There have been several kerfuffles in the last few months regarding the brand images designed to replace the existing written statements for foto-friday, et al.  Yes, Photographers was branded before the word ‘brand’ was ever used to describe anything it does. It has lent much to the success of the group.  Now that some time has passed and the ‘emotion’ has died down some, it is time to bring the topic up again, explain what was not clearly explained, and hopefully clear up some misconceptions.

To help achieve that, let’s take look at defining what branding is, how it applies to Newsvine Photographers, and attempt to address some specific issues and concerns that have come up.  Let us push the rock from the road and leave it in the rear view mirror.

Photographers,

I apologize if inserting the brand imaging into your articles seemed more complicated than it is.  It's really quite simple.  Here is a straight-forward set of instructions, if the previous three weren't of any help.  All it really takes is a simple photo upload and every Photographer already knows how to do that. 

Including the brand imaging and using it appropriately is beneficial to everyone and is part of being a cooperative member of a cooperative group. 

Step 1

Download the files onto your computer.  I keep mine in a 'Newsvine Photographers' folder on my desktop.  It is recommended you do the same. 

1a. Right click on the above file, then click on 'Save Picture As' (for Internet Explorer).  For Firefox users it will say 'Image' instead of 'Picture'.

1b.  Save the file to your 'Newsvine Photographers' folder. 

1c.  When you save the file this way, the file name will be 'imagesizer.jpeg'.  Change 'imagesizer' to 'NVP_FotoFriday'.

1d.  Repeat the above steps on the graphic above but rename to 'NVP_WeekendExposure'. 

Alternatively, you may request the images be sent to you by email to avoid having to rename anything.

Step 2

After your article is assembled and has all its images, upload the appropriate brand image. See How to Add Images to your Newsvine Article for further information on uploading images on Newsvine.

Step 3

Chose the 'none' alignment and enter the appropriate link in the 'Edit Image' box. 

Use http://photographers.newsvine.com/foto-friday for Friday articles.

Use http://photographers.newsvine.com/weekend-exposure for Saturday and Sunday articles.

There's nothing else to it. If you're still having troubles, come to a virtual-vinemeet. We have one every Thursday and every other Tuesday and Saturday.  I'm even willing to schedule special sessions to walk you through the process - there are many others willing to help too.  The GoToMeeting technology is extremely simple.  See this article for a GoToMeeting overview.

After many months of collaboration and design, Newsvine Photographers is excited to introduce to its members brand imaging to include in their articles.  This imaging is intended to replace the 'This article was produced for foto-friday / weekend-exposure...' disclosure the group guidelines required on all articles published on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. 

Why is it called a brand? This little stick figure drawing means something.  It's the culture and promise around what the Photographers community has come to represent. 

This absolutely would have not been possible without the cooperation of those attending the virtual-vinemeet and especially not without MalamuteMan, who ultimately did the final design work and had to deal with the whims of a crazed group administrator.  Thank you.

Rocky is the representative of the Newsvine Photographers photo-challenge.  Each month this rocking horse ornament devises a photo shoot to challenge the Photographers to shoot something on a theme.  Here he is at the Minneapolis Sculpture garden shooting the travel destinations challenge.  This purpose of this sentence is to fill this space. 

© Example copyright notice here.

Happy Friday [er, Thursday] everyone!  The skies are blue [no they're not] and Rocky has decided to head over to the Minneapolis Sculpture garden [a few weeks ago] to contribute to his community and the great state of Minnesota.  It gives him great pleasure to have the images featured in yet another article [or two].

Our next GoToMeeting (GTM) is scheduled for Saturday, September 17th at 12:00 PM Central.  That is 1:00 Eastern, 11:00 Mountain, 10:00 Pacific, 7:00 Hawaiian.  Expect a run time of one or two hours. 

This meeting will occur every other Saturday at 12:00pm CST until further notice.  

Agenda / Summary

Here is the header designed by MalamuteMan for our front page we discussed last time:

Now begins the search of additional images.  We are taking both submissions and nominations (photos and themes for the banner).  Please email them to photographers.newsvine.com@gmail.com.  To keep this going will take a concerted effort.  Photographs should be distinctive enough to recognize from a thumbnail-sized photograph and may be cropped, or otherwise edited, to fit header needs. 

We also will need to begin a list of themes to create so that the banner can be updated to showcase our great diversity.  This diversity will surely produce many themes.  If we don't collectively have the required images in our stock, we can always shoot them.

