Mimetic Galleries » News

A Multimedia Exhibition

David Gross — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:12:06 +0000

If you want to have an exhibition dedicated to multimedia, here’s how you can do it. In a previous post, I wrote how to show a video in an exhibition.

Create a new exhibition, called “Multimedia”. (You can change the name later.)
For each video in your exhibition, find a small picture that you can upload. It does not matter what the picture is! It is just a trick to create a new picture in the exhibition.
Upload the fake picture. This will create a new picture. Now, follow the instructions on how to show a video in an exhibition to connect the new picture to your multimedia video.
Repeat for each picture in your exhibition.
When you’re done, navigate to your new exhibition. You should see your videos, ready to play. Now, get the ID number of the exhibition. At the top of your browser page, where you see something like “http://mywebsite.com/gallery.php?ProjectID=29″, write down that last number. In this example, write down “29″.

Now, let’s say you want a menu item to link to multimedia. By this, I mean a link in the same menu that says, “New Exhibitions” or “About (my name)” or “Blog”. That menu is set in the “Gallery” tab, as an “Advanced Feature.”

In your list of exhibitions, click on the
Click on the Galleries tab.
Click on “Show/Hide Advanced Features”.
Be sure the checkbox “Use custom menu bar”, next to “Menu Bar (Top)”, is checked.
In an unused, blank entry in “Menu Bar (Top)”, choose “custom 1″.
In the “Menu Bar Custom Items” area, further down, write this code into field, “Custom Item 1″
Multimedia
Remember the ID number we wrote down, above? In place of “XXX” in the code, put that number. In this example, we chose “29″, so you would end up with:
Multimedia
Click the “Save and Close” button to save your changes.

Go to your front page, and you should see the new “Multimedia” menu entry.

Showing Videos in Exhibitions

David Gross — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 04:26:41 +0000

You can show videos in the place of pictures in galleries. The videos must be hosted on a video sharing website, such as Vimeo.com or YouTube.com.

Since the video should be the same height as other images in a gallery, try to create your video 300 pixels high. The width doesn’t matter. However, since the videos resize well, if yours is large it will work just fine.

Here’s how to work with Video on Vimeo.com (YouTube.com works almost exactly the same way).

(Vimeo has updated to HTML 5, so the code is much short!)

Get an account on Vimeo. Log in to your account. Upload your video. After the website has processed your video, you’ll be able to watch it, and there will be a link titled, “Embed.” Click on it, and you’re given some code in a box.

Method #1: Using the New Code (use this)

Vimeo has updated their system to use the HTML 5 coding. The new code, for new browsers, iPad, and iPhone, looks like this:

Athens fish & meat market from milos bicanski on Vimeo.

Copy the code. When you click on the code, all of it will automatically be selected, so you can simply choose “Copy” from your edit menu.

Now, go to your gallery website. Log in, go to the exhibition that will show the video, and upload a new image. It does not matter what the image is, so make it small! Really…the uploading just creates a new place-holder which we will use to hold the video. This is not the best way the system could work, but it will do for now. Once you have the new image, edit it. The third checkbox down is titled, “This is a video, not a picture.” Check it, and a new text box appears.

Paste the “iframe” code, above, into the text box. The only part you want is the “iframe” definition .That means starting from, and including, “”. Erase the extra code, starting with the “

”. Here’s what the code looks like after I’ve deleted the extra stuff at the end:

Now, skip down to “Set the Size,” below.

Method #2: Using the Old Code (don’t use this unless you have a good reason to)

Vimeo has updated their system, but the older code for older browsers is still available, if you want to use it. The old code, for older web browsers, looks like this:

&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1
&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1″ />
&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF
&fullscreen=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true”
allowscriptaccess=”always” width=”400″ height=”225″>
</embed>

Antoine Goff from David Gross on Vimeo.

Copy the code. When you click on the code, all of it will automatically be selected, so you can simply choose “Copy” from your edit menu.

Now, go to your gallery website. Log in, go to the exhibition that will show the video, and upload a new image. It does not matter what the image is, so make it small! Really…the uploading just creates a new place-holder which we will use to hold the video. This is not the best way the system could work, but it will do for now. Once you have the new image, edit it. The third checkbox down is titled, “This is a video, not a picture.” Check it, and a new text box appears.

Paste the “Embed” code, above, into the text box. The only part you want is the object definition .That means the codes and everything in between them. Erase the extra code. Here’s what the code looks like after I’ve deleted the extra stuff at the end:

Set the Size

Now, we need to set the size. Since pictures in your gallery are probably 300 pixels height (only custom installations would be different), you want your video to be 300 pixels height. So, we need to calculate a proportional width, this way:

(width / height) x 300 = new width

Using the example above, I can see from the code that the width is 400, and the height is 225 pixels. So, I calculate like this:

(400/225) x 300 = 533 wide

You may need to the fix the code itself, too. In this example, you would replacing the value following “width=” with “533″, and the value following “height=” with “300″. If you’re using the old coding, remember to change the values both at the top of the code, and at the bottom of the code.

Now, on the picture page in my gallery, just above where I pasted the “embed” code, I put 533 into the first box (“wide”) and 300 into the second box (“high”).

Save your work by clicking the “Save” button or the “Save and Close” button.

Your video should appear in your exhibition. You can use the “Organize” exhibition editing page to move it around in the exhibition.

Note that not all themes support this well — flexible themes, for example, won’t work correctly. That’s because unlike pictures, a video isn’t supposed to resize.

Add Pictures by Email

David Gross — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:01:36 +0000

Your gallery has always allowed you to send it pictures by email. However, you had to caption the picture properly, as if you were sending it to an agency.

