From now on it is possible to upload photos up to 16 Megabytes with infinite pixel length. For the present this is only meant to save your original files in size and resolution within fotocommunity. Presently we´ll be planning on further possibilities as extension to this. Here we´ve gathered everything you need to know about uploading high resolution files to fotocommunity. Enjoy!

We are working on a new contest to start on fotocommunity.com soon. This one will be dealing with off shoe flash photography similar to strobist. We are at the moment working out some great prizes for you and determining rules. Watch the contest channel and this blog for further announcements.

As you know the Eiffel Tower illumination is regarded as an art performance and therefore it is not allowed to publish any photos of it. Until now we had to delete such photos to protect you and us from getting in trouble with the copyright holders.

It was obvious that deleting photos was the worst of all possibilities and therefore we contacted S.E.T.E. the copyright holder via email (lots of them ... :-)) ) discussed the issue and exchanged opinions. The whole process was supported by a bunch of enthusiastic fotocommunity users (thank you folks!).

And finally we are glad to announce:

From now on it is possible to show the Eiffel Tower illumination here at fotocommunity!!!

BUT - There are 2 little things you have to observe:

The photos may not be used for commercial purpose! And you have to put the following note underneath your photo: "Copyright Tour Eiffel - Illuminations Pierre Bideau"

READY TO UPLOAD????? GO!!!!!!!

We're looking forward to see your Eiffel Tower photos!!!

Photo: Sven Jan Arndt
Copyright Tour Eiffel - Illuminations Pierre Bideau

Basicly developed in China, then brought to Europe and finally used all over the world. Whenever and wherever people have to celebrate something very special fireworks are used.

Besides of national holidays and sport events the welcome of a new year is one of the most reasons to put the sky into that special light. People all over the world hail the upcomming new year and shoot rockets into the sky.

Fireworks are a special task for photographers ... the right shutter speed, settings and angle are importatnt to shoot "that special fireworks" shot.

Get out there, do that shot and participate in our fireworks contest!

As always there are attractive prices waiting for you!

Prices are:

1st - 3rd place:

Photo book:
Window Seat
The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking
by Juliane Kost

4th-5th place:

fotocommunity voucher: 3 months world membership

6th - 10th place:

Kata card safe to protect your storage cards.

Contest upload (2 photos for each photographer) will open on December 31, 2008 and close on January 15.,2009. After another week of voting the results will be available.

Good luck to all of you ...

An interesting question with even more interesting answers. Because you (and only you) will be able to see who visited your profile in your “My Photos” screen. If you don’t want to appear as a profile visitor you don’t have to do anything because the new feature’s standard setting is set to “disabled”. Only you can enable the feature by clicking the according check box within the menu “Membership / Privacy options / save profile visits”.

Enjoy the new feature and get in contact with your visitors …

Watch out for our new contest "A Midsummer's Dream"!!!

Show us your way to feel the summer or your personal midsummer dream!

Since this is a ".com - only" contest participation is limited to those users who registered at fotocommunity.com as well as world members.

Prices are:

1st - 3rd place:

Photo book:
Window Seat
The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking
by Juliane Kost

4th-5th place:

fotocommunity voucher: 3 months world membership

6th - 10th place:

Kata card safe to protect your storage cards.

The contest has started already. You can upload 2 photos into this contest. Closing date is September, 19.

Good luck to all of you ...

photokina one day ticket

From September 23rd to 28th 2008, photokina, the world's largest trade fair for photography, will take place in Cologne, Germany. Via fotocommunity you may now buy your day ticket for only 9 Euros instead of 28 Euros regular prize. Isn't that a deal?

fotocommunity world convention at the photokina

No question that fotocommunity will also be at the photokina. Not only will we be in a huge stand of 700 square meters, we will also provide a great program and shows every day all week long, and we will be holding the
fotocommunity WorldConvention
on September 27th as one of the major events of photokina!
The fotocommunity WorldConvention will be THE photo event of the year. Along with highly recognized photo workshops held by well known specialists such as Robin Preston, Doc Baumann and others, we will have a huge great international party, free drinks and food, live music and other highlights. We expect several thousands users from all over the world to attend and celebrate with us.
Don't wait and get your tickets now! In the prize of 29 Euros is a day ticket for photokina included!

