BPN Newsletter 2, 28 February 2015

BPN Newsletter 2, 28 February 2015

• Image of the Year selection
• New Forum: Story Sequences
• BPN Membership Changes
• Recurring Payments and Subscriptions and BPN Subscriptions
• Publisher's Favorite
• Our Sponsor
• Previous Newletter
• Q&A and BPN Support
• Unsubscribe

Image of the Year selection

Work on selecting the 2014 Image of the Year (IOTY) is done. The overall winner is "Fish Toss" by David Salem. This image was selected by the jury as 'Avian' category winner. The reward is a Lifetime Membership. Congratulations David !







The following stunning images were selected as winners in the other categories:

• In the Shadow of the Ele, by Marc Mol in Wildlife

  
  

  When you look at the thumbnail of this image, you wonder what this is about. Until you see the shapes of the camouflaged elephants, almost blending in with the desert colours. Great image, a lot of stories could be told when you look at this image.

• Fun with Smoke...Waves, by Steve Adkins in Out-Of-The-Box

  
  

  Very creatively photographed image. The smoke (from a cigarette) colors blue because of the size of the burnt particles. Only blue light gets reflected because the other colors have wavelengths that do not bounce on these small particles. You can see Steve's smoke setup here: http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...th-Smoke-Waves.

• Fluffy, by Vida van der Walt in Macro and Flora

  
  

  I don't know how Vida managed to get close to this spider, let alone have it pose like this. If you go to her website http://www.jumpingspiders.co.za, you almost think it is easy, but that is only a first impression.

• Dune 45, by Peter Delaney in Landscapes and Cities

  
  

  Dune 45 is a star dune in the Sossusvlei area of the Namib Desert in Namibia. Its name comes from the fact that it is at the 45th kilometre of the road that connects the Sesriem gate and Sossusvlei. Standing over 170m, it is composed of 5 million year old sand that is detritus accumulated by the Orange River from the Kalahari Desert and then blown here (Source: Wikipedia). It is almost as if there are two light sources here, which creates a very strong image. The B/W conversion boosts this effect.

• Wte, by Giovanni Frescura in Eager to Learn

  
  

  Two fighting birds on an ice lake. Great moment captured and very well done.

All of the category winners will receive a one year subscription voucher. Congratulations everyone !
Note to the winners: your free one year subscription is best taken by cancelling your next paypal subscription payment: your BPN expiration date has been extended by one year.

New Forum: Story Sequences

The forum "Story Sequences", announced last month, is now active and open for submissions. Gabriela Plesea will be leading and moderating this new forum.


You are all invited to submit your images in this forum to tell your image story sequence. Please make sure to limit the number of images to a maximum of 5.


There are 4 ways to upload multiple images in a thread:

1. Use the vBulletin IMG tags to import an image to a thread.
   [ IMG] http: /www......[ / IMG]. Use multiple of these tags to display multiple images
2. Members, who are able to upload images to BPN, can use the BPN uploader to upload multiple images. Although uploading goes one at a time, you can actually upload multiple images per post/thread.
3. Members can use their entitled albums to host the images on BPN. Once uploaded in your album, you can reference these images with a [ IMG] http: /www ....[ / IMG] tag.
4. You can also start a thread and then submit a post/reply for each image.

The forum can be found at the following link: Story Sequences.

BPN Membership Changes

BPN is changing how participation to the forums will be managed and who can actively participate. As of 1 March all current 'Forum Participants' (non-paying members) will be granted limited BPN memberships (BPN Limited Membership group). On 1 June their limited memberships will expire and they will become 'BPN Viewers'; they will no longer be able to start threads or to comment on threads started by others. BPN will become read-only for this group.


Similarly, participants who register after 1 March will be granted granted limited BPN memberships (BPN Limited Member group) for exactly 90 days. After that time, they will automatically be moved to the 'BPN Viewer' group, limited to read-only privileges.


Folks who become 'BPN Viewers' will need to sign up for 'BPN Membership' to continue BPN Member privileges. Note that the BPN Member group has more privileges than the Limited Member groups: see the table below for a detailed overview.


The table below show the detailed rights of the different usergroups:
















Become a member by clicking on this link: http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/payments.php. This page lists all membership benefits in detail.

