Welcome to our site! We are a group of enthusiastic photographers at all levels of the craft using Nikon equipment. This guide has been written to provide members with some idea as to what we are all about and how you can extract the most out of our community.

Quick links:
History of Nikongear.com
Types of photographers
Photo feedback
Letting others show edits of your photos
Code of conduct
Photo hosting
Nudes section
Jokes section
Articles & editorial submissions
The Pic Of The Week
The Chairman's Challenge
Hall Of Fame
Advertising on Nikongear.com
Internationalism
Reporting problems
Technical problems
Private messages
Cancelling your membership
Supporting the site financially

The Guide To Nikongear.com

History
Nikongear was founded by Dallas Dahms in September of 2005. Originally intended as a site for collecting information on all things Nikon, the birth of the forum in April 2006 saw the site take on a new life and direction. Nowadays the forum makes up most of the content you will find on this site.

Types of photographers here
There are all sorts of ‘togs here. We have professional photographers here who provide valuable input, from critique to gear information, to post processing techniques. There are also some semi-pro guys and gals who help out, as well as the purely amateur folks who do photography for fun and who want to learn.

Photo Feedback
Our gallery area exists for members to share their images and receive constructive feedback on how they have executed their shots. It is assumed by the membership that if you post photos here you are looking for C&C, unless you specifically use the “No crit - just sharing” icon when you make your post.

Because we are not a very busy forum, sometimes feedback may be a little slow in coming, or sometimes it may not come at all. Don’t be discouraged by this. It’s nothing personal, it’s probably more a case of the members not really having anything to add that is of any use to you. Keep posting and if you are specifically looking for C&C try using the “Crit me, please!” icon when you make your post.

Another tool you can use to invite feedback is to create a simple poll with your post where members who are short on time can vote on your image anonymously without leaving any written feedback.

Letting others edit your photos
We have recently introduced a flag for members to state whether they mind if others do this to their images or not. You'll find this flag in your profile under "Forum Profile Information". The default is NO, but if you don't mind seeing how others would edit your images you just need to tick the box next to "Edit my pics?" and this will become a YES.

Code of Conduct
Nikongear is intended to be a forum for adult photographers. We don’t have heavy-handed moderation or censorship here. However, we do ask our members to abide by our simple code of conduct: respect the rights of others to have an opinion that differs from your own and refrain from making personal insults against other members or groups of people. Ad hominem attacks won’t be allowed.

Swearing is not censored, but at the same time it will be frowned upon by more sensitive members, so try to be mindful of what others may think before you say something you might regret.

Banning of members will only happen if those members are persistently in breach of the code.

We have an Off Topic area where members can post anything that is bugging them. However, please remember to check your political and moral rants at the door BEFORE entering! If you make posts along these lines you can be assured that somebody here will have an opposing view which could lead to raised blood pressure and possible coronary failure. Not a good idea to use OT to vent that sort of thing - rather go and take some pictures! ;D

Photo Hosting
One of the advantages of being a member here is that we offer free image hosting space to all members. You get 5 megs of space on our Gallery 2 installation just for being a member. You can also add an image as an attachment to your post, provided it is smaller than 300kb and isn’t longer than 1000 pixels on either edge.

Nudes
Yes, there is a section on this site where images of naked people may be posted. At present this board is only visible to paid members. If shooting nudes is your thing and you don't have a paid membership but would like to contribute there, please send an email to Dallas on the forum. We'll make a plan and give you a concession to view that board. This policy is in place for reasons relating to advertising (which sometimes appears on the site for non-paying members). If your images contain any nudity please move them into the nudes section. A note on porn: we all know what it is when we see it and we’d prefer not to see it here.

Jokes
We like ‘em! There is a sub-board of the Off Topic area set aside for members to post their funnies, clean or not-so-clean. ;-)

Articles & Editorial Contributions
We openly encourage contributions from all members, be they in the form of a tutorial, a photo essay, or an equipment review. If approved these contributions get posted as HTML pages on the relevant sections of the site. If you would like to include some Adsense or PayPal Donations code with your article make sure to include it with your submission. In the case of Adsense code, it may be subject to colour changes to make it fit with the site’s colour scheme.

The POTW (pic of the week)
Every week we honour a photograph that is posted to our image gallery on the forum. This job is done by our POTW committee. Each member nominates a photo and one of the members chooses from those nominated. This image is displayed as one of the sidebar widgets on all the Nikongear pages. The member who owns the image also gets a Silver Membership which brings with it additional forum privileges and accesses.

The Chairman’s Challenge
Every fortnight we run a challenge that all member’s can enter. The theme for the challenge is set by the winner of the previous challenge, provided they submit a theme at the time of sending their entry in. Read the sticky in the Challenges board for more information on how this works. Challenge winners become Gold members, which provides them with 100MB’s of hosting space on Nikongear.

Hall Of Fame
The Nikongear Hall Of Fame is a place where all our Pic Of The Week (POTW) and Chairman’s Challenge winning images are kept for posterity. This is housed on our Gallery in an album called "Hall Of Fame". Members can visit this area at all times and also leave comments on the images in the gallery.

Advertising / Advertisers
We recently fired Google Adsense as an advertiser on the site because of the poor quality adverts being served up, as well as the fact that their code was slowing the loading of our pages. We're actively looking for new advertisers who can buy deals directly from us. If you are in the photo trade and would like to advertise with us, or perhaps sponsor a prize or two, please send an email to dallas@nikongear.com and tell us about your product.

International Belonging
Our site attracts membership and visitors from every continent. We encourage you to select your country’s flag to display in your posts, not for promotion of nationalism but rather to let others know where you are coming from. This helps to dispel any potential misunderstandings that might arise if English is not your first language.

Reporting Problems
There are seldom any major problems on Nikongear, but in the event that you feel something posted here is not in the spirit of the forum or definitely contravenes our code of conduct, please use the “Report Post” feature. This sends an email to the admins and mods who will attend to the problem. We have a moderation centre that is only visible to the admins and mods and we usually like to discuss reported matters there prior to taking any action (if its necessary).

Technical Problems
We have a very reliable host and we are also using Open Source software that is particularly robust and stable. However, if you have any problems reading the forum or experience difficulties with any part of the set up here you should send an email to admin@nikongear.com explaining exactly what the problem is. We’ll try to get back to you in the shortest amount of time.

Private Messages
PM’s are used to communicate privately with other members. This feature has been restricted to paid members or members with more than 100 posts.

Please don’t abuse the PM system by harassing other members with unwanted messages. If you are receiving abusive or unwelcome PM’s please get hold of the admins and explain the situation. We can’t read your PM’s but if we receive complaints of this nature we reserve the right to place the offending member into a group without PM privileges.

Leaving Nikongear.com
If you would like to leave the group please log into your account and select the "Delete this account" option from the profile summary.

Supporting the site financially
There are two ways of helping us financially: PAID membership or Donating via PayPal (click the top right donate button). We are very grateful for any financial support we get.

Contacting Nikongear.com

Site owner & administrator: dallas@nikongear.com

Moderators: support@nikongear.com

Contact telephone number: +27(0)71 1331733

This document may be updated and refined from time to time without notice. If you are unsure of anything covered here just use the admin@nikongear.com email address to get in touch with the admins of the site.

Last updated on 8 March, 2009.