Wowza by G8keeper

G8keeper and Johnny Splunk approached me a couple of months ago with a great idea of starting a Gallery for hosting screenshots. I was thrilled with the idea and when they offered me the opportunity to be the curator, I couldn’t say no for what I know will become a great site of sights. The Observatory will also grow beyond just images, as we’ll try to include links to other exploration resources as well. We kick-started it with our Alliance membership and are now ready to open it to the public for viewing and submissions.

Astero by Mynxee

With that, it’s my pleasure to introduce the EVE Scout Observatory. I believe it’s fair to say the majority of, perhaps even all, explorers share a common love for the beauty that New Eden has to offer. As we travel the stars, we often try to capture and share the wonders we find along the way with our fellow capsuleers via the images that we take. We post and share them in many different ways on many different sites. There’s no one place to go, no observatory, no gallery that showcases the marvels of our cluster.

EVE Gate by Mushroom Greene

Wouldn’t it be nice to go to one site to peruse images of New Eden? A place where you can download and use images for things such as desktop backgrounds? That’s the idea behind the Observatory. This will be a place for our pilots to share their amazing images with the rest of New Eden. I can’t think of an Alliance or Corp that’s done something like this. I believe this will be a first and it fits nicely with EVE Scout’s and Signal Cartel’s credo of being a service to all of New Eden and embracing what it means to be a true explorer.

With that in mind, as curator, it will be my task to ensure the quality of the gallery. We’re not looking for quantity here, so please, don’t submit images by the cargo load. Only submit images that you are truly proud of and wish to share. Images that you don’t mind if others will download and use. We’ll not be watermarking these or making any other kind identifying mark. We want this to be a public, creative commons license for all to enjoy as they see fit. If you have an issue with that, then don’t submit. I will be creating an album for each astrophotographer, so your work will be associated with you, and I’ll be adding “by pilot name” to the title.

Nebula by Triffton Ambraelle

I’m not going to be too critical, so please don’t be afraid to submit an image. There’s only one scenario that I’ll flat out refuse and that’s if the GUI is showing. If that’s the case, see if you can trim the image down, cutting the GUI out, then submit it. If requested, I’m happy to provide feedback and if I do reject an image, I will be sure to let you know why. We’ll be housing the gallery on Flickr, then submitting the best to Tumblr and Twitter.

Screenshot tips see “Astrophotography 101”

To submit your work, please email a link from a location you’ve stored the image such as Imgur or Flickr. Imgur is easy to use and you don’t have to have an account!

Email: shots at eve-scout dot com

Quit and Curious by Ned Thomas

Include at a minimum the Title, Pilot name, and System Name (if possible). Optionally please send all the details you can so I can tag the image accordingly. Such as ship class, planet name, station name, etc. Please, I don’t have the time nor am I going to take the time to fill in any gaps. Don’t assume I’ll know what kind of ship it is or place or whatever. I just don’t have time. Please fill in as much as you can about the image.

Once accepted, your image will be posted at our Flickr gallery, in our albums and our collections.

Truly exceptional images will then be shared to our Observatory on Tumblr and Twitter on a regular basis, perhaps daily or weekly, depending. We’ll see how it goes.

Below are a few images that recently won our kickstarter contest to get the Observatory going. I think our judges did an excellent job of picking some of our pilot’s best submitted works.

by Teclove duVall

Vista by Dr Zemph

Astero Porn by Ishtar Komarovo