Steve Hoffmann's Nature and Landscape Photography

This web site is basically divided into two sections. The first section consists of my photo galleries. The second section is comprised of digital imaging articles and equipment reviews.

The photo gallery section is my online stock photo gallery. You can buy enlargements of these photos or you can purchase these photos as high resolution digital images delivered on a CD. Digital images can also be made available for download using your web browser or by using FTP software. If you are interested in purchasing an enlargement or digital image, visit the Order Information page. If you would like to use one of my photographic images for any type of project, please read my Copyright Statement before going to my Order Information page. The photographs in this web site consist of landscapes, zoo animals and macro photographs of insects and flowers. The Tech Articles & Reviews section of this web site contains useful information about photography and digital imaging for the web and home digital darkroom.

Finding Your Way Around in This Web Site	My Copyright Statement	Monitor  Settings and Gamma Adjustments
Photo Viewing with AOL	Contact - Email	Photo Viewing with Internet Explorer 6
	About Steve
Over the the last 10 years I have bought about 25% of my gear locally and the rest online from B&H. B&H is head and shoulders above the rest of the online photo dealers. B&H has a huge variety in their inventory and their customer service is the great. If the B&H web site says they have it in stock, you can be comfortable in knowing you will get the item within the stated shipping time.

Finding Your Way Around In This Web Site:
Many of the links and choices you have for navigating the photo gallery section of this web site are contained in drop down menus. Using a drop down menu is very simple. Click on the little arrow on the right side of the drop down menu. Your choices will appear as a list under or above the original drop down menu. Move your mouse cursor to the appropriate link and click and you'll be on your way. You may have to SCROLL some of the drop down lists to see ALL of the links that are available!

If you use the advanced search and sort features available by clicking the "show sorting and search dropdown menus" link under the main set of drop down menus, you will occasionally execute a search that that doesn't return any results. If this happens, try another keyword or search parameters or just click the "Reset (show all)" button that is on the top of the drop down menus. If you navigate without the advanced sort and search functions and choose a category that shows no photos, select another category or select "all" from the category drop down menu. If you have been searching by keyword and decide to change galleries, click on the "Reset  (show all)" button before changing galleries"

The search feature available in this web site's drop down menu cannot utilize modifiers or wildcards (and/or = modifier & * = wildcard). Use a single non-plural keyword whenever possible. A non-plural keyword will generally return more results. As an example, searching 'all text fields' of the "Zoo Animals" gallery with the keyword LION will show all photos with the word lion in the searchable text areas of the photo database and photos with the plural LIONS. The plural keyword LIONS will only show photos with the full text string LIONS in the searchable text areas of the photo database. Unless you are looking to search a specific category in the database, the "all text fields" selection in the search dropdown will probably generate the most hits for your keyword.

Move around in the photo gallery section of this web site by using the appropriate navigational links on the thumbnail and photo pages. Navigation within the photo gallery section of this web site has been designed so that you usually don't need to use your browser's BACK button. Using your browser's back button in some situations may cause you to see a "this page has expired" warning or cause other navigational inconsistencies. If you get a "this page has expired" warning click your browser's refresh button and then click OK on the 'retry' message. Thumbnail gallery and individual photo pages are built "on demand" based on your selected category and the viewing preferences you have chosen in the drop down menus. Asking the browser to 'go back' doesn't always work well with dynamic web pages.

After Entering a Photo Gallery

Find the types of photos that you are most interested in by choosing an appropriate category from the CATEGORY drop down menu.

To move to a different gallery use the GALLERY drop down menu or the 'Gallery Index & News' link in the top navigation bar. TIP: before selecting another gallery from the drop down menu, be sure the current category is set to 'ALL'.

You can also choose to view the images as much smaller thumbnails by selecting 'microthumbs' from the LISTING TYPE drop down menu.

If you just want to see a list of images in a particular gallery select 'Photo list' from the LISTING TYPE drop down menu. If you want to see a list of photos along with some technical detail for each photo, select 'Photo tech details'. A fast way to find a specific type of image is to select an appropriate gallery and category and then select 'Photo list'. All of the photos have fairly descriptive names so you may find what you are looking for without having to download thumbnails. If you see an image name that looks interesting, click on it and a larger photo of that image will be displayed.

To see an informational window box that contains the photo name, photo number and a some technical information about the photo, place your mouse cursor over the thumbnail photo. A small informational window will open over the thumbnail photo.

By default the photo gallery shows 20 thumbnails or photo listings per page. You can increase or decrease the number of thumbnails or listings shown on each page by selecting an appropriate number from the DISPLAY drop down menu.

If you don't want to increase the number of thumbnails or listings displayed per page, use the PAGE drop down or forward and back arrows on the left side of the screen on the Gallery Browser page to go from page to page until you have seen all of the thumbnails or image listings in your selected category.

To see the newest photos added to any of the galleries select 'new photos' as the category from the CATEGORY drop down list on the Gallery Browser page.

If you click on any thumbnail you will see a larger photo at about 300X500 pixels. Under each photo will be technical information about the camera, lens, settings and accessories used for that photograph. Some of this technical information is presented as a 'clickable' link. If you click the link a 'popup' window will open that contains a more detailed description of that particular item. If you'd like to see a slightly larger photo, click on 'Large - 750X500 pixels' in the 'select image size' drop down menu located on the lower left side of the photo page. To go back to the thumbnail gallery from the photo page click on the GALLERY BROWSER link on the upper right hand side of the photo page.

