Real Photo

Real Photo has been set up to provide a photographic survey of the British Isles in the early years of the 21st Century.  The aim is to provide our citizens with an opportunity to think about where development is going well and where it is leading to destruction of the existing landscape  Photographers will be invited to take photographs of their local area, both of what they find of beauty and what they find distressing.

How Beautiful is the Countryside of the United Kingdom?

Whilst so much of this country is very beautiful there is a lot of it that is not.  The landscape may be, in some places, a superb setting for the cities, towns, villages and hamlets and in these places there will be buildings and other structures including parks and infrastructure that do not detract from their location but may even add to them.  But in other areas the landscape is not, to be frank, attractive. In these areas the role of the architects of the built environment will be to try to make the most of what they have.

HRH the Prince of Wales

Prince Charles got the ball rolling with his book "A Vision of Britain" where a number of principles were stated that form a guide to conservation and development both in the countryside and in the built environment.

Web Publishing

One of the advantages of publishing on the Internet, the World Wide Web, is that the published material may be studied at little cost, both in monetary terms and in terms of conservation of  material resources.

Photographers

This is an interesting and possibly profitable opportunity for photographers to use their cameras to record their immediate environment.  I fully understand that photographers will want their copyright to be retained and may want to supply prints of their photographs or grant a license to republish their photos elsewhere.

Website Organisation

I am currently (December 2006) considering the format of the website.  The website is hosted by www.xyzweb.co.uk which is pleased to host such an ambitious undertaking. Realphoto may be configured in various ways to meet the needs of the photographers who submit photographs.  In addition to the time required to manage the website there is a relatively small financial cost.  The success of the website will be measured by its contributors. Income may be generated by context sensitive advertising and affiliation, provided this does not compromise the integrity of the website.

To both encourage photographers to submit photos and to minimise management of the website I am considering the creation of sub-domains which each photographer can manage for their own contribution if they wish or delegate management to the webmaster.  Each sub-domain will initially be designed to provide a common framework. The template used will be designed to display photographs to maximum effect and include a text area for supporting the image.   Photographers may decide to vary the template, for example, subscribers  will be permitted to include links to their website or they may wish to use part of their own part of the website to promote their other work and services. To take an active part in the development of the website photographers will need to have access to Frontpage 2002 or later or other  web publishing software.

A recent survey of towns can be found via the Wikipedia website at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crap_Towns

NB the website is being published ahead of its "Open for Business" stage in  order to be listed by the search engines

Geoff Edwards  Editor

Contact:

xxx@realphoto.co.uk substitute ed for x's