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Palouse Open Source Image Bank
Personal introduction
My name is Will Simpson and I live outside of Moscow, Idaho. Mary and I have a dog, Boykan, and three cats who rule over us. I'm originally from Canada but have lived in various parts of Western United States since 1967. Currently, my day job is in a hospital where I help manage a large database of digital images - radiographs specifically (x-rays). No, I'm not now and neither have I ever been a 'pro'. Like many photographers of my generation, my interest in photography has been renewed by the digital revolution. I've had a couple of darkrooms in my time and they have always been messy and expensive. I wasn't very good in the darkroom. Now that I can use a daylight digital darkroom, my creative energies are growing. Also the fact that there is no recurring film cost has really opened up the possibilities. Do I aspire to be able to produce photographs and exhibitions that are 'pro' class? Yes indeed! Dreams can come true with a lot of hard work and a little luck.
I have over twenty years experience as a photographer and with computer technology. My earliest experiences on the Internet were with Lynx, a non-graphical gopher browser. Before that there was CompuServe and Genie and all the various regional and national BBS. My first modem was a super fast 1200 baud. My first camera was a hand-me-down Argus range-finder camera. The first one I bought new was a Nikkormat FTn. My interest in the technical nature of both computing and photography are married together with this site. It allows me to express some creativity and delve into the exciting field of web design, coding, and database integration. One day I might get good at this. One day it might be useful.
Support this site
You can support this site by spreading the word that these pictures are available. I encourage you to link back to my site. The pictures here are free for you to use in any way you want. My day job provides enough income support my photography habit.
If you use a photo
If you do use one of the picture you find here, please let me know. You can email at linux dot photo dot geek at gmail dot com. I enjoy seeing what others have created with these photos. Send me an email and let me know how you use the pictures you're using. It would make me really happy if you linked back to this site and gave credit for any pictures you used. The pictures are free for you to use and you should feel good about doing so.
I currently use Canon equipment to capture my pictures. I use a Canon 10D and a G2 with an assortment of Canon lenses. For processing of the pictures I use Gimp2.2 which is an Open Source image manipulation application. It is available for Window, Mac and Linux. I am a Open Source advocate and use Linux as my operating system. Dave Coffin has a great plugin for Gimp that allow manipulation of RAW files.
Website design inspriations and tools
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This website has been developed starting with the great work of Alison Gianotto at snipe.net with her "Free Image Management Software" package called Snipe Gallery. I then modified and build on top of it.
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My tool of choice for web design is Quanta which does a great job of managing uploading changes to my hosted website. This is a KDE application that runs on Linux. My current Linux distribution is Ubuntu 'Hoary Hedgehog 5.04'.
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The random image generator I use on the main page comes from Matthew Sturkenboom and is available here: randompic.php.
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This site is loosely modeled after Jon Sullivan's wonderful Public Domain repository of pictures. He has placed thousands of pictures on the web for you to use in any way you want. I have created this site in that same spirit. There is no need for me to hoard my images. I also use this for improving my skills.
Inspirational Photographers
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The best site on the web for instuction and inspiration is luminous-landscape.com. Michael Reichmann is the principle architect of Luminous Landscape. He has tons of experince and does a great job of balancing the technical and artistic side of photography. Together, with a small team of photographers, he produces a fantastic video journal that is available via subscription. The site luminous-landscape.com also contains equipment reviews, tutorials, shooting locations, workshop directory, essays and regular columns by some great photographers and educators. Also there is a forums and video previews of the Luminous Landscape DVD. This is a huge site with over 2000 pages all with no commercial advertisements.
Podcasting Photographers
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Brooks Jensen produces an audio program that is both thought provoking and focuses on some of the larger ideas in art and photography. Brooks is the editor of Lenswork Magazine which is about 'photography and the creative process'. Brooks doesn't podcast these little audio works but is worth the effort to manually fetch them.
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Gordon Smith is one of the early pioneers of podcasting. he is the author of 'A pictorial journal of life in rural Australia'. While he has recently slowed, at one time he had a daily podcast talking about his photography. Gordon is prolific photographer and produces a sort of sound-seeing tour of regions around Armidale, New South Wales, Australia.
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Chris Marquardt has a web design and audio production business in Tubingen, Germany. Chris's podcast 'Tips from the Top Floor' is smartly produced. He has various segments with guest photographers. It is a lively fast paced show and he obviously has a lot of fun doing it.
If you have questions or requests, please email me at linux dot photo dot geek at gmail dot com.
Copyright
A copyright is a license granting certain uses of the material with the copyright. You are free to take any you like and do whatever you like with them. I have chosen to release these photographs using a Creative Commons license. Currently I am reserving the right of attribution. That means you must place the text "Photograph by Will Simpson" somewhere on the document (electronic or print) where one of my photos are used. Feel free to use anything here for parodies, education, commercial or private use.
The photos, graphics, designs or text I've produced and integrated into this website are not copyrighted. Use them for whatever you want. Use it all. Sell it. Mangle it. Whatever you want. Please. But it would be polite to let me know so I can at least enjoy whatever creative use you're putting it to. Use it for whatever you want.
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