Sierra Vista Remembered
How To Contribute

I started this little site with only 7 photographs which my parents had saved. Since that time several others have contributed their photographs. I hope that you're reading this page because you have a photograph (or photographs) of our time at Sierra Vista and it isn't one already posted. Here's how you can help.

First, please call (or e-mail) me if you have photographs which could be added. It's possible that someone else has just sent me the same photograph, and I don't want to ask you to do some work if there's not a good reason. At this very moment I have only one photograph which has not been pulled apart into individual student pictures, but that one is listed on the appropriate page as "coming soon."

Then, you can choose which of two ways you want to contribute: you can either create a digital copy of the photograph yourself, or if that is difficult, you can send me the photograph and I'll do it -- and send your photograph back afterwards, of course. The first contributed photographs, from Diane West (Boothe), were mailed to me and I copied them. The next photographs, from Cindy Meier (Demoret), were scanned on a friend's scanner and then e-mailed to me. As you can see, both ways work.

If you decide to scan your photographs yourself (or at a friend's house) here are some guidelines so that I can preserve the quality of the photos when they're posted here:

• Scan the photos as "Black and White Photographs" or "Sharp Black and White Photographs" depending upon the scanning software. Please do not use color because the originals are black and white, and color makes the files Real Big.

• If your scanner permits you to adjust "Tonal Balance" or "Level Equalization" then please adjust this before scanning the final version of the photograph. Some photographs are very pale, and telling the scanner this will help the final image be more visible. One of my photographs was very dark, and even though I had to redo an entire class of photographs, the effort in starting over was worth it.

• Scan the originals at 300 pixels per inch (or 300 dpi). This provides a small margin of error above what the final images on the site are presented as (the ".large" versions, not the first ones you see).

• Save the scanned image in either GIF or TIFF formats. These are file formats which preserve the full quality of the scan. Even the compression algorithms used in these formats are what are called "lossless compression algorithms". There are probably other useful lossless formats, but these two are the most common and I can easily use either one.

  Do not save the image in JPEG format. This format uses a lossy compression algorithm which has the benefit of making the file sizes much smaller (unless you choose a high quality compression setting -- and then there's no point) but the cost is a loss in image quality. The original digital versions of all photographs I have are GIF or TIFF, but the versions on the Web site (at least the first ones you come across) are all, or will soon be all, JPEG images so that you can download the images quickly.

• Finally, before e-mailing them to me, please check how the images look on your monitor. Although I've had good success using GIF images as the "original," one person's scanner had better luck in sending me TIFF images. Your mileage may differ.

• The final file size of a single 8-1/2 X 11 black and white photo scanned at 300 dpi and saved as GIF or TIFF will probably be between about 2.0 and 2.5 megabytes. This is a big file, and if transferring this to me via e-mail is too difficult, then please contact me and we'll figure out a better way to transfer it.

• Please check for any notes of names. Diane West's (Boothe's) mother wrote all of the names for some classes on the back of the photo or on the enclosing folder. In third grade I started to list the names of classmates on the back, but like most third graders I must have gotten distracted before I got very far. :-)

In advance, thank you for your help in building this record of our time at Sierra Vista.

Chris