Recurring Payments and Subscriptions and BPN Subscriptions

As of 1 January 2015, BPN’s annual subscription fee was raised to $40. Why?

1. Despite ever-increasing operational and maintenance costs during our seven years in existence, we have never had a rate increase.
2. When we tried to raise funds by introducing ads, there was lot of resistance. We, as owners, agree that BPN should not be flooded by advertisements

Please help us keep our new low rate in place by supporting our main sponsors, B&H, Outdoor Photo Gear, and the BIRDS AS ART Online Store by using the logo links on the site.


For new members, the price increase will be straightforward. Their first payment will be $40 and will get them into the new scheme.


Existing members with an automatic Paypal renewal who wind up paying the old fee of $20, will receive a mail from staffbaa@att.net with detailed instructions as to how to proceed.


Existing members who currently have automatic Paypal renewals set up for the old fee of $20 are asked to follow the somewhat complex directions immediately below carefully just before their next recurring payment is due. Many of those are scheduled in mid-January through February so now is as good a time as any. Though most will have not trouble canceling their old $20 recurring payment, we do apologize for any inconvenience that we my have caused.


First log into your Paypal account and cancel the current $20 recurring payment. Yes, please cancel your existing $20 recurring payment.


Do this by going to Profile -> My Money -> My Pre-Approved Payments. Click on the Update button. Now Identify the line for BPN/BIRDS AS ART and then click on the active hyper link for Merchant. A new Billing details screen for BPN will pop up. Then click on Cancel.


Folks that do not see an active link for the word Profile should click on the gear icon (upper right). Then they will need to click on Preapproved payments. To cancel the $20.00 preapproved payment, click on the merchant name, in this case, Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART. Now comes the tricky part: in the upper left of this screen, below the words "Subscription details" and "active" you will see links for Cancel and View history. Click on the Cancel button and then hit the button that says Cancel Profile. No worries. You will not be making any changes to your Paypal profile, you will simply be canceling the Recurring payment.


If you have trouble canceling your $20 recurring payment , please let us know with an e-mail to us at samandmayasgrandpa@att.net and we can take care of it.


Next, please set up a new Recurring payment to BPN by going here http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/payments.php and then selecting your correct currency from the drop down menu at the top of the page just to the left of the order button. Then click on the Order Using Paypal box, enter your password, and click the Login box. On the next screen check all of the details and then click on the Agree and Pay box.


Go to Activity and you should see your payment.


Once we receive your $40 payment BAA/BPN will issue a $20 refund to your Paypal account. If you run into any problems along the way you can e-mail us at samandmayasgrandpa@att.net or call us at 863-692-0906 during weekday business hours or on Fridays before 2pm.


It took us about 8 hours of work to figure out how to implement these changes in a relatively seamless manner.

Publisher's Favorite

When you visit BPN, the home page features two side bars. The sidebar on the left, lists the current selection of 'Image of the Week', managed by Daniel Cadieux. The right sidebar represents a selection of striking images from all categories that drew special attention. The newsletter will select a special image that stood out, selected outside the voted IOTW. At present, the image displayed here shows a mother Black Rhino that managed to escape the horrors of poachers but was eventually killed by a puff adder. The image was created by Carl Walker. Read about the details in Carl's thread, by clicking on the image.

Our Sponsor

Our main sponsor is B&H Photo Video. Support our site by clicking on the link below. Using the BPN affiliate link will not cost you a penny but will be greatly appreciated.

Previous Newletter

The previous newsletter can be found on the BPN Help forum: BPN Newsletter 1, 24 January 2015.


Topics covered were:

• Image of the Year selection
• New Forum: Story Sequence
• Recurring Payments and Subscriptions
• Vertical Image Limits
• Your BPN email address
• CDLC Videos: BirdsAsArt Bird Photography Tutorials
• Publisher's Favorite
• Our Sponsor

Q&A and BPN Support

In case of user, posting or other BPN problems, contact me on my BPN email address: peterkes@birdphotographers.net.


Subscription and payment problems: staffbaa@att.net.

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• Settings (top right)
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• Find: Messaging & Notification
• untick the mail notification for "Receive Email from Administrators"

best,
artie & peter