Now, it’s much easier! To send a picture to the gallery:

Make a new email message, and attach your picture (it must be a JPG format picture, not Photoshop or TIFF).
Write the nickname of the exhibition in the email Subject (if blank or unrecognized, the picture will go into your portfolio exhibition).
Add any information, such as the title or caption (see below).
Send the email…
- Private gallery: If you have a private gallery in your own domain (e.g. yourdomain.com), then email the picture to pix@yourdomain.com.
- Public gallery: If you have an account at mimetic.com (or another shared, public gallery), then email the picture to pix@mimetic.com (or the name of your public gallery).

You can set the nickname of your exhibition by editing your exhibition, then clicking on Show/Hide Advanced Features. Below the title is the field, “Nickname.” Use a simple word you can remember — if your exhibition is called “Fishing in Afghanistan,” you might write “fishing” for the nickname.

I’ve created an exhibition called “Snapshots” where I can send pictures from my camera phone (it’s an iPhone). Take a peek at www.davidgrossphoto.com/gallery.php?ProjectID=156.

About Security

Can anyone send a picture this way? No. The gallery only accepts pictures from email addresses it recognizes. If you send a picture to the gallery from an email account that isn’t the one in your profile, the gallery won’t accept it right away. Instead, it will look inside the picture, for IPTC caption information. If it can’t find a match for the credit/byline/author, it dumps the email message.

Adding Title, Caption, Date…

You can also add information to your picture. In your email message, you can write any IPTC field information you want. In particular, you can add a title, caption, date, city, and country to the picture. Just write the field name you want (e.g. “Caption”), followed by a “:”, then your text.

Title, Headline

Author, Byline, Credit, Source

Caption

City

State

Country

Below are the fields you can use. You can use one, or all, as you wish. Extra text in the message will be ignored, so don’t worry about your email signature.

Fields You Can Use:

Title: The title of the picture. You can also use the word, “Headline”.

Caption or Description: The caption or description of the picture.

Date: The date the picture was taken, written this way: YYYY-MM-DD. For example, write “2009-07-05″ for “July 5, 2009″.

Author or Byline or Credit: The creator of the picture, usually your name.

City: City where the picture was taken.

State: State or province where the picture was taken.

Country: Country where the picture was taken.

Example:

To: pix@mimetic.com
Subject: fishing

Title: Man Fishing in River
Caption: An Afghan man fishes for catfish in the Wazir river at sunset.
Date: 2009-07-05
Credit: David I. Gross
City: Kabul
Country: Afghanistan

From my iPhone....

RSS Feeds – Promote Your Gallery

David Gross — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:20:50 +0000

Anyone can subscribe to your RSS feeds and be notified of any changes to your exhibitions. Simple send people to

feed://yourdomain.com/rss.php

and they’ll see your RSS feed. What’s really cool is that it works on the iPhone, too. Anyone with an RSS app, such as Free RSS, can see your new pictures right away.

You can also have an RSS feed for a single exhibition that shows the latest entries. You will need the ID number of the exhibition. Look in the URL for your exhibition, after “ProjectID=”. For example, if an exhibition is at http://www.yourdomain.com/gallery.php?ProjectID=156 then the ID number is 156, and your feed is:

feed://yourdomain.com/rss.php?action=project&ID=156

Be careful: “ID” is uppercase.

New Themes

David Gross — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:12:33 +0000

We’ve added three new themes for gallery pages, featuring big resizing pictures: Big Picture Left, Big Picture Across, and Picture Right. These themes are designed for gallery listings. They match the default theme, but they show a large picture from the gallery that will resize to fit the screen. It’s a nice compromise with the Picture Background Resizing theme, which fills the whole screen but can obscure text.

We’ve turned on live editing for the #container setting, so you can start messing around with margins, padding, and other aspects of the main area of a theme. Give it a try.

Major Upgrade!

David Gross — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:05:27 +0000

I’ve finished a major upgrade to the gallery system (http://info.mimetic.com/). I’m very exited — I’ve been working on it for months. The coolest new tool is the live theme editor. Finally, you can change how your gallery looks by clicking right on the gallery itself! Also, you can now add uploaded files, as links or even embedded in text. Now, it’s easy to add a picture or a link to PDF file.

Add social networking

David Gross — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:12:08 +0000

The best way to draw people to your gallery is through social networking. Many people share their favorite websites using Twitter, Digg, Delicius, and other social networking sites.

We’ve learned that just being mentioned in a popular blog can draw thousands of viewers — people who might otherwise miss your exhibition.

Here’s how to add a sharing menu to your menu bar. You will be changing the menu bar for an entire gallery, not just one exhibition inside a gallery.

Go to your administration pages, and click on the Galleries tab. Chose Edit to the far right of the name of the gallery you want to change, and you’ll see an Edit Gallery form. Then, click on Show/Hide Advanced Features. This will let you edit the menu bar.

Click the checkbox before Use custom menu bar?

You can chose each menu item in your menu. Make the last item Share.

Click on Save when you’re done. If you look at your gallery, you’ll the Share item in your menu bar. It’s the one with the “+” in a box.

That’s all you have to do, and people will be able to tell their friends and followers about your exhibition with a single click.

New Exhibition and Slideshow Listings

David Gross — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 22:10:33 +0000

There are two new catalog pages you can use. They use the SlideShowPro gallery page, a fantastic Flash viewer that we use to show slide shows. The new catalog pages, called “All Shows” and “Catalog”, will show all exhibitions in your gallery.

Both “Catalog” and “All Shows” can be added to the menu bar of a gallery. Catalog shows a grid of exhibitions on the same kind of page as you would see a list of exhibitions. “All Shows” shows the same grid of exhibitions, but on a slide show page. Both let the viewer watch a slide show of an exhibition.

Catalog

All Shows