We’ve added over 1,500 movie theater photos

posted by Patrick Crowley on June 1, 2011 at 2:38 pm

Medium

You guys are amazing! Since launching our new website with photo gallery support, you have uploaded over 1,500 photos to Cinema Treasures.

Overnight, the photos section of Cinema Treasures has become one of the most exciting parts of the site. Whether you’re a historian looking for vintage images, an architect looking for inspiration, a theater manager or marketer interested in bringing in patrons, or a theater fan looking for theaters to visit, the galleries have already borne tremendous fruit.

That’s way more photos than we expected less than four days later, but since you’ve been asking us to add photo galleries for a very long time, we totally understand.

What can you do with our photo galleries?

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about our photo galleries, so here’s a quick description of what our galleries can do and answers to some common questions.

  • Upload your favorite movie theater images. There’s no limit to uploads, so you can add as many photos as you like. Over time, we expect to have dozens of images for theaters like Grauman’s Chinese, the Grand Lake, the AMC Empire 25, and many others.

  • Browse and search through all of the photos on Cinema Treasures. To see the photos of a specific theater, you click on the Photos tab just under the theater’s name and address.

  • Favorite your favorite photos (and theaters) by clicking the heart on the bottom of the photo. And to see your favorites, just go to your member profile page and click on the favorite photos link.

  • When uploading a photo, you can pick the license for that photo. We currently support several types of licenses: copyrighted, public domain, and a number of Creative Commons based licenses.

  • If your photo was shot on an iPhone or Android device and you upload the original photo, we’ll show a map of where the photo was taken.

How do we pick the default image for a movie theater?

We pick the most popular photograph for each theater and that becomes the default image. Popularity is calculated by the number of photo views for each theater, and we update the default image every day based on any changes in popularity. (We also reserve the right to pick the default image ourselves if we have a favorite.)

What else are we working on?

  • Due to your feedback, we’ll be adding the ability to remove photos you’ve uploaded later today. We hope to eventually support rotating photos, but for now you must rotate your photos manually if necessary.

  • New and better ways to browse all the new photos people are uploading.

We need your help!

While we’ve made huge progress in the past few days, there are still thousands of theaters that don’t have a photo yet. If you haven’t uploaded any photos of your favorite theaters yet, please take a moment to upload them.

(Thanks to Ken Roe for his gorgeous photo of the Grand Lake in Oakland.)

Comments (11)

Ross Melnick
Ross Melnick on June 1, 2011 at 3:49 pm

Make that 1,600 …

HowardBHaas
HowardBHaas on June 1, 2011 at 4:17 pm

We will be able to edit text or change photo license? I made 2 mistakes that I would like to correct.

Patrick Crowley
Patrick Crowley on June 1, 2011 at 4:59 pm

@HowardBHaas. Yes, we’ll support editing photos soon. But probably not for another week or two at least.

Ron Newman
Ron Newman on June 2, 2011 at 1:46 pm

Once I’ve added a theatre, is there some additional step I need to take to put it into the ‘Newest Theatres’ list?

Bway
Bway on June 2, 2011 at 2:07 pm

The photo section REALLY has breathed new life into the site! All the new photos really make you revisit theaters probably not looked at in years. It makes every theater come to life on an ongoing basis!

Patrick Crowley
Patrick Crowley on June 2, 2011 at 6:58 pm

@RonNewman Your theater submission will appear on the website soon. Just like on the old site, submissions are not posted until our theater editor Ken Roe has had a chance to review them first.

Ron Newman
Ron Newman on June 3, 2011 at 12:16 am

Patrick: my submission got posted as soon as I submitted it. It is at http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/35976 (and already has a comment from someone other than me). However, it is not in the Newest Theatres list.

spectrum
spectrum on June 3, 2011 at 12:20 am

Has this ever happened to YOU?? I put up the first photo for the Lorain Palace – a nice view of the front facade/marquee, and attached a snazzy description trumpeting the wonderful architecture. Lo and behold, when I later brought up the Palace’s webpage, there is a nice big exteriot photo of… the stagehouse!

Man, that was embarrasing. Turns out the .thumbs.db file for my photo folder was corrupted so the thumbnails didn’t match the actual photos. But all fixed now!

ChasSmith
ChasSmith on June 4, 2011 at 11:00 am

First of all, I have to say that this is probably the greatest website renovation EVER. No joke. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Of course, as others have said, the new photo capabilities must be considered a leading asset.

And this is where I have one question: You mention that you eventually hope to support the rotating of photos, but that we must do it ourselves — before uploading — for now. That’s fine, except that in one set of photos I uploaded this morning, three of them appeared in incorrect orientation, but they were already correct on my end, and appeared correct when uploaded to my own web page in the past.

Any words of advice on this point will be greatly appreciated. And thanks again for everything!!

Bway
Bway on June 6, 2011 at 10:43 am

I have to agree with Chas. I usually HATE site upgrades, as they usually are inferior to the original. This is one of those rare cases where the upgrade actually lives up to the hype….it’s GREAT. The old site was nice, but it was outdated, and a lot of things were missing. The new site has addressed a lot of the “suggestions” people have asked for over the years, and made a good site, GREAT. And of course the photo section is a winner hands down.

Patrick Crowley
Patrick Crowley on June 11, 2011 at 1:49 pm

@ChasSmith Thanks for your feedback. Glad you love the new site! :D

As for rotating photos, in most cases, you won’t need to rotate photos when uploading photos from a new camera or mobile phone (like the iPhone).

But, sometimes, for older images and images that were scanned, we may not be able to determine the orientation. And that’s when manual rotation will be necessary.

So far, the vast majority of images have been uploaded without needing rotation. But there are definitely exceptions.

@Bway Thank you. That means a lot.

You must login before making a comment.

New Comment