If you want to view pictures consecutively, You can use the 'previous' or 'next' links or the thumbnails at the top of each photo page to go forward or backward through the pictures in your selected category at the size you have chosen from the 'Select Photo Size' drop down menu. The 'GALLERY BROWSER' link takes you back to the thumbnails or listings (Gallery Browser) page.

NOTE: In the 'Tech Articles and Reviews' sections of the web site you will find the links to other tech articles and reviews on the bottom of each page. You may have to scroll down the page to see these links.

GEAR NOTES: I did not keep technical notes for my photographs until the last 3 to 4 years. The shutter speeds and apertures listed with some photographs may be educated guesses based on a very consistent shooting style throughout the years. I include them only to give photography enthusiasts a basic idea of what I was trying to accomplish technically in the composition.

I have modified some of the PHP and html code in the Exhibit Engine's pre-made template pages that were used to make this web site. The majority of these modifications consisted of additions, deletions and changes to the descriptive text embedded in the code.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
All of the photographic images in this web site and all of the written content in this web site are protected by copyright and are not available for commercial use or ANY TYPE OF PUBLIC USE INCLUDING EDUCATIONAL, RELIGIOUS AND CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS without purchasing a copyright release. Proliferation of my images in the public domain would considerably reduce their commercial value.

PLEASE DON'T ASK TO USE MY PHOTOS ON YOUR OWN WEB SITE UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO PAY $25 PER IMAGE  FOR A WEB SITE COPYRIGHT RELEASE. ARTISTS READ THIS: YOU CANNOT USE A PHOTOGRAPHER'S COPYRIGHTED PHOTO AS A MODEL FOR YOUR ARTWORK UNLESS YOU HAVE NEGOTIATED A COPYRIGHT RELEASE FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHER. THANK YOU!

The images and the written content in this web site are only available to download for limited personal use. Limited personal use, as defined here, means for your own private individual use in your home or office.

This copyright also applies to the PDF article downloads available to purchase on this web site. Please do not copy and distribute the images, files or the written content contained in this web site in print or digital form. Distributing images, files or written content from this web site may put you or others at risk for copyright violations. If you would like to share these resources with others, please give them the appropriate URLs so that they can visit this web site.

To find out how to buy prints or high resolution digital images suitable for any type of publication, visit my Order Information page.

Web Photo Viewing Information:
If these photographs looked layered and the colors don't blend evenly or they look too dark or too light, learn how to make these web images look like real photographs. AOL users, learn how to maximize web photo viewing quality. Internet Explorer 6 users click here to find out how to view web photographs at their proper size.

Monitor Color Settings and Gamma Adjustments:
All Photographic web sites look their best when viewed with your monitor set for at least "24 bit" or "true color" color. If some of the pictures you see while browsing the web look layered or the colors don't blend then you are probably running your monitor at only 256 colors or 16 bit color.

If you want to maximize the quality of photographs viewed on your computer screen, set your monitor's display properties to 24 bit or 32 bit color (true color). To check or adjust these settings on a 'Windows' PC right click on any blank area on your desktop and select properties from the pop up menu. Click the settings tab. Select 24 bit or 32 bit color from the 'colors' drop down menu.

If these photos look too dark or too light, you may have to adjust your monitor's gamma. Gamma adjustment is accomplished by setting your monitor's brightness and contrast controls properly. As a general rule, gamma adjustment should start with raising the contrast control on your computer monitor to 80% or more of it's adjustment range. Do the fine tuning with the 'lightness / darkness' control. To check and adjust your monitor's gamma level and color depth settings click on the following link to see a Gamma and Color Settings Check Chart. You should be able to see each individual shade from pure black to pure white and all the colors smoothly blending together without any banding or speckle like effects. You will probably need to use more than the test page's recommended 25% for brightness. Use your browser's back button to return to this page after you have adjusted your monitor according to the instructions on this test page.

Maximize Photo Viewing Quality With AOL's Web Browser:
AOL compresses web photographs into a format they call ".art". This allows them to load faster but causes a significant reduction in the quality of the images. To set your browser to view web photographs properly go to "My AOL" and select "Preferences" and then "WWW". Click the "Web Graphics" tab and uncheck the "Use compressed graphics" box.

To complete the process, go back to the "General" tab and clear your temporary internet files. This will clear out all of the old compressed photos and pages in your browser's cache memory. The next time you visit one of your favorite web sites you will see better quality photographs.

These steps will affect pages that use JPEG (jpg) images. Most photographs used on web pages are JPEGs. Animations and small graphics are usually GIF images and will be unaffected. If you are unhappy with the change, you can recheck the "Use compressed graphics" box at any time.

Viewing Web Photos At Their Proper Size With Windows" Internet Explorer" Web Browser:
Microsoft's newest web browser Internet Explorer 6 (Windows XP browser) defaults to a setting that allows the browser to resize images to fit in the browser window without scrolling. The only problem with this is that the viewer has no idea of the actual size of the image. Also this temporary 'resize' significantly degrades image quality. To fix this problem open Internet Explorer 6 and click on the tools option in the browser's toolbar. Then click on 'Internet options'. Then click on the 'advanced' tab. Scroll down to 'multimedia' and UN-check 'Enable Automatic Image Resizing'. An alternate method of seeing web images at their actual resolution is to hold the mouse cursor over any image that you suspect has been 'resized'. If it has been automatically resized, in a second or so a little square orange box with blue arrows coming out of each corner will open in the bottom right hand corner of the image. Click that box and the picture will expand to actual size.