Click here for the ticket shop!

Starting today you can now make your buddies public and to be seen by all of fotocommunity who you are friends with.
On your buddy list you can ask others to become your public buddy. This user will then receive an email by the system where he or she can agree or refuse your request. Try it out, could be fun.... :)

(Please note that this function is not available for the admin team, we are buddies with everyone anyways :) )

Enjoy the fotocommunity!
Andy

Due to maintenance works this night we might still suffer under some restrictions in functions.

We apologize for any inconvenience and try hard to solve the problems.

Best regards

Sven Jan

What is going on with my friends at fotocommunity? Who uploaded a new photo, who posted comments and who signed up at the user calendar? This and more is available with a single click: A new feature – My News – will be available within the „My Photos“ area next week.

„My News“ will show you which one of your friends uploaded a new photo, wrote a comment, received a comment, changed his profile and so on. a new photo, wrote a comment, received a comment, changed his profile and so on. You’ll be able to filter this news and to select which activities of your friends shall show up or not.

In addition to that you can adjust your privacy settings within the “My News” area. You can select which of your activities shall be visible for other users and which not. To protect your privacy the basic settings after the change will be “show none of my activities” and you’ll have to change that on your own if you want to use the feature.

If somebody opened his activities for the public, they will be visible for any fotocommunity user (after login), but not for the surfer who take a glance at fotocommunity without being a member.

there is a new feature for you in fotocommunity. From now on you can make some or all of your favorite photos from other photographers public and so show others which photos you think are best at fotocommunity!

To do so, just go to the menu, click on my photos and you will find a new option "favourites". Here you can choose amongst all your favourite photos from others if you want to share them with others or still keep them private.

Have fun with this new feature!

Youth Channel Contest

You want to discover your photographical talent? Become well known? Your photos published in magazins? fotocommunity and the French youth mag "PHOSPHORE" offer you the opportunity to do so with this contest! Until March 7th you may upload your most creative photo about "being 18". We are eager to see sensational photos and how you understand the theme. After a user voting there will be an expert jury from phosphore magazine evaluating the winners from the best photos - and publish them in their magazine.

Here's the link to the contest

Contest Rules:

-The upload starts on 23 January 2008 and ends on 7 March 2008.
-Each participant can upload a maximum of 5 photos.
-Only photos that creatively realize the subject "Being 18" can be submitted.
-Photos can only be submitted without comments. If you want to enter a photo that has already been shown and received comments, you cannot simply enter that photo with all its comments. You have to upload the photo again in the Contest Channel.
-Underage participants declare the consent of a legal guardian with the submission of their photos.
-Entries that do not fulfill the contest rules cannot participate.
-The anonymity of the contest ends with the announcement of the winner.
-With the submission of your photos, you confirm that you own the rights to the photos and that the photo rights are not owned by a third party.
-The rights of the photo are in accordance with the terms and conditions of fotocommunity.
-During the first phase, the photos will be rated by Users eligible to vote. The second phase will be decided by an independent jury of experts.
-The judges' decision is final. Legal recourse is excluded.
-For technical reasons, participants must be/become fotocommunity members (free membership is possible).
-Employees and their relatives may not participate in the contest.

The selection of the winning photos, the vote, the jury.

The 10 best photos from each language version will be collected in a pool of 50 photos. Journalists from "PHOSPHORE" magazine will select the winning photos from this pool.

That means:

User voting from 21 January 2008 until 4 March 2008
The 10 best photos from each language version will be selected.

