12 months -
perhaps 3 for argument and send them to me together with an empty
recordable CD. I will then collate them, cut the CD for each of you and
send it back for Christmas! Then I will begin to nag you all again in 12
months time to return your disc and the next 3 or so images, repeat the
process and return it in time for Christmas 98 etc.

The images could be sent as prints, negatives, slides, duplicates, or as
electronic PICT or JPEGs, Though the later would be easier and the others
would need to put up with my scanning it will give everyone an opportunity
to contribute.

If 50 of the group did this we would have a LUG annual of 150 images each
year. At say 500 k per image we could have a disc in 8 years of
considerable interest. I suspect we need at least 20 of us to be bothered
starting up the LUG's Own Annual.

Now to really be a success we would want more than just the hacks amongst
us to contribute. This means that the pros out there who already give their
time and advice would ideally contribute and each of us would have to
respect the submitted work as copyright. This could be minimized by keeping
the images at a relatively low resolution and putting copyright information
on the image itself. But even seconds can be educational and after all the
Beatles did not exactly put Hey Jude quality out on the Christmas disc. In
order to be out by Christmas I suspect I will need to start by September
and have all images by early November at the latest, but all things are
usually done in the last 2 minutes at the best of times in this household.

OK now over to you; comments and suggestions please. I am not a publisher
and will undoubtedly be naive. Should the images be just cut simply or held
in some form of slide show or photo CD format. I do not own a CD writer yet
(small problem!) but easily overcome and I cannot scan 6 x6 negs or slides
with any quality so dual format users will need to be selective. I work on
a Mac, but it cuts pc floppies and zip discs, so I presume it will cut CD's
to suit with suitable software etc. What major problems have I over looked
Marc, Ted, Fred and others?




Alastair Firkin

http://users.netconnect.com.au/~firkin/AGFhmpg.html