The Daily Kos Photo Cooperative is alive and well, finally running on all cylinders. It took a while to set up and work out some kinks, but after almost a year of fine-tuning, it's finally starting to become what it set out to be:
The Daily Kos Photo Cooperative is an administratively initiated and facilitated archive featuring original, accredited photos by Kossacks relevant to the mission of Daily Kos, made available for online editorial discourse by other Kossacks and progressive bloggers elsewhere in the blogosphere.
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Everything you've always wanted to know about DK Photo Co-op
Daily Kos Photo Cooperative launches, by Meteor Blades
DK Photo Cooperative: How it will work, by citisven
DK Photo Cooperative: Categorically Speaking, by citisven
Now open for business: The Daily Kos Photo Cooperative, by Meteor Blades
You know you're getting somewhere when front pagers are using DK Photo Co-op images...
With over 500 photos uploaded and almost fifty registered contributors to date, we thought this would be a good time to give a little tutorial on how to embed photos from our Smugmug.com host site into your posts and comments. Besides, what better way to welcome the Co-op's founder and guardian, Meteor Blades, back to the FP than to make his baby come fully alive?
Follow me below the squiggleydoodads for a visual tutorial.
Using Photos from the Daily Kos Photo Cooperative
I. Embedding a Photo in a COMMENT
Do you ever stroll into a post and wish you had the perfect photo to accompany your comment? Well, it happened to me last week when I clicked on this post by FishOutofWater:
I thought, "wouldn't it be cool to have a renewable energy-related picture to go with this?" So I went over to the Photo Co-op to see what I could find. I looked at the categories on the home page, saw the energy category, and clicked on it...
Inside the "Energy" category, there were a bunch of galleries that fit my specs (and yes, some of them still need filling. Wink, wink, potential contributors!), so I went to the "Wind Power" gallery...
And behold, in it I found just what I was looking for. There, in all their glory, were a couple of photos of wind turbines, posted by DK Photo Co-op contributor Elaine Lindelef...
I clicked on the one I liked, then selected "Get a Link" from the "Share" button right above the image...
This took me to the links page. I selected "Embeddable Links" and then clicked on the "Copy" button at the right side of the "Blog-Small" box...
Voila, I had the code I needed. I went back to FishOutofWater's post and pasted the code right under my comment...
I clicked on preview to make sure it was there and the right size (if you don't like the small, medium or large smugmug presets, you can easily customize the size of your photo by adding width="xyz" to the html code) ...
then clicked "post." Sure enough, there they were, Elaine's windmill shot and my comment in all their matching glory!
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Got it? I thought so. So, while we're groovin' on how easy it is to use photos from the Co-op, let's try another one!
II. Embedding a Photo in a POST
The good news is that you can use the exact same method I described for putting a photo in a comment to embed a photo in a post. But, just as there is always more than one road to happiness, there are a few different ways to navigate the Daily Kos Photo Cooperative. Let's start with a different way of finding the image you're looking for.
Let's say I'm writing a post about the Keystone XL Pipeline and I'm looking for an image that illustrates opposition to the project. I need a quick hit rather than sifting through categories and galleries, so I go to the Co-op's home page and type "pipeline protest" in the search box at the top of the page. This gives me a collection of all the pics that contributors have marked with "pipeline" or "protest" as keywords...
I'm lucky, there a bunch of pics. The one on the top right looks really intriguing, so I click on it and it takes me to Mark Noel's iconic shot of people protesting the tar sands pipeline, waiting to be arrested at the White House. It's located in the "Activism" gallery inside the "Environment" category...
Cool! I like the photo so much that while I'm here I give it a Thumbs-Up by hovering my cursor over the image and clicking the green thumb. This will give it a chance to make the "Most Popular" list on the home page to get more exposure...
Next, I go to the "Links" page from the "Share" button as I demonstrated above, but this time, instead of getting the whole embeddable code, I just grab a link. Hovering over the red ? next to the sizes shows me how big the small, medium, or large image will be. "Medium" is 600px wide, which is also the width of a Daily Kos post, so that's a good starting place. I can always make it smaller by adding a custom width in my post...
Now I'm ready to add the image to my post. Remember, since I didn't copy the whole embed code, this time I have to use the preset from the Daily Kos post draft. So I place my cursor where I want the image to show up and click on the "Link" button. A rectangular box will pop up. Next I paste the url of Mark's photo into the "URL" box, make sure to check the little square box on the right (which tells the code that it's an image), and add a title to the "Label" box (though not required)...
I click on the "Add" button and get the following code in my post...
However, since I have that fancy purple box around this tutorial, I know if I don't want my photo to push the right border of the box off the canvas, I'll have to narrow my image. This, of course, is the perfect excuse to show you how to change the image size, which applies to any image you use on this blog, or in any other html format, for that matter.
So this is where I add width="500" to the code, making the photo just a wee bit smaller...
I click on "Save & Preview," and D-R-U-M-R-O-L-L...
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If you've made it this far, you're pretty much fluent in Photo Co-opese by now. It's really easy to use
and you don't have to wonder whether you're ripping off a photographer, which is exactly what the goal was when we first envisioned this archive.
I'll leave you with a summary of this tutorial as well as some info on how to become a contributor. It's a good excuse to highlight a few more of the talented Kossack photographers who have uploaded photos so far, as well as play around with different image sizes and alignments. (To wrap an image in your text, simply add align="left" or align="right" to your html code, right next to where you specified the width of your image.)
Using DK Photo Co-op
Browse for images you'd like to use in your diary and select a photo in a gallery. Above the big version of the photo on the right you will see a “Share” button. Select “Get a Link.” You now have two options:
1) Select “Embeddable Links” at the top of the box. Copy either Blog-Small, Blog-Medium or Blog-Large option and paste directly into the body of your diary. You can further customize image size by adding width="XYZ" to the code.
2) Copy the Photo Link in the desired size (hovering over the orange ? next to the size will give you pixel size) and paste it into your diary with the “add” function on Daily Kos.
We recommend Option 1 because it will automatically include a link back to your image and info on Smugmug and provide the extra exposure for you. We'll post a "Complete Guide to Using Photos from DK Photo Co-op" diary in the near future.
Contributing to DK Photo Co-op
Contributing photographers retain all rights to their original photos not expressly transferred to the Daily Kos Photo Cooperative, as described in the terms of use. In other words, if somebody at The New York Times sees your photo here or at a DKPC-approved blog and wants to buy it for a use you approve, you are free to do so.
If you'd like to contribute, email dkphotocoop at gmail dot com and include your DK user name as well as the name you'd like to have on your watermark. Your watermark name could be your DK user name, your real name, or your relevant photo web site. We will then create your watermark and email you the manual containing login info and everything you need to know about uploading your photos.
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