Features of this Website
Overview
This website was designed, coded, and implemented by the photographer, Jon R. Holmquist. He is the sole designer and producer of all content, artistic and technical, on this website. He's an accomplished programmer, and has managed computer systems as both an I.S. Manager and a CIO.
There are two general classes of imagery available on this site. Regular rectangular photographs are familiar to everyone. We also specialize in stitching panoramic photographs. These are created by combining many photographs, taken in sequence by "panning" (most commonly) horizontally in a scene, into a seamless image with an extreme width to height ratio. Properly appreciating this type of image requires a special Panoramic Viewer that allows you to navigate the 'wrap around' image via a rectangular viewing window.
There is also a hybrid class of images that are assembled from several photographs like panoramas are, but because they don't have extreme horizontal aspect ratios, they're displayed as regular photographs. These appear as super-wide angle photos.
Index
Customer Service
Because we're a relatively small, independent company, we're able to provide you with the highest quality and personal customer service you can find anywhere. Photographer Jon Holmquist personally oversees the processing of your order from start to finish. We keep you apprised of the status of your order via email and you can always check on it online by clicking on the Order History link in the footer of all pages. Call us at 541-345-9632 (9:00am-5:00pm PST) if you have any questions about our website or if you rather deal directly with a human instead of ordering online.
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Content Access
There are currently 43371 photos in regular rectangular format and 1290 special panoramic photos that come up in a panoramic viewer when you select them. They can be accessed in three ways:
1. Galleries are a hierarchical set of visual indexes that show thumbnail samples of each location/subject which allow you to navigate to the galleries content pages. These show thumbnails of the actual photos with their photo number and title and the buttons: . Unlike most of even the largest stock photo houses, we've developed methods that allow the gallery images to dynamically fill in each row to the width of your browser and remain centered.
2. Photo Search allows you to search for photos by keyword.
You can also find text on web pages using the website search.
All of these features allow you, once you've found a photo you like, to obtain a large view, by clicking on any gallery thumbnail, 'Order' button. This takes you to our exclusive Image Cropper, which both allows you to see the exact crop that any of the the common images sizes will produce, or actually crop the image to any dimension you want. Each change instantly shows you the current new price (based on image size and style).
The 'Large View' page is also where you're able to freely download a comp photo, or 'Comprehensive Rendering' for purposes of "comping": determining the feasibility of the photo in your project, planning, or presentation for approval.
We also provide an online download feature. In most cases, after we received confirmation of payment, we make your photo available for download and email you a link to it, or if its small enough, we simply attach the photo to email.
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Search Engine
This site contains a full featured search engine for both photos and webpage text.
like virtually all others, it works using "keywords" - words that describe what you are looking for. Because it s so important, you'll find this tool in the upper right, and at the bottom, of all Photo Stock Source web pages. Results are presented with the same 'look and feel' as the gallery pages. Panoramic photos are ordered to appear first in the pages to help the aesthetics of the display.If you search for text on web pages, the results are displayed in a list format with links to the matching pages.
It contains full feature Boolean operators for inclusion, exclusion, phrasing,etc. This search engine also performs what is called "stemming". If you search on the word "running", the stem of that word, "run", will also be included in the search. For the same reason, if you search on a plural word like "lakes", the stem of that word, "lake" will also be included. Read the search help.
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Account Benefits
The account feature stores the minimal personal contact information (e.g. email, and shipping address) needed to process orders online. We do not store credit card or any financial information. Signing up for an Account allows you to:
- store and retrieve your current lightbox when you 'Sign In'
- access your Order History
- reload your Contact Info
- track Order Status
- access and reprint order invoices
- guarantee Rights Protected licensing
We also provide a 'password lookup' feature in the not too uncommon event that you forget your password.
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Technology
This website derives much of its functionality from technologies which include using a database and numerous custom written support utility programs. These allow us to periodically regenerate most of the 45700 (e.g. Galleries) pages when new content is added and do things like telling you exactly how many pages are on this site - right now.
Each time we regenerate our site, we also create new sitemaps. One that you can read, and another (as an XML) document that we feed to search engines, which increases the likelyhood that you'll find our site when you search the internet. We also make use of a Resource (ROR) file that contains "meta" information useful to search engines. The sitemap and ROR are both examples of RSS (Really Simple Sindication or previously, Rich Site Summary).
We use descriptive filenames and directory names for all content pages to clarify contents and to enable searching.
We dynamically produce pages that show you the Large Photo View, and the Search pages at the moment you click on a link. Targeted keywords and titles are also automatically created to make finding these pages via search engines more likely. We can read the license status of a photo and not allow anyone to buy if it has a current Right Protected license.
We dynamically generate a PDF document anytime you create an invoice. We use a java applet for creating the Panorama Viewer and if you don't have java on your system - it automatically 'fails-over' to a javascript version.
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Documentation
This website is rich with documentation with a 'Help' button on virtually every page. All buttons should display information about their function if you place your mouse over them without clicking. There are many links within regular text which will take you to help pages about the subject. There is an extensive help module which provides even more information about every feature on this page. There are several 'Demo' pages that show how a feature looks or works.
Each photo contains a title and highly accurate location and description information. If you discover any content errors we'd appreciate your feedback.
We are constantly adding to our frequently asked questions page as we discover new things to clarify.
There is a page about us as well as one to contact us. There is also a sitemap which lists all of the major content pages.
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Formalities
No professional and sophisticated website is complete without several important formalities.
There is a page which ensures you of your privacy and others that describe the polices and the copyright assumed by this site and its terms of use.
We also have explicit documents that describe our Rights Protected license Agreement (HTML) (PDF), Royalty Free license Agreement (HTML) (PDF), and Photo Comp Usage Agreement (HTML) (PDF).
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