About the LensPlay Gallery


Bar Harbor ©Copyright 2006 Bob Atkins

This isn't a image sharing website like Flickr. The purpose isn't to provide a place for people to store and display their holiday snapshots or even to provide extensive gallery space for accomplished photographers. Rather it's a place for photographers to place few images, with a commentary on how (and/or why) the images were created. The commentary is as important as the image and may help others learn about the way a photographer thinks and approaches a subject. In return for contributing an image a link is provided to any other website where more of the photographer's work can be viewed. The Lensplay website is currently viewed by over 12,000 unique visitors each month, with over 80,000 pageloads, so there's a good chance the images will be viewed by a wide audience.

If you would like to display three of your images here, you can upload them and a short commentary on each via the upload page. The commentary is very important. It should be more than a caption, in fact if you use less then 50 words, you can't make an upload! This may seem strict, but if you can't say at least 50 words about an image than you probably haven't thought about it enough.

• File Upload Page

You should add all three images at the same time. Once the images have been uploaded, you will not be able to upload different images without first contacting me to have the existing images removed. The system will not allow you to overwrite existing images. Since I'm not currently using any authorization and authentication system for users, allowing image overwriting would be asking for trouble!

  • If you want your images to appear exactly as submitted then each of the three images should be no more than 500 pixels in any dimension and no larger than 100 Kbytes in size. For example, 500x500, 500(w)x330(H) and 330(w)x500(h) are OK. If you submit a larger image it will be scaled down, but there is an absolute limit of 1MB on submitted file size. Files will be downsized using an algorithm to optimize image sharpness and minimize any changes to overall image quality.
  • The text should be around 50-100 words and should be a description of the image and the way (and/or why) it was created. Equipment specifics really are not necessary, but can be included in addition to the description if you wish.

All images are displayed with a ©Copyright notice crediting the photographer. If you want to embed a copyright notice in the image itself, that's OK too.

Regarding image rights, here's the plain text version: Basically these are your images and you retain all rights to them. By submitting them to LensPlay you're simply giving me permission to post them under your name in the gallery section on this website. Nothing more. Anytime you want them removed or changed, I'll do that as promptly as I can. This site isn't run by a committee, a team, a corporation, an investment bank or a website consolidator service. It's just me and the buck stops here!

If you have any comments or question you can reach me by email at 

Bob Atkins