Wikipedia:WikiProject Scotland/Edinburgh Photography Workshop

Introduction



 * For any queries contact Daria Cybulska at daria.cybulska@undefinedwikimedia.org.uk.
 * Phone 0207 065 0994 or 07803 505 170.

Organisation: Daria Cybulska, Brian McNeil and Peter Weis

From 20 - 22 July 2012 an international group of Wikimedians run the first "Edinburgh Photography Workshop". Our idea was to improve photography skills amongst the attendees, share the tricks of the trade and show how to make the most of your photographs throughout Wikimedia's projects, focusing on Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia.

''We covered a variety of topics, depending on their individual skills and interest:
 * GPS - photography and geodata
 * camera setup - understanding the manual
 * tripod photography
 * image editing (Photoshop/Lightroom/GIMP) - improving your results
 * composition - how to avoid common mistakes in the field
 * tricks of the trade - tips and gadgets you might find useful
 * panorama photography - stitching images
 * architectural photography
 * landscape photography
 * image licensing

The workshop was designed for participants with different photography skills - attendees were encouraged to present on a topic of their choice to share knowledge.

There was a limit of 20 participants, including as many locals as possible and interested attendees from elsewhere in the UK (up to 10) as well as Germany (up to 3). Anyone with a camera (point-and-shoot camera or a high end DSLR) could participate.

Local transportation

 * DAYticket for £3.50
 * traveline Scotland provides public transportation information

Venue

 * | Mcdonald Road Library, Business Hub. 2 McDonald Road, EH7 4LU, Edinburgh. Accessible by Lothian buses lines 7, 10, 12, 14, 16, 22, 25, 49. 'Hillside' bus stop on the Leith Walk road.
 * Internet connection available
 * Refreshments available
 * This is where we had the initial workshops/explanations, it was our base to be used when going out for photography trips.

Accomodation
Trainers were supported with costs.

Participants
Participants user names:
 * - couldn't attend but was interested
 * - couldn't attend but was interested
 * - couldn't attend but was interested
 * - couldn't attend but was interested
 * - couldn't attend but was interested
 * - couldn't attend but was interested
 * - couldn't attend but was interested
 * - couldn't attend but was interested
 * - couldn't attend but was interested
 * - couldn't attend but was interested
 * - couldn't attend but was interested
 * - couldn't attend but was interested

Schedule
Possible photography locations included:
 * Arthur's Seat
 * Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
 * outside McDonald Road Library

Friday
Mcdonald Road Library opening hours: 10am-5pm

Saturday
Mcdonald Road Library opening hours: 9am-5pm

Sunday
Mcdonald Road Library opening hours: 1pm-5pm

Trainers

 * Peter Weiss
 * Brian McNeil
 * Magnus Gertkemper
 * Several others willing to share their photography/editing and Wikimedia Commons Knowledge

Photo knowledge & blogs

 * Camera exposure modes on photo.tutsplus.com
 * Exposure modes and metering on photo.tutsplus.com
 * http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/ - collection of big pictures as seen in the news throughout the world
 * http://scottkelby.com/ - Scott Kelby's blog, renowned photographer
 * http://tv.adobe.com/show/photoshop-user-tv/ - photoshop user tv, nomen est omen
 * http://www.diyphotography.net/ - blog with lots of tutorials and DIYs
 * http://digital-photography-school.com/ - blog with tutorials and information about camera gear
 * http://strobist.blogspot.de/ - THE blog on anything flash and beyond
 * http://lightroomkillertips.com/ - useful blog for Adobe Lightroom users
 * http://www.dpreview.com/ - camera gear review website
 * BE ENCOURAGED TO ADD USEFUL LINKS HERE!

RAW editing
For those who saw editing of RAW format photos, and would rather not spend the money on yet another piece of software, there are free alternatives. This video shows a program called RawTherapee. Yes, the demo is on Linux, but there is a version available for Windows.
 * http://www.rawtherapee.com/ - RawTherapee website
 * http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Digital-Photo-Tools/Raw-Therapee.shtml - RawTherapee version 4 (for Windows)
 * Most versions on Linux are going to be a few versions behind "bleeding edge"; however, if you know about PPA files, you can get that sharp edge here.

Licensing
Wikimedia Commons has an official policy on licensing. Although a large variety of free licences is suitable for your content, we focused on Creative Commons licences throughout the workshop.


