Attractive, high-resolution photo hosting
I agree with you that for viewing pleasure in countries with fast internet - high-resolution photos are the best. But CGOAB is also read by a lot of touring cyclists who are pedalling through countries with slow and haphazard internet. They want to be able to view journals without waiting hours (and I mean hours!) for high-res pictures to load.
Plus high-resolution images are great to see when the person is a good photographer. When the cyclist isn’t one – than I prefer viewing smaller low-res pictures – they are easier and faster to scroll through.
Cyclists can already photo host on sites such as Flickr. One of the reasons why people are leaving the Flickr community is because a lot of Flickr users are doing “photo dumps” – uploading all of the pictures from their camera card at once without editing the images beforehand. Then with all of their pictures from the “photo dump” (even non bicycle touring images) they then dump them into the Flickr bicycle touring group...
It’s exasperating when someone writes me that they want to contribute a photo and send me the link to their Flickr site – which turns out to contain hundreds of un-edited pictures – many of which have no relation with their bike trip.
Even Adventure Cycling writes in the photography submission guidelines:
Also keep in mind that we are extremely busy and being asked to browse hundreds or thousands of photos online is not our idea of a good time. If you are serious about being published in Adventure Cyclist, you'll need to submit only your best “selects”...
Actual publishing avenues for strong writers in the community to share trip stories
Newsletters that push relevant and exciting content to members
In theory this is a great idea. But as I see it there are two opposing forces in your general idea. CGOAB is a community where everyone is equal. Once you start saying that “cyclist A” is a “strong writer” and has “exciting content” -it’s great for cyclist A’s ego. But for “cyclist B” who would also like to see their journal promoted but are rejected for not having enough “exciting content” – their ego is dented and they can become extremely pissed off. This does not strengthen the idea of a “community”. Plus I can imagine that the last thing that Neil Gunton wants to do is write rejection letters (it is a horrible task) telling cyclists that their material isn’t good enough to be promoted via newsletters or publishing avenues.
At this time the digital magazines are the places to look for links to some of the best individual bicycle touring writers and photographer’s websites.
And not to lose site of the original subject – here are some bike touring pics
Baralacha-La pass on the Leh - Manali highway in North India
Rickshaw near Delhi, India
Cycling in Tajikistan
Camping in Kyrgyzstan