How to Send Photos to MR…

MR Photography WorkshopPark Place Porsche in Dallas

August 23, 2014

One of the most difficult things for our club has been getting pictures from the members to the Slipstream Editor, the Photo Editor, and the Webmaster. There are many ways to do this:

•Send an e-mail w/ the photos attached or embedded•Burn a DVD and mail it•Burn a DVD and give it to somebody•Burn a Flash Drive and give it to somebody•Upload to a Flickr/Dropbox/ account and send an e-mail around•Upload to the MR-PCA website Photo Folder•Send to a Cloud

All but the last two are 20th Century solutions!

We have created a storage area on our Regional web space for photos. It is located at:

http://mavpca.org/photos/PhotoDrop

If you access that PhotoDrop folder, you will find that there is some organization going on in there. You should see folders w/ descriptive names of our recent events.

For example, you might see the following:

Index of /photos/PhotoDrop• Parent Directory• AutocrossSchool/• ConcoursDetailingClinic/• MayAtMayos/• SocialForMay/• SummerRally/

Apache Server at mavpca.org Port 80

If you click on any of these folders, sub-folders may be there. I clicked on the “MayAtMayos/” folder and saw:

Index of /photos/PhotoDrop/MayAtMayos• Parent Directory• CharlieDavis/• DavidRobertson/• LindaBambina/

Apache Server at mavpca.org Port 80

If you then click on one of the photographer’s names, you will see a list of their photos. If you click on a photo it should be downloaded to your browser.

Note that this is not intended as a way for members to look at pictures! It’s a way for the members of the Region that USE our pictures to access them quickly.

We are creating photo galleries that will enable members to look at our pictures. However, these galleries are not a good way for members to download high-quality images. Our photo galleries are still a work-in-process, but you can go look at what we have; the URL is:

http://mavpca.org/photos/MRPhotoGallery/

In contrast to our old flickr galleries, this gallery is curated, which means that somebody selects the images to be uploaded. If there are duplicates or photos w/ problems, they are not uploaded to the gallery. Occasionally a submitted photo will be edited before being put in the gallery. This should make the gallery a LOT more fun to view.

OK, so how do members submit photos to the MAVPCA Photo Drop?

This gets a bit technical, but I’ll try to explain it in a simple way and give lots of examples. You need to use the File Transfer Protocol [FTP] to upload your images. To do that, you will need some software that knows how to send files via FTP. Windows Explorer can do FTP uploads, but it is terribly difficult to get it set up to do it. Apple also has issues when trying to do FTP uploads. Not recommended for most users.

The best approach is to install an “FTP Client” on your computer. There are hundreds of them. Most cost a few dollars. Most are not worth a few dollars, IMO. There are two quite good and free FTP clients:

•Core FTP LE [http://www.coreftp.com/download.html]•FileZilla Client [https://filezilla-project.org/download.php?show_all=1]

Core FTP LE is only for the Windows platform, but FileZilla also has an OS X version. I’ll use screen shots of Core FTP LE as examples.

When you launch Core FTP LE, it will pop up this Site Manager box. It won’t have anything in it. You need to do some typing [only need to do it once].

Click on “New Site” and name this site something like “mavpca.org”. Your new FTP site will appear in the big box on the top-left.

Now click on each of the boxes on the right side and fill in the data exactly as it is shown. I know the Password is not shown and I don’t want to distribute it here; contact me or James Shoffit for the secret Password. After that we will also teach you the secret handshake!

Lastly, click on “Connect”.

You will not have to do all this again. The next time you launch Core FTP LE, this Site Manager box will pop up and you will just hit “Connect”.

The primary Core FTP LE window looks like this. The top box has a running list of FTP commands and responses. You don’t normally need this information. The bottom box will have information about files [pictures] that you are transfering. The left box is your computer directory; it will look different than mine. The right box is the folder directory on our website. When you click on “Connect”, it will take a few seconds to send information back and forth. Exactly how long depends on many factors, but the speed of your Internet connection is a key one. On my system it takes about 2-seconds. During this time, you will see some activity in the top box and the right box will show the folders in the root directory of mavpca.org/photos:

Double-click on “PhotoDrop”. The right box will now change to show the folders in the “PhotoDrop” area:

Double-click on the folder for the event that you have photos from. If you don’t find that folder, we will have not done our job properly! The “plan” is to always create folders in advance of events to make it easy for you.

If you don’t find a folder w/ a name that describes the event you are looking for, you can either call me or create it yourself.

To create a new folder, first make @#$% sure you are in the “PhotoDrop” area. This should be obvious, but in case it isn’t, there is a banner above the right box that has controls and information:

You should see “/PhotoDrop/” in the address line. If not, navigate there. You can use the “Up-folder” icon to go up a level. When you get to the top level, double-click on “PhotoDrop”. Then click on the “+folder” icon and type the name of your event. Don’t use spaces in this name. Capitalize each word.

As an example, select the “SummerRally” folder and you will see that someone has added a folder called “GeorgeLuxbacher”:

I’m guessing it was George. To add your photos, you should create a folder called “YourName”. You do this by clicking on the “+Folder” icon and typing “YourName” into the Make Directory box, then click on “OK”.

When you do this, the “YourName” folder will appear in the right box:Next, double-click on the “YourName” folder.

This will open your new folder so that you can transfer pictures to it.

Now you should use the left box to navigate to your pictures stored on your computer.

There is a “Directory Tree” tool at the bottom-left of the left banner. Click on it and a “Local” box will appear. Select the folder on your computer that holds your pictures and click on “OK”.

The left box will now show all the picture files in the directory you selected:

You must select the files that you want to transfer. You can click on each one w/ the “Ctrl” key depressed. You can click on the first [highest in the list] file and then, holding the “Shift” key down, click on the last [lowest in the list]. You can use some combination of these shortcuts, like use the “Shift” method for 439-444 and then use the “Ctrl” method for 445A and 446.

When you have all the files selected [highlighted], click on the right-arrow folder Icon and the files will appear in the bottom Box.

When files appear in the bottom box, they will start transfering. You will see a LOT of FTP commands scroll up through the top box and gradually, the files will appear in the left box. That signals that they have transferred. As each file successfully transfers, the bottom box will momentarily show “Success” in the Status column. Then those successful lines will disappear. When all files have been transferred, the bottom box should be empty. If some files didn’t transfer properly, those lines will remain with a “Failed” Status:

If you want to abort a transfer, there is a Red-X icon in the banner above the right box.When the transfer is completed, you should see all the files you highlighted in the left box existing in the right box:

You can perform directory operations from within Core FTP LE. For example, you can delete and rename files in either your computer or the remote site. These operations work just like they would when using Windows Explorer.

If you want to look at a picture on the right side [stored in our webspace], right-click on the file name and select “View” from the drop-down menu. You will see the backward transfer happen in the bottom box and your computer will launch Windows Photo Viewer [or something similar] w/ the image displayed full screen.

When you exit Core FTP LE, there is a several-second delay. Watch the top box to see what happened.

When the transfer is completed, you should see all the files you highlighted in the left box existing in the right box:

After you upload pictures, you should send an e-mail to The Curator, the Editor, and the Webmeister. Tell us what you did.

If you have problems setting up your FTP Client, we can help.