Search Member Websites?

Just went online to look at others' pix of Pt. Reyes National Seashore and found the Google results to pretty much suck. What I'd really love to have done would be to search photographer web sites, preferably limiting to California photographers. I'm not a techie -- hey, I even still shoot film! -- so I'm wondering if it would be a simple matter to have a search function on this web site that would allow me to search all member websites. This could be a good thing for the larger website as well if marketing/art director types found it helpful. Something to mull on.... There's gotta be a better way to "niche search" -- and if there already is, someone let me know!

Hi John, I'm not good at the internet tech side either, however, I have found on my own images at various sites it takes "keywords" to be in place for anything to rise to the surface on a Search, so to speak. So, unless a person has placed the correct "keywords" in the description of the image anywhere, it might not come up. Additionally, when searching it pays to try and guess at what others may have used in the verbiage that may be hiding it someplace. Again, this is just my own 2 cents on the searches I have tried and setup on my own.

John,

As Paul mentioned, searching requires keywording and a database. You won't find that here at least among "member websites." You can do a search within all the postings, but I don't think this is where you want to do a search.

However, there is an image search feature of the main Nature Photographer's Online Magazine (photoportfolios.net) where you can do keyword searches:

http://www.photoportfolios.net/portfolio/pf.cgi?a=sp1&gr=2

I see you don't have a portfolio there, so you might not have been aware of it. I did a search on the main search page listed above and found 64 entries when searching for "point reyes."
Searcher beware however..... that the keyword search contained the word "point" which returned lots of images not anywhere near Pt. Reyes. Keep your search simple. I tried "reyes" and the search returned only 6 images. Of course a general search that's too broad doesn't help either. I did "ocean sunset" and the search returned 1,199 images! (just from photoportfolios.net)

Alernatively, you can also do a google search for "stock photos" "stock photography" etc. and check out sites like fotosearch.com where there are many more images on file.

Hope this helps a little,
Lon

I have a lot of stuff of Point Reyes. Is anything in particular that you're looking for?

- Dan.

http://www.timelesslight.com

One issue with your request is that in order to be able to get a search hit, an image needs a title or description with location names on the same html page in order for the netbots and crawlers to know about it. If one looks through most of the ES&S landscapes for instance, you would notice most of the images posted are poorly described as to location. In many cases we photographers have an interest in protecting where we shoot so instead of giving the GPS coordinates will instead simply state something more vague like Point Reyes National Seashore. However here on NPN I've noticed it is more common to not even give that much information. I've complained about the lack of camera/film/ image information on post too and that hardly generated much interest except by the moderators. On my own website I not only have thorough descriptions on the image page of every print I market but I also have index pages that sort my images by location, type of image, etc. What I noted is all the big search engines seemed to really like that so if someone searches for one of the locations I have an image for, I'm sure to be on the list though it won't be near the top of the list since I don't pay for that. ...David

Thanks for the responses, guys. I'm looking for places to go shoot pictures, Dan.

The stock photo web sites were a good idea. Although they don't say very precisely where they were, I'm familiar enough with the place to figure it out. I have a photo book called "Pt. Reyes Visions" that's really good. I should go back and check that out again. I've started a Pt. Reyes page on my own web site and look forward to filling it out. I was thinking about heading up there again tomorrow, but I'm having a hard time deciding where I want to be at sunrise. Hopefully this storm will blow through by then.

By the way, Dan, I love your Home Town section. Excellent idea and execution.

Did you try flickr?
http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=point+reyes&m=text

There is some good stuff there, and some not so good stuff. I always search for photos prior to traveling to new places, it just takes a lot of time.

Also there is the California Coastal Records Project who have photographed the entire coast from the air:
http://www.californiacoastline.org/cgi-bin/image.cgi?image=200505508&mode=sequential&flags=0&year=2005

I've shot at a lot of the Point Reyes beaches as well as Muir beach. If you're looking for sea stacks, Muir, McLures and Kehoe have some but they're nothing like you'll find further north.

I actually think Point Reyes visions is a very mediocre look at a beautiful place.

What kind of landscapes are you looking for?

- Dan.

Google launched a service to create a custom search engine.

Google Co-Op
http://www.google.com/coop/

You enter the sites you want the search to query against. It would be pretty easy for people to list their sites and have them added to the custom search engine created.

I have a couple shots of Pt. Reyes, but nothing that makes up a dedicated gallery.

Sorry to be so late in posting here. I was checking some old fav links and re-discovered this one.

I am a native Northern California currently living the Sierra foothills east of Sacramento.
Just returned from Pt. Reyes last week. Bad timing. 40mph winds and chilly temps. I will be going back again soon. Still working on images to post.

My website is: http://www.jtnaturephoto.com

-- Jim