This is the only forum I have seen that does not support browsing your computer to add pictures. If this is due to cost, I would gladly pay $10/yr for a BLF membership to get that feature. Its archaic the way the pictures are handled now. So much is lost due to people know knowing how to do it or people just dont want the hassle of using a image hosting service.
Something to consider. Possibly two levels of membership. A free basic one and a more premium one with some better technology.
I get you completely………the trouble is who polices it? (I think SB and I had a similar conversation some years ago over pm)
Trouble is people generally don’t even know how to post a photo, or for that matter resize it. The result could be OUR paid for storage being full of THEIR massive photo’s - also there’s the reviewers who often upload gb’s of photos - I think they should at all times be stored off site in a private paid for account.
Any such move should have limits on users uploads (gb) to stop this, but of course we are back where we started then……. better still, limit image size so they HAVE to resize it first.
A photo can be any size if stored off site (as I do), I don’t mind at all really apart from loading times on needlessly huge photos but storing such huge files locally would soon fill up the space, then we’d have to pay more, maybe.
Like you say though, worth thinking about - maybe do a poll to test the water. I’d be up for it.
Of course there would be issues - for example, what if Joe Bloggs paid 1 year, then not the next…. do we delete his images? or leave them on there free whilst others pay……
A good argument for forum hosting is reliabilty. Image hosters come and go, and when they go, they take the material with them. Otherwise I’d say it’s not asked too much for everyone to caring for image hosting themselfs.
I got a Smugmug account years ago to store all of my photos. It’s not expensive and once you get the process figured out, it’s pretty easy to generate links to your photos.
I especially like that the Smugmug Android App automatically backs up all my photos to my online account.
When I want to post images here, I just log into my Smugmug account, select the image I want, then chose an image size to generate a link.