ricardojmendez Posted October 1, 2002 Share Posted October 1, 2002 I couldn't think of any other forum to post this question to. I was wondering: how are those Photo critique circles working for you people? Still alive and well? I'm curious as to how participation was after the first weeks: in the Karsh circle, it started dwindling until I think there are only three of us left - and too bad, since it was really helping us get focused feedback on the photos. How are things on the other circles? Good luck, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobertChura Posted October 1, 2002 Share Posted October 1, 2002 They must be very bad. I can't join in any of them. No response from my request to join. No reply from anyone at photo.net about anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricardojmendez Posted October 2, 2002 Author Share Posted October 2, 2002 Hi Robert, <p>That may be because (I believe) the Circles are administered by Photo.net staff, and so far they seem to be going insane with the ratings changes. I'm sure that people's complaints about ratings keep them busy enough. <p><b>Now, a suggestion for Photo.net staffers:</b> Allow somebody withing the circle to manage them, adding new users if necessary and removing those people that no longer want to be in it. Empowering somebody in the critique circle to manage them would free you for other tasks, and would allow people in the circle to contribute some work back to Photo.net. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nomade Posted October 6, 2002 Share Posted October 6, 2002 as you mention it... the Curtis (dedicated to landscapes) has gone slowly down and turned off. I think most of us bored about saying and looking the same kind of images all the time, or simply didn't had more photos to show others, so left the circle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scott bulger Posted January 7, 2003 Share Posted January 7, 2003 Maybe this will get read, maybe it won't. My circle died a slow, painful death. Seems people weren't intersted it real critique, they were just looking for a pat on the head and to gather parise. True critique was frowned upon, so I just gave up. I would be very interested in a circle that was actually looking for opinions and not hollow "Great" "Wonderful" "Super" type accolades. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r.m. Posted January 9, 2003 Share Posted January 9, 2003 Scott, so why not start your own? You are one of the better critiquers, IMO, on this site, & I do believe that there are many members who would be interested in participating based on many of the threads & comments I've read (certainly me for one, and Ricardo and Nestor too perhaps), so why not start another? Why wait for photonet staffers when you know they're experiencing some problems with resources? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricardojmendez Posted January 9, 2003 Author Share Posted January 9, 2003 Reina, As far as I know, nobody can start their own circles within Photo.net. I actually suggested that the admins in Photo.net relieve themselves of this work by empowering some people within each circle to accept new members, but so far I've received no response to that. Sure, you can contact some people and notify each other when you upload a new photo, thus improvising your own circle. You would, however, lose what I believe is the tool from the circle that makes a difference: the filtered view of the Photo critique requests. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r.m. Posted January 9, 2003 Share Posted January 9, 2003 Ricardo, I agree that the ideal would be a resurrection of the photonet circles, properly moderated by staffers or members. The problem seems to be that they don't have the time/resources to address the problem. You posted this thread in October. It's now January, and you've received no response from the staff. Scott posted a similar thread at the end of September in the Cameron forum, as have a number of participants in other Critique Circle forums, none of which, to my knowledge, has prompted a response by the staff. I myself had posted a thread in Genral-Unarchived, and also emailed them without receiving any responses. So the question in my mind is do you wait until the staff addresses the issue, which, if at all, may not be for months - or do you attempt to start your own circles; assign your own moderators, replace individuals who are not participating regularly; set up guidelines for critiquing, etc. Perhaps if a group of us can keep a circle up & running for a period of time, we may be able to convince the elves to allot the resources required to ressurect the circles. Another question I have is why are certain circles doing really well? The Rowell circle comes to mind. They seem to have had consistent activity since its inception. What have they done differently, if anything? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricardojmendez Posted January 9, 2003 Author Share Posted January 9, 2003 Reina, It is possible that I'm not aware of all the tools that Photo.net provides. It is also possible that I'm too much of a software developer to think outside writing a new piece of code. I'd love to hear your suggestion as to how to set up photo critique circles here without intervention of an admin. Or do you mean managing things largely off-site? Later today I'll try and post a question on the circle you mention about their experience, I'd like to know how they're doing. In our case, I believe that it was a lack of commitment: some people were probably interested only in posting an image or two and seeing what happened, while others hung in the sidelines for months. We had the prolific David Vatovec, who posts quite often, Mauricio José Schwarz, myself and some posts by Ellery Chua. Most other posted maybe an image or two. How does this affect the ones who do post? Well, after a while most critiques I got from the circle were from Mauricio and David; David got critiques from Mauricio and me; etc. It defeats the purpose of the multiple possible points of view if you always get the same two, and this discourages the people who were posting. I myself dropped out about a month ago - I've been too busy with my work to take the time and create something new, just to have it largely ignored (yes, I'd rather have a somebody post a scathing oh-dear-lord-what-terrible-composition or I'm-tired-of-this-same-kind-of-crap message than have an image ignored). I promise not to go into a "has Photo.net's growth hurt it" thread. Stopping here, Ricardo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r.m. Posted January 9, 2003 Share Posted January 9, 2003 Ricardo, My thoughts on this are as follows: 1) Gather a group of individuals who would like to participate. 2) Assign the task of administrating/moderating to one or 2 members 3) Run the circle(s) in 4 week intervals - At the end of 4 weeks current members have the option to renew or move on to another circle. 4) Determine a curriculum for the circle - i.e.Week One - Study a range of images on the site from a given set of genres and comment/critique. Week Two - Submit a set number of photos for critique in the form of a presentation.Week Three - Review fellow members' submission and provide a critical analysis - I'm inclined to say no rating, just analysis in the form of commentary.Week Four - Provide a summary on each photo you submitted for critique - highlighting lessons learned, most valuable advice/critique, etc. 5)Follow Seven Stuartson's(sp?) lead and have the administrator set up a "circles" page not unlike his hot links. List all members of the circle(s) with links to their presentations on one page, Week One genre studies/comments on another. General comments / questions would also be posted here. 6) If a member is not participating on a regular basis or if abusive behavior occurs, have the administrator remove them from the list. 7) Since the submissions are in the form of a presentation I believe you could limit access to only the members of the group. I'm torn as to whether it should be restricted. If what you're looking for is feedback why not leave it open to view by the general membership. At any rate, those are my initial thoughts. What do you think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
root Posted January 10, 2003 Share Posted January 10, 2003 There have been quite a few threads on why the circles were not maintained. I think the reasons are as follows: Most people did not see signing up as a committment to contribute both images and critique. Several people who signed up didn't actually want critique, but praise only, and got upset . The content of each critiquer's comment starts to wear thin after a while and the whole thing gets boring after a month. Rotating member is essential I am virtually certain that the circles will not be officially revived. It's a shame that it is not possible for someone to have access to the program for the purpose of adding new members. That's all that's needed. In the mean time. We could start our own group right here. I would say that it's critical to consider that each participant would have to upload several images a week and be expected to critique everything . . and, most importantly, to return to images several times, treating each image as a discussion - like the POW, only more civil. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricardojmendez Posted January 10, 2003 Author Share Posted January 10, 2003 Carl, I agree with you on most counts, except on uploading several images a week. Actually, I think that keeping postings per user to one or two a week can help focus the discussions, and foster more discussions on those images that have been uploaