PapaTango

Until recently, I had never heard of her either, or her impact on the perception of femininity as it is expressed in photography. After reading an article on her work in this and other images, I am now on a re-read of John Pultz's "The Body and The Lens: Photography 1839 to the Present." Here is the article and interview with her: "This uncomfortable portrait of femininity has resonated for four decades"

I just noticed this, and yes it's long gone! Part of me wishes that I still had this rig--and except for the money it's worth today I cannot imagine why. A bunch of the enlarger stuff is still around. My darkroom had two 45MXTs in it--one dichroic and the other condenser. A few months back, I converted one of them to this: The camera mounts on the quick release, and plugs into the 7" monitor. The bottom "easel" thingy is made to firmly hold Bessler negative carriers, and is lit by an LED plate below. At an angle on both sides are 6" LED photo panels made adjustable by Neewer arms. This rig copies MF/LF and serves as copy stand for digitizing ancient prints--hence the lights on the sides. Beginning this winter, I plan on digitizing several thousand MF strips and 4x5" sheets. What is nice is that this was all built out of flotsam and jetsam that has been acquired over the years for various projects and pursuits... 🤔 In another discussion over on Photrio, the topic is aligning the 45MXT--and an adjustable lens plate called the Delta Bes-Align. I sold three of them when I sold the turret. I wish I had them still, as the price is astonishing!

The max file 'size' for upload in FF is 8 Mb, although I can't think of a good reason to upload a file that size. The other 'image size' maximum "edge" has been raised to 4500px from the previous 2400px. Also, forum tennis fans, the edit time on posts, personal messages, and comments has been increased from 30 minutes to 45. You will note too that link embedding is supported in the forums, galleries, and albums, and gallery/album images can be embedded in forum posts.

@Ricochetrider Do you remember the wonderfully working software we had from 2016 until October of last year? Or are you a member of Photrio.com? Both of these were/are Xenforo. The one peculiarity that XF has is that while it supports full "drag & drop" in the forums--galleries and albums require manual file manager placement of images. So, while this feature is missing in the galleries and albums, there are literally a dozen other features and conveniences that XF offers over Invision, which is PN's platform. Nothing wrong, just how things work in different places. Beginning next month, FF will be debuting a "Photo of the Month" contest, fairly identical to what was had here before. Stay tuned... 🤔

And that would only be the beginning. Have you noticed that Hulu is being acquired by a minority stakeholder, Disney? Buh bye Hulu. Soon, a group of corporate interests that one can count on one hand will own or control the majority of the media we have available and consume. Sadly, I dumped that chucklehead and his Ecks (the sewer formerly known as Shitter) pretty soon after he began eliminating his various content review and moderation teams. Not to get political--but anyone is more honest and open when they think they are amongst friends. My sincere apologies for Smucker Goebbeler (aka Tucker Carlson), and for Tusk too--but these clowns are holding a dangerous major stake in the consciousness and beliefs of several societies. We have to pay attention and speak until we and no one else can speak for us. My apologies to Pastor Niemoller... 👮‍♂️ The robber barons of the late 19th and early 20th century could not hold a candle to the Musk', Bezo's, Buffet's, Zuckerberg's, and others. Multinationals are buying up everything. Heck, PhotoNet's C-Suite offices are located in Israel. I can't do anything about them, so I have figured the best course is to do things that make me happy. Like making and sharing images and noxious opinions! 🤪 Maybe it's that Trilateral Commission I heard about in the 70s, working with Musk, George Soros, and Bill Gates to control our minds here on PhotoNet. And keep an eye out for the CIA or NSA. I know that they have to be skulking about in this conspiracy. I would write more, but it's time for my pills and nightly telephone therapy session. 🤔

Yes, somewhat like PN was before the botched migration--working elegantly with daily site admin presence... 🤔

No Sanford, Savings time had nothing to do with what happened. What happened was due to disinterest, abandonment, negligence, and disrespect for this community. It should have never happened, and if it were not for the actions of a volunteer--would still be FUBAR.

Again, thanks Roger for acting on this. I had tried contacting Invision on Tuesday (see a previous post), but because I was not a listed admin that became the end of it. I believe that you also gave Sandy a credential boost back at the beginning of the year. If so, thank you for that--as it enabled us to do A LOT of work on the new platform. I do want to address your message above, as some of the information might be seen as misleading. Brand hosting is all the thing, and as you say--that is what made the most sense to Fiveer when they acquired this tchotchke (pun intended) as part of their acquisition of Creative Live. It is important to note that the "whole team of folks are paid to manage...." only concerns the core operations of the software platform. You know, things like updates, security patches, feature fixes, and enhancements--so on and so forth. You can pay them about $90 bucks an hour contract and they can help with other things. Otherwise, as long someone pays their invoices--they could care less about PhotoNet or what becomes of it. The rest is the responsibility of the domain owner/publisher to provide services such as contract developers, purchasing add-ons, domain registration, etcetera. Oh, and the forum-level operational staff to mind day-to-day business. As you well know, we had a pretty solid platform running before the acquisition and migration. That trashed many things that were not directly frangible between the platforms and eliminated many beloved features and abilities. We were left in October of last year with a plain vanilla install of Invision and an unknowledgeable administrator (Matt Jensen) who disappeared at the end of the month. Heck, people could not access or create albums, post to categories, or delete their own images, or get into their accounts--does everyone remember just how messed up it was? Here is a reminder of how PhotoNet looked at the time of Matt's departure, until January 19, 2023: Awe Inspiring, isn't it? Then we were given the key. 😎 Do you like the front portal to this site? I built that from scratch and committed over 500 administrative changes to this platform. Those with staff privileges here can find many of the summary change log documents and development discussions in the super-secret staff board. No "whole team of folks paid to manage...." had a single thing to do with that, and apparently still doesn't. While all of this was going on, NO ONE from corporate--either in the States or in Israel saw fit to respond to dozens of messages sent to them by a group of 4 of us. Or even now. I gotta tell you that I am still a bit miffed that none of them have ever deemed fit to thank any of us for repeatedly rescuing their site and preserving its value. There is no team running anything here. If it were not for the dedicated core of volunteer moderators, administrators, and support heroes--this place would have real trouble. What happens when our absent overlords forget to pay the domain name renewal to Enom? Let's talk about those volunteers for a bit. As everyone on 'staff' can attest, they were never contacted prior to or after the acquisition and migration. No one at Fiveer acknowledged them and certainly did not reauthorize or officially empower them to do anything on this site. Three times now a volunteer, not authorized by the owners--has stepped up to fix a major bollix. These dear friends are our support team. Then there is the matter of exposure and liability for any volunteer who takes any administrative or moderation action. Do you have an agreement that absolves you of responsibility if something goes south? That's why two of us are no longer doing administrative or moderation things. I don't like being sued... 🥸 At the end of the day (as the hackneyed phrase goes) here are the irrefutable facts about PhotoNet currently: The owners acquired the site as a piece of something else they wanted. A number of factors demonstrate PN as not something they are really interested in, or can easily monetize. In the last year, NO ONE from Fiveer has taken a formal and active administrative role or felt a need to communicate to the membership. Many features remain broken, missing, or far too difficult to use. No investment has been made in functionality or features. This site was dysfunctional for a week before a VOLUNTEER not associated with Fiveer stepped in to help us. It appears as if no one from Fiveer is even aware of this, as shown by the last time any of them logged in months ago. You know what? This degree of disrespect for the community and its membership is deplorable. Sure doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence, and certainly not somewhere I would risk my money on a subscription. I would also like to address that personal jibe in your message "a single hobbyist" and then touting the invisible mythical support resources for this venue. I take that as shade thrown on my new community website in that it is unreliable and poorly supported. Well, here is the deal. I am a professional web developer with around 30 years of experience in customer application and site development, network engineering, administration, and maintenance. Several of my previous client sites currently have over 1M members. FotoFora has a core team of contract app developers, full technical support for all platform updates, plus the full weight of 24-hour business class technical support with Inmotion Hosting VPS, and Amazon Web Services. And I am not the only senior administrator available. Two other developers I worked with designing FF are available to assuming active roles if necessary. FotoFora is a formal LLC that is structured and seed-funded to assure continuity into the future, with a business plan, transition plan, full technical changelog documentation of every step taken and line of code written to ensure the site is solidly credible. Oh, support is pretty quick for FF members too, not that much has been necessary. After over 20 years of membership (most of it paid) here at PhotoNet, I wish I could say the same for it. It makes my little hobbyist heart sad. But enough! Let's celebrate PN's resurrection from Bollix world!

This is a wonderful outcome! Thanks Roger! .

OK. FotoFora is different from those, as it is not an "image storage bucket" for thousands of a particular members images, but rather a place to post, comment, discuss, and build friendships around our love of photography.

There you go! https://fotofora.net/media/albums/rural-relics.14/ Here is the "Browse Albums" page: https://fotofora.net/media/albums/

Indeed. We were tossed such a 'lifeline' back in January when one of our member administrators was extended platform admin rights by an admin who is long gone, but felt badly about the mess that was left by the last migration, and how we had been seemingly abandoned by Fiveer last year. That newly elevated member admin then granted me the same rights, and I brought everything up to functionality and presentation as best I could without access to any funding or the ability to install addon modules to extend things that folks were complaining about. That was as TGOPS, and I have since discarded the credentials to log in that way. However, our problem is not in the forum software admin panel, but on the server itself--which is a whole different universe. As I stated before, we use "brand hosting" in that Invision Communities hosts their software for us--and is supposed to take care of updates and issues through their support staff. Note also that the issuance date and expiration coincide with the time of the last migration from Xenforo. Certificates of Authority are customarily issued by the server every 3 months, or once yearly depending upon the hosting. The cost may be built into the service contract, or paid by the site owners. Whatever the issue, it does not bode well, as the system is likely sending many messages to someone about this issue--which are not being read or worse, being ignored. Someone authorized as an account manager from Fiveer has to get hold of their support rep from Invision and get them to fix this. No member admin has access to the server admin panels that control our security. As no one listed in the admin list from Fiveer sees fit to respond to any of our messages--and there were a number of us on a campaign to do so at the beginning of the year--we have no real options. I even took the step Tuesday to contact Invision and was told that as I was not an authorized account administrator they could not help me or refer me to tech support. An "IPS Temporary Administrator" is probably not a human. Invision uses these accounts to push regular updates and fixes to their software. The only thing I see that happened was that our set of Smiley's was replaced with a new one. I call BS on that, as they took away one of my favorite icons... Of all the failures and transitions that I thought were possible that would lead to the collapse of PN, this simple thing was not one of them. 🤔

North Africa in 100K years? Strange times, yes?

@Nick D. I am surprised--but really not--to hear of POTN shutting down. I posed the same argument last month in this thread: Some communities that adequately monetize themselves are doing quite well. Photrio.Org pops immediately to mind. But also, that world is built on information primarily. Smaller, dedicated communities can thrive also. Thanks for posting the article, I have published it as a discussion article at the 'other place'. 😎 https://fotofora.net/ams/the-photography-on-the-net-forums-is-shutting-down.54/

Yup. After you have logged in, click on the | Member Albums | tab in the main top menu. Click on the green | Add Images | button. Here you can add images to Topical Categories, create and upload to personal albums or existing albums. The only thing I ask new members is to be considerate of the number of daily posts. The site is new and dozens of images at once overwhelm the image strips and notices. Gradually is the key, and after all, the purpose of the site is to look at and discuss the images. We had a former member drop over 400 images in a short time. They are no longer with us... As membership grows and more are posting, this sort of thing will not have a great impact.

There a a few reasons that the Amazon SSL/TLS secure certificate has not been renewed. For most websites, the issuance of certificates is an automated process. PN is hosted by Invision Community (IPS), the developer of this software platform. A temporary administrator IPS joined this site about 20 hours ago, and it is still broken. No one from Fiveer has been here since October 2. Here is Invision's details: https://invisioncommunity.com/buy/buy/ As to who I am, consider this bloviation: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickthrush https://papatango.photography/about/

Well, if a member that has been here since 1999--and cleaned up the mess that was left of PN back at the first of this year is the "same people" then that is true! I am the publisher of that site, and it was built with this day in mind... 🤔 It has absolutely no connection to PN, it's owners, assigns or heirs. Just me, 300 hours of coding and development work, and a $3500USD investment. It is the product of 30 years of professional internet and networking experience. Given the fact that the owners of PhotoNet were not (and are still not) communicating with us, I felt after nearly 120 hours of administrative work to clean up the mess left behind by Fiveer's admin Matt Jensen (within the limitations of this platform)--FotoFora was born in the spirit of what PN once was in its heyday from 2009-2016, when Phil's original platform was in place. That began in February, and formally launched in April. Quite a few PN members contributed to the planning and thinking. Consider this: http://fotofora.net/faq/view/about-fotofora.5/#faq-14 Remember that Phil Greenspun was just one person who began PhotoNet. I am the one person who began FotoFora. The rest is up to the community membership! 🍿

If you get an itch to post and talk about something, you could also join a few others over at FotoFora... 😀 Our certificate is current. 😼

It should be a temporary thing. Or not, depending on how Invision has its servers set up. This 'certificate' is the SSL/TLS credentials attached to the domain name that tell your browser that you are really at the site that you think you are, and are not being spoofed or redirected. I do not know what systems Invision (both our forum software and the company that hosts it) uses to monitor this, but on many LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) these things are automatically corrected in short order by the system issuing a new certificate. At issue is the time and date recorded on the certificate no longer is in sync with the server system clock. We will have to wait until it heals, because there is absolutely no one we can complain to. My servers for websites jumped this hurdle with new certs at 2AM or whenever the time rolled. But PN is not on my servers, so... 😄

Used to be numbers on the wall could lead to interesting developments. A gesture left behind, an action to be taken... 😻

I don't understand the problem here. Portable tech is moving to the USB C shell standard. Remember the ubiquitous and boxy USB B Mini that was on many phones and devices once? Or a mini phono plug for the wall wart? It's time to standardize and get rid of random proprietary solutions and outdated components. The fact that Apple is dropping their noxious charging plug tells the tale. Nothing about these changes affects things one already has. Nothing prevents anyone from dropping a $10USD bill and getting something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Jadebones-Lightning-Converter-Lighting-Connector/dp/B0C96LGNYB/ref=sr_1_19?crid=1M146UX3A13AQ&keywords=usb+mini+to+usb+c&qid=1699020269&sprefix=usb+mini+to+usb+c%2Caps%2C89&sr=8-19 I have been using USB to Micro converters for years, as all of my USB cables now terminate in the C format. The only thing one needs aware of is that some cheap "turbo' warts can cook older devices. Being too cheap is not a good thing in power supplies. Nothing about this matter is any cause for alarm or real concern. Time marches on, and there are always methods to keep old tech running. 🤔

"The Owners", which is Fiveer--inherited PN as surplus property with their acquisition of Creative Live, our previous owner. PN does not really fit with what they are doing, and the fact that it is a collection of users with distinct habits that settled in a long time ago helps nothing in that regard. I doubt that the trendy millennials in charge of this play much golf... Even though it's a horridly inefficient way to stock a FAQ-like answer system, this help board does work and has helped many. I actually have a better question, one that comes to the heart of what PN is today. Once upon a time, this was a booming enterprise, and things such as Flickr, Instagram, Imgur, SmugMug, and a host of others did not exist. Hundreds of members daily were uploading--and incredibly had time to discuss some, review others, and engage in general 'like' petting parties. Hundreds more daily came to read and comment. This is how we have come to host nearly 5 million images today. We are lucky currently to have 100 registered members a day visit. The usual number of people signed in at any time ranges from 15-25. The original intent of PN was to help photographers improve their photography--not as a free photo storage bucket. Which brings me to the question. Why would anyone want to deluge the front-facing pages with batches of 20, 40, 80, or 400 images? Not only would readers not view very many of these, but what happens when someone else decides to do the same thing in three minutes? Did you know that in our image inventory, over 60% of the members who uploaded them have not returned here in over a decade? No one really sees or discusses any of these loads of images. Why would anyone want to post that many images at once to an image discussion site? 🤔

@gdrastal you will probably not find more salient and concise words to describe the PN community as it exists today. 🤔 The idea of a standalone forum being the basis of a community has changed over the decades since such was possible. Now the 'collective' chooses social megasites that push a gamut of experiences in their faces at all times. We can choose to inhabit those spaces or participate in smaller ones. But the diaspora to these new mediums--and bad corporate management trying to figure it out--has led to the decline or demise of many formerly 'world-class' special interest communities. Here we are in a prime example. Much of the activity at PN is in the topical clusters and image-posting group threads. The core members that still make up the creative heart of PN are to be found there. As Fred noted, the majority of the core have learned to successfully navigate and manage the limitations imposed by the current version of Invision Community, our software platform. As to a FAQ library or manual, the best there has ever been since 2016 is found right here in the Help section. Since the first "Great Platform Update of 2016," various members have stepped forward in volunteer capacities to help other members. PhotoNet is software stable, and the platform could become better with enhanced features added. Remember that our last migration was installed 'plain vanilla', so additional plugins and enhancements were not included That takes money, expertise, and staff. Oh, a vision for the future is rather helpful as well. In the meantime, until our silent owners decide to do something or just quit paying to host the platform--we will muddle through!

Deleted Duplicate Post Content

You were told not to buy one of those cheap Muntz TVs. You must be a madman... 🤪 Over the decades, have you not discovered an unwound coathanger can sometimes work wonders with a cellphone and spotty connections? For a time in a rural place I lived, one had to stand in the front yard to get a signal. With a section of coathanger cut to a multiple of the carrier wavelength, I could call from inside the house. But you got me to thinking that I could have added a ground plane square of foil and maybe added a couple of dB's to the signal! 🤔 Ahh, the good old days. I still have no idea how to program a VCR...