This session is still intended to discuss column and article formatting.  In whatever order it happens, the branding discussion and the answering/researching of HTML questions, etc, we can still finagle with the editor.

 Joining the Meeting

The link and meeting ID are located in the group discussion tab (click the Newsvine Photographers tab directly above the comments section), or you may e-mail me for the information.  Detailed instructions for joining the meeting are located here.

 Upcoming Meetings

Tuesday, September 20th @ 6:00 PM CST

Thursday, September 22nd @ 6:00 PM CST

This is Rocky. Rocky is the representative for the Newsvine Photographers monthly photography challenges. Each month he photographs a new challenge. This month he decided to mosey on over to the Walker Art Center's sculpture garden to challenge the Photographers to write travel destination articles.

Rocky tries for another forced perspective shot. To insert this text in between the images without using captions, I went into HTML mode and entered text between the two uploaded images, which are indicated in the article by < --- vine-media type="image"....

First, I went into HTML "manual" mode and pasted the brand image code that MalamuteMan graciously created for us. Then I uploaded my images. This gave me some white space that was filled with a couple sentences describing my photographs. It's approximately 45 words, using the < p class=leadin > attribute to enlarge the text. It is not necessary to use the leadin attribute if you have more to say.

I will close this article with saying by saying that this layout may not suit everyone's article layout styles but for the brand imaging to be most effective to our readers, it should be at the top. Also, white space SUCKS and the Newsvine editor often gives too much.

Our next GoToMeeting (GTM) is scheduled for Saturday, August 20th at 12:00 PM Central.  That is 1:00 Eastern, 11:00 Mountain, 10:00 Pacific, 7:00 Hawaiian.  Expect a run time of one or two hours. 

This meeting will occur every other Saturday at 12:00pm CST until further notice.  

Agenda / Summary

We discussed branding a little bit at the meet on Thursday.  To recap, we discussed the branding of our front page.  The icon, as seen in the virtual-vinemeet branding above, will be used as our avatar.  The header will resemble something like this

except that each photograph will contain an image.  The images are be from a different group member, chosen through a contest. 

This session is still intended to discuss column and article formatting.  After the branding discussion and the answering/researching of HTML questions, etc, we can finagle with the editor.

 Joining the Meeting

The link and meeting ID are located in the group discussion tab (click the Newsvine Photographers tab directly above the comments section), or you may e-mail me for the information.  Detailed instructions for joining the meeting are located here.

 Upcoming Meetings

Tuesday, September 6th @ 6:00 PM CST

Thursday, September 8th @ 6:00 PM CST

Our next GoToMeeting (GTM) is scheduled for Saturday, August 20th at 12:00 PM Central.  That is 1:00 Eastern, 11:00 Mountain, 10:00 Pacific, 7:00 Hawaiian.  Expect a run time of one or two hours. 

This meeting will occur every other Saturday at 12:00pm CST until further notice.  

Our next GoToMeeting (GTM) is scheduled for Thursday, July 21st at 6:00 PM Central.  That is 7:00 Eastern, 5:00 Mountain, 4:00 Pacific, 1:00 Hawaiian.  Expect a run time of one or two hours.   These sessions are always BYOB. 

Until further notice, there will be a meeting every Thursday at 6:00pm CST.

The Agenda

We don't want to take up an entire meeting again, but we'll review what has been done in the last week with HTML formatting and try to answer any questions that have come up. Let's give this no more than a half-hour. 

The challenge is finally out, so I thought we could talk about forced perspective and perhaps collaborate to help people with ideas, if that's needed. 

Branding is always on the docket.  Part of the discussion is figuring out exactly what the group currently stands for and what it should be.  If we don't get to this because of the other two items, that is OK.

Joining the Meeting

The link and meeting ID are located in the group discussion tab (click the Newsvine Photographers tab directly above the comments section), or you may e-mail me for the information.  Detailed instructions for joining the meeting are located here.

I know people enjoy foto-friday because of the pretty pictures, the getting to know the people behind the camera and the vast variety of discussions that ensue from both of those things. Pictures aren't always pretty, in fact, some of the best and most memorable photographs are quite horrifying.  I can immediately and vividly see an absolutely terrified Phan Thị Kim Phúc naked, running away from a napalm attack on Trảng Bàng, Vietnam in 1972.   The following image is in the same vein, one could suppose, though the subject matter is less compelling and historically unimportant but meaningful [to me] nonetheless.

