Dear members and friends of ipernity,

1) World Photography Day - August 19th, 2023. Will your photo be out of this world? Get your cameras ready! Our annual World Photography Day celebration is happening soon. Remember that contributions will need to be taken on August 19th. More details will be posted in a news article about a week before the event.

2) Online kindness.
ipernity is a place to spread our joy of photography, but sometimes our worldwide communication can be challenging. We are greatly privileged to be able to talk with people from around the world. Let's remember that with that privilege comes responsibility. A responsibility to be kind. Many say that to be kind online one needs to be respectful. While it's easy to type "Be Respectful" as a rule for online communication what does that mean? And being respectful can be especially difficult when communication crosses cultures and languages. So what's a person to do?

We don't have all the answers, but remembering a few things can be helpful:
1) Remember you are communicating with another human being. There's a person on the other end of your typing. This may seem obvious, but it is very easy to forget.
2) If you are making a joke, let everyone know. Humor can be especially hard to understand across cultures and languages. Simply stating "that's a joke" can be very helpful.
3) Correct grammar helps avoid misunderstandings. This is especially true here on ipernity because many people will be translating your words.

We are so lucky to be able to talk with people from all over the world, let's make an extra effort to keep our communications kind and respectful.

Note: A short version of this is being developed, with access to it from link added beside the 'Preview' and '(options)' links located under the 'Add your comment' input box.

3) Landing page refresh.
Many wonderful suggestions have been submitted for the refresh of our Landing page. A big thank you to all of you who have contributed! Your efforts are making the Landing page refresh possible.

Because there are so many images to choose from and because we are wanting to represent our diverse community, we have decided to use a rotation of images. Below is the first subset of images from the suggestion group. The team will choose the final images from this subset, and any more recent submissions, in the coming weeks.

The final chosen images will remain in rotation until other useable images are suggested, or until it is time to do another refresh. So please feel free to continue to submit photo suggestions to the Landing Page Suggestions group. See first comment below for links to each photo.

Note: A drop-down menu has been added to the 'Explore' button. This allows direct access to such as 'Gallery' or 'New' without having to visit the landing page first.

4. Group highlight.
Our last group highlight brought the group many new group members! Does your group need a new influx of energy? Contact the team and your group could be the next to be highlighted.

5. In memoria.
It is with great sadness to inform you that two of our long time members have passed away, Jenny Mcintyre, has passed away after a short illness and tommes (Thomas Kauroff) passed away unexpectedly. Condolences and comments can be made on their pages in memoria.

Your ima team.