I got the new layout with the mouse-over "like" and "tag photo" buttons tonight and I LOVE this direction that the photo viewer is heading in. I love that this fills the screen more than previous versions and eliminates having Facebook User Interface buttons ALWAYS cover parts of the image. These are changes I asked for in the feedback section of the site... YAY, they are listening! :-)

I started seeing this new feature yesterday. I have lots of albums and it guessed the locations pretty accurately but I usually have something already written in the 'where' area of the album.

I have one album that it's guessing a location for but I NEVER wrote where the photos were taken but it's accurately suggesting the city where they were captured. I took them with my DSLR camera (no GPS data). I'm wondering if it's guessing based on who's tagged in the photos.

Aaand there is a second Scam going around posting an offensive message on walls and ends with a link to "Remove This App"

I do like the direction of the new photo viewer, and as a photographer like my photos displayed on a black background. However, facebook isn't all about serious photography and the black can be overpowering for some images (especially when they don't completely fill the screen). I think the black should be an option one clicks on after loading the pop-up screen. For example, the initial view would dim the background, feature the photo, but also the comments (maybe to the left of the image in a scrolling area that keeps the image in view while reading and commenting). Then if someone wants to focus on the image itself (like in Flickr) they can click on a button that will bring up the larger view on black.

For loading times, I am seeing some lag. I'm on a DSL connection and with the old format, I enjoyed quickly scrolling (using the arrow keys on the keyboard) through several images. Since the I got the new format (today) I get half-loaded images when doing this and at times have to scroll past an image and come back to it before it will fully load.

I haven't tried this on my netbook 10.1" netbook yet. I'm viewing from my 17" laptop with a 16:10 screen ratio.

I'm also happy about this being a "lightbox" pop-over effect. However, I tend to open dozens of tabs while clicking on info from my newsfeed or updates feed, so there will still be a lot of tabs popping up on my end.

I think it's a useful feature - however, I prefer to keep my list on the broad reaching side. Granted, I have 1800 facebook friends (friends, people from church, clients, friends of clients, etc...) but facebook was already sorting through and showing only the top 500 in your newsfeed. There previously was an option to either "let facebook pick" or "choose who you want to see updates from". I guess this is a new version of that previous feature without it being a full-time choice.

I thought the SAME THING!

Churches HAVE to use Papyrus - it's the font that Jesus used. *SMH*

Hi Joseph,

I hope you don't mind me replying to your comment to make the point of a larger issue. The article is ambiguous about the specific point of "is homosexuality a sin" but my question is does that point have to be argued, debated, agreed, disagreed, or settled in order to address the injustice of mistreatment from the church toward those who are identified as GLBT?

If the church is to be the body of Christ and extending the hope of the Gospel to everyone, can we do this without doing some work in removing the beam from our own eye and making amends for the wrongs that have occurred 'in Jesus name'?

Great insights and write-up Tim! I haven't been "on staff" at a church in a while, but most of the work I do is with churches and has me interfacing with staff of multiple churches. It's amazing to see how consistent the "inner world" of church offices are even if the outward worship styles (and denominations, etc) are different.

These points you've made are great for a variety of churches. Thanks again!

I'm part of a large church and I do photography for some smaller churches and nonprofits. My church regularly collects model releases for anyone who is participating / volunteering. If we're producing a video we will often do another just for that video.

Events that take place in public spaces (church picnic in the public park for example) we don't collect releases for since there isn't an expectation of privacy and they are in a space that anyone could legally photograph them.

I try to encourage my nonprofits to collect releases or at minimum make a notification of photo and video recording part of their sign-up / sign-in process. I find that many new (less than 10 years old) organizations simply don't know about model releases or photographers rights.