2. Jury voting by the journalists of Phosphore

3. Announcement of the winner here in the blog

PRIZE:

The prize is the publication of the 3 best photos in the magazine.

A foto often offers more viewpoints of reality. This effect can be used and strengthened due to digital editing. In this international contest fotocommunity and Wacom are looking for your most creative before - after images. Show us what you create from an original image of your choice. We want your entry with the before and after within this one image. What you'll change is totally up to you and your phantasy. Faces, rooms, landscapes, the motif is free! We are very excited and eager to see the most astonishing images.

Go to the contest here

- uploading will start 25th of January and end 25th of March 2008
- each account may upload two images maximum
- only entries showing the before AND after on the same image can be evaluated!
- photos may be entered only without comments, that means if you have an image uploaded already you will have to remove it and upload it new to the contest channel.
- we do assume the acknowledgement of parents for minor participants
- entries not matching these conditions will not be evaluated in the contest
- with publishing of the winners, the authors of each image will be seen
- with uploading you confirm that all copyrights are held by you and that the image is free of third person's rights.
- copyright is handled as stated in terms of use of fotocommunity
- voting will be done in two steps. In the first step by members, in the second step by a n independent jury.
- contest is without possibility of recourse to legal action
- participants have to be registered at fotocommunity, free membership is possible.
- members of Wacom and fotocommunity and their dependents may not take part in this contest.
- on equal vote the older entry wins

voting procedure:
most contests at fotocommunity have the so called 2 phase voting. That means:

1. during the whole upload time images can be voted by full members on a scale from -5 to +5, which means that -5 results in 1 point, +5 will give 10 points.
2. after the end of user voting - which can last 1 to 2 weeks after upload phase - the best 100 to 200 images will be evaluated by a jury. Each jury is put together by experts for the referring contest theme.

Prizes:

1. Prize

Cintiq 12WX


Instant Creativity.
All over the world, creative professionals use sketchbooks to express their first ideas. This is why the Cintiq 12WX was developed as if it was a sketchbook: With a smooth, flat surface. And with a light weight that enables you to use it on your knees and to show it around to others. As you would do with paper – digital paper.
No matter whether the Cintiq 12WX is on your desk or in your lap – just plug in and visualize your thoughts immediately with Wacom′s patented pen technology on a high-resolution LCD monitor. Which can be part of a multi-monitor environment, too.

2. Prize:



Intuos 3 A5 Wide Special Edition

Now, on the occasion of its 25th birthday, Wacom is introducing Intuos3 Special Edition. Available in the popular sizes A5 Wide and A4, the Special Edition sets itself apart from the other Intuos3 models with its smart black finish and the enclosed Intuos Airbrush input device.

3. Prize:



Bamboo Fun Medium

Bamboo Fun Medium
Creativity is about expression. And what better way to express yourself than by creating your own world - your own photographs, drawings, collages or letters. Offering almost unlimited possibilities to express yourself in a simple and intuitive way.

The vision to bring man and technics together by providing natural input technologies and devices has made Wacom to the leading manufacturer of pen tablets, interactive pen displays and interface solutions.

From 31 January to 2 February, the second largest photo trade show and convention in the world, the PMA, will take place in Las Vegas. Of course, fotocommunity will be there! Three members of the Bonn team and a small booth will represent us. If you happen to be in the area, you should stop by and visit! By the way, we'd like to use this opportunity for a user meet-up, Vegas style! Anyone interested in exploring Sin City, shooting a few photos, and perhaps enjoying a few beers is cordially invited to meet us on Thursday, 31 January 8:00 PM at the main entrance of the Luxor Hotel. We look forward to seeing you there!

On behalf of the whole team and administration it is my great pleasure to wish all of fotocommunity.com a great christmas season. May your day be a blessed one, may all of your wishes come true and all of you be happy and find some peace of mind!

Andy, in the name of the team!