 * CC-0 By using CC-0 you release your content into the public domain or release as many rights as legally possible if you can't release content into the public domain under the legislation of your country. The idea of this "licence" is to waive requirements such as attribution in order to simplify re-use and strengthen the public domain. People who re-use CC-0 content may create works that are fully copyrighted. The complete legalcode can be found here.
 * CC-BY 3.0 To properly re-use a CC-BY 3.0 file you are required to provide the 1.) name of the author 2.) title of the work (if provided) and 3.) the URI to the legalcode of the licence. People who re-use CC-BY 3.0 content may create works that are fully copyrighted. The complete legalcode can be found here.
 * CC-BY-SA 3.0 To properly re-use a CC-BY-SA 3.0 file you are required to provide the 1.) name of the author 2.) title of the work (if provided) and 3.) the URI to the legalcode of the licence. People who re-use CC-BY-SA 3.0 content may not create works that are fully copyrighted, since the licence requires them to "share alike". The complete legalcode can be found here.
 * DISCLAIMER Please not that only the legal code of each licence is legally binding. You should read it carefully. The URI may depend on the medium of re-use: while on the internet a hyperlink (see CC-BY-SA 3.0 example) is considered to be sufficient, in print you'd have to use the entire link (see CC-BY 3.0 example) - since hyperlinks don't work on paper.

Using Commons images elsewhere
As mentioned in chats during Saturday's session, some people do use other tools (WordPress, for example). In this case, WordPress is freely licensed, similarly to text on Wikipedia and images on Commons.

However, as a blogger, you can have all of Commons at your disposal. This WordPress plugin is designed to allow you to do that. This allows far more scope in making your images available to a wider audience; in return, you - relatively conveniently - have the entire Commons media repository at your disposal.

For those, like our friends from OpenStreetMap, absolutely any installation of the same software as used by Wikipedia can use something called InstantCommons. Again, it puts all of Commons at your disposal. This, on an individual level, may not be particularly useful. However, many small-to-medium companies can employ the MediaWiki package instead of the far more costly Sharepoint suite from Microsoft.

The big advantage of tools like this is you, as a content creator, are not left dealing with the technical details of downloading from Commons, perhaps resizing the image, uploading to your content management system, and correctly attributing the image - you just use it.

Metrics
If you upload pictures to the Commons you usually do that to illustrate a Wikipedia article. However it's nice to know about the metrics of re-use.


 * Find re-uses throughout the web by using Google image search. To do so you can open the dropdown menu left to the search box (arrow symbol pointing down), and click on "Google Images" if you are on an file page on Wikimedia Commons. For the image of Angela Merkel you'll see Google's results at: https://www.google.com/searchbyimage?image_url=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F2%2F26%2FAngela_Merkel_IMG_4162_edit.jpg%2F300px-Angela_Merkel_IMG_4162_edit.jpg If you want to know more about the "search by image" feature, read: https://support.google.com/images/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1325808
 * Get page views for file pages and articles by using the stats server. http://stats.grok.se/ is a website that allows you to get click statistics for most items on most Wikimedia projects. If you want to see the stats of an article you'll select the Wikimedia project (in this case English for English Wikipedia) and the date (in this case 201204 for April 2012) to get http://stats.grok.se/en/201204/Titanic. You'll then see the page views for the article "Titanic" on English Wikipedia in April 2012. You can do the same for images, however you will have to use the entire filename as displayed at the top of an image page - e.g. File:Angela Merkel IMG 4162 edit.jpg. This will procedure create http://stats.grok.se/commons.m/201207/File:Angela%20Merkel%20IMG%204162%20edit.jpg Please note that current events or highly visible content will directly influence the page views for an article/image. Google's doodles are heavily increasing the stats of an image. On the 150th birthday of Gustav Klimt, Google featured this doodle: http://www.google.com/doodles/gustav-klimts-150th-birthday Since Wikipedia is usually high ranking in the Google search results, people are likely to click them, which you can see here: http://stats.grok.se/en/201207/Gustav%20Klimt

Featured pictures
Featured pictures are images that the community has chosen to be highlighted as some of the finest on Commons. The idea is to award this honour to extraordinary images, which will then be featured on the main page of Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia (for Wikipedia's featured picture project see Featured pictures). Every year, featured pictures elected in the last 12 months will be part of the picture of the year contest.

Featured picture candidates is a good way to get feedback on your images and see if the community considers them being the finest available. Please note that critique on featured picture candidates may be rather harsh sometimes. In addition you'll encounter several non-native speakers or people who don't speak English.

You can learn more about featured pictures on Featured pictures and Featured picture candidates