This Gallery ~ the images and the various readable stories found here, is dedicated to the friends who have been a part of my life in the mountains.

My intent from the beginning has been to showcase, with images and stories, the adventures and camaraderie I have shared with this gang of mavericks over the past 35 years.

There are numerous ways to explore the gallery.

• From the home page you can mouse over and click the image thumbnail to locate a state, province or country and explore all the albums for that region.
• Or, you may choose an acitivity category to view from the horizontal menu bar (found on every page). You will then be presented with a list of available albums and stories in that selected category.
• You can also go to 'about' and click on the 'players' link. Pretty much everyone is listed there and is hot-linked to any image that contains their name. A quick way to find a certain person no doubt.

Clicking and thumbnail once you have chosen an album will start a customized version of the now popular "Lighbox" slide show. Some albums have so many thumbnails images that a paging class has been configured to move thru the additional images. To continue the "Lighbox" slide show it is necessary that you click the next or prev links in the navigator to bring up the next set of images where you can then click any thumbnail to continue.

We have recently added a new feature. Some of the albums now have a link to the "Story behind the pictures". Any album with a story will display a visible link to that story.

All images on this website are available for licensing. Please refer to the rate sheet link in the upper right hand corner of this window. At some point in the future we would like to make licensing images available online. While that is a ways off as I write this and you should not hold your breath, we do want to encourage more people to view and license images in digital format.

Recently we have begun to rescan all the images found on this site. This is due in no small part to the fact that I have finally learned how to do a proper scan. Realizing too that almost 60% of web users now have a broadband connection, I wanted to upgrade the large image size to 600 to 700px on the long axis. I think you will find the results pleasing and certainly more fun to look at.

A list of where everyone (more or less) fits into the big picture. Expand a list and then click a name to do a search of the database for all images of a particular person.

Contract All | Expand All

Like the writer who slaves over a story to get it just right, or the photogarpher who keeps going back to a certain location knowing that better lighting can be had --- writing code is a similar endeavor. Many years of trial and error, of scrapping it all and starting over, of just plain knowing it can be down better have lead me to this point in time where all the little nuances of the trade can now be brought together in one display - the results of finally having a pretty clear understanding of XHTML, CSS, JS, PHP & MySQL. Of all these technologies, Javascript has been the hardest language to learn.

The only code borrowed from the open source community that you will see in this gallery are customized versions of Peter Lavin's excellent book 'Object-Oriented PHP' and the aforementioned 'lightbox'. I am the first to admit that what is contained in the four files that make up the 'lightbox' is way over my head. Rather then understanding every line of code, the trick is to learn how to customize them. For CSS issues, I found Andy Budd's book 'CSS Mastery' to be invaluable, particularly the concept that the rollovers for the menu can be done with one image rather than two!

This, the third version of the image gallery, is my attempt to build a table free website with little or no styling declared outside of the style sheet, and to use OOP to write the PHP functions that make up the server side connection to the mysql tables. I use Filemaker and its new MySQL ODBC drivers to connect directly to data, thus providing a graphically easy interface to add, edit and delete records via a desktop app. I also use the GD library in PHP to create and size the thumbnail images on the fly.

All the shots are scanned from 35mm slides using a Konica-Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400II. It and they are no longer available having been absorbed and 'downsized' by Sony (what the heck, who needs a slide scanner these days anyhow). Image editing is done with Jasc Paint Shop Pro (the final version before Corel bought and bloated the product).

I have not spent alot of time worrying about whether this thing is completely cross browser friendly. But, for most part it is and while there are inconsistencies in presentation (read IE6) they are minimal.

Its probably all geek speak to most of you, but for those who are inclined to wonder how it was built, this is at least a simple explanation of the project in conceptual form.

There are some obvious holes in coverage that I am trying to address. Rock climbing being one of them. NH rock climbing since 1990 is woefully behind schedule, but since most of the scans have been done, its only a matter of getting them into the database. I am also adding an album of shots from climbing in the Gunks. Its not very current, but then again either am I. I also have some stuff from Shag Crag and the Camden area in Maine that is waiting in the wings. The last couple of winters around here have yet to be added and other than bcs and ice in VT, I have not put any time into getting scenics and hiking shots back into the gallery. Same can be said for Maine and NH.

Suffice it to say, there is plenty more to come. Its just a matter of getting the work done.