With that in mind, read the story and view the image below.  The contents of this article are graphic,  both in text and in image.  It involves a dead animal (a rodent) but the cause of death was natural.  Although I feel the material is minorly graphic, if you might be offended by any of this, hit the back button on your browser and tell every single friend to stay away ;).  If you are unsure, read the story, then decide to look at the photo. It is at the end of this article, directly after the sentence, I sped off as quickly as was possible.

Our next GoToMeeting (GTM) is scheduled for Thursday, July 14th at 6:00 PM Central.  That is 7:00 Eastern, 5:00 Mountain, 4:00 Pacific, 1:00 Hawaiian.  Expect a run time of one or two hours.   These sessions are always BYOB. 

Until further notice, there will be a meeting every Thursday at 6:00pm CST.

The Agenda

We'll talk any questions that have come up in the last week as our first group of 'testers' begin using their new tools.  It also would be a good idea to figure out the best ways for formatting articles.  According to sources, the goal is to not have users alter HTML in their articles 'whenever possible', but if a case can be made for a specific use, the technical staff is willing to consider implementing it.  We're leading the 'charge'.

We also want to get back into the branding discussion and begin by asking:  what in the Sam Hill is Newsvine Photographers?

Joining the Meeting

The link and meeting ID are located in the group discussion tab (click the Newsvine Photographers tab directly above the comments section), or you may e-mail me for the information.  Detailed instructions for joining the meeting are located here.

Our next GoToMeeting (GTM) is scheduled for Thursday, July 7th at 6:00 PM Central.  That is 7:00 Eastern, 5:00 Mountain, 4:00 Pacific, 1:00 Hawaiian.  Expect a run time of about one hour (but we've gone as long as two).   These sessions are always BYOB. 

Until further notice, there will be a meeting every Thursday at 6:00pm CST.

The Agenda

I imagine after rottlady's announcement last week some of you don't know what to do with it yet.  There is a wealth of support for you among regular Vinemeet attendees.  GTM should make this very effective and we'll be happy to help by showing enough to get you started.  Once you've used it for awhile, or whenever, we can spend some time each meeting discussing, answering questions and collaborating on the best ways to format articles (good and consistent article formatting is important - a definite sign of 'quality').  If this takes the whole meeting once in awhile that is OK.  However, we do have one HUGE item of importance:  what in the Sam Hill is Newsvine Photographers?

Joining the Meeting

The link and meeting ID are located in the group discussion tab (click the Newsvine Photographers tab directly above the comments section), or you may e-mail me for the information.  Detailed instructions for joining the meeting are located here.

Our next GoToMeeting (GTM) is scheduled for Thursday, June 30th at 6:00 PM Central.  That is 7:00 Eastern, 5:00 Mountain, 4:00 Pacific, 1:00 Hawaiian.  Expect a run time of about one hour (but we've gone as long as two).   These sessions are always BYOB. 

Until further notice, there will be a meeting every Thursday at 6:00pm CST.

The Agenda

You may have noticed there wasn't a summary for the last meeting.  While the discussion wasn't focused anywhere specific, the question, "what is this supposed to do for us," was raised. The short answer to the question is:  a lot.

According to my research, branding, as you would have probably guessed, originated on the cattle farm, then became a "symbol of consistency" for corporations (with Coca-Cola being the most successful).  Today brands basically represent an identity of a service or product.  Branding is extremely effective, in fact, it seems to be more important than the actual product.  Although many see this as a problem, consumers like brands, it makes the world of infinite choice that much simpler. 

Wait a minute.  We already have an identity.  Is this a re-branding then?  I don't think so, I think we're looking at clearly defining what our "company" officially represents, instead of having a "general idea".  The process is supposed to be difficult.  In fact, 90% of brands utterly fail because companies don't understand their purpose.  Even executives that manage successful brands have trouble and some large corporations have even gone under because of it. 

Considering all this, I think it's fair for us to call this a 'long-term' project.  Let us do our research.  There isn't enough time in one week to do the proper amount, so before we resume the discussion on branding, rottlady will share the good news she got from tyler after she confronted him in Louisville.  Also, since Seagull seems to have gone missing, and July's challenge was going to be 'Armchair Traveling', I'd like us to collaborate on a new challenge.  Vlad's dog has already made a suggestion.

Joining the Meeting

The link and meeting ID are located in the group discussion tab (click the Newsvine Photographers tab directly above the comments section), or you may e-mail me for the information.  Detailed instructions for joining the meeting are located here.