We have raised the upload size maximum to 400kb per photo to improve the quality of photos at fotocommunity. This also means that there is no more need for double uploads, which will give some more uploads than before when double upload was used before.

The size limit of 1000 pixels wide and high remains unchanged.

We hope you all like it, enjoy!

The Nordic Light International Foto Festival just closed their last exhibitions and fotocommunity (that is Grit, Totto and me) set down our displays and dismounted all the computers and packed them in their boxes again. My car is full to the roof again and ready to roll out of Kristiansund tomorrow morning. The weather hasn't been nice to us here, it is cold, windy and raining all the time, average temperature is about 8° Celsius, yesterday morning I saw fresh fallen snow in the mountains just a few kilometers away from here. As we heard there are some roads closed due to the snow and so we decided to take the coastal route via Bergen and stay with Tove Fölid tomorrow night at her house in Bergen before we move on towards Oslo where we will have to be by Thursday morning and will board the ferry to Kiel, Germany. We will hopefully arrive there on Friday morning and will then head straight on to Berlin for the fotocommunity.de festival there.

Overall this has been a week of meeting and making friends, all interested in photography and all sharing the same passion for it. We have also had quite a few interesting chats and talks with some of the exhibitors and it was all topped with a great and typical Norwegian dinner at Christiane Wüllner's home last night, where famous Bruce Barnbaum was also invited and shared some of his opinions and thoughts on photography and nature preservation with us. He even brought and showed us some of his prints that have not been displayed in his exhibition, that was a highlight too. If you are into fantastic black and white photos, check out his work!

After dinner and desert and a good portion of red wine to go with it, we went to the official end of festival party where we could say good bye to many of our new friends, not without having them promise to upload their photos and become active members real soon. We are really looking forward to that!

So overall I could say this was a very worthwhile trip for fotocommunity, trying to bring our idea of sharing our common passion for photography and discussing our works with the rest of the world to Norway and it's people. As I sit here and write this little article, it really makes me happy and proud to be a member of this great idea and community!

Over and out, will be reporting about the Berlin festival to you guys not being able to make it there in about a week from now....

Andy

After entering the ferry from Kiel to Oslo and after driving 600 kilometeres through beautiful Norway, passing by well known olympic Lillehammer, we finally arrived in Kristiansund on Thursday night last week.

After a good and well needed sleep at Martin's house, we set up our fotocommunity exhibition display, our computers and everything needed to introduce fotocommunity to the festival visitors all day Friday and then went to the opening ceremony on Friday night.

Morten Krogvold, the artistic director of the Nordic Light festival welcomed all visitors and gave a short introduction of the artists and exhibitors for the coming up week. Morten is a very well known photographer himself and it was inspiring to see his eyes literally start to glow when he described what the visitors would have to expect from these artists and lecturers in his very own enthusiastic way.

Of course there won't be any time for us to attend any of these events going on since we will be busy showing and explaining the fotocommunity and fotocommunity spirit to the visitors of our little 'internet cafe' at the Kristiansund Opera House, the main building of the festival.

Check out the pictures from old and new users in the Nordic Light 2007 section!

To be continued.....

From today on I will be travelling to Norway's second annual Nordic Light Fotofestival in Kristiansund to mainly represent and introduce fotocommunity.com to the festival visitors and of course to see old friends and maybe make some new ones.

Travelling with me will be Grit Siwonia, our Youth channel manager and marketing director Uli Hülswitt will be up there for a long weekend, too. In Kristiansund we will enjoy Martin Unger's hospitality by staying at his house. Thanks for having us Martin!
Martin is envolved in the festival as well as our Nature channel manager Tor-Henrik (Totto) Furmyr.

In a few hours I will board the ferry from Kiel to Oslo where I'll arrive tomorrow in the morning. Next time I will be able to give you a short report on Friday with my first festival impressions and hopefully a few nice shots for all of you to see.

Take care everybody. Cheers!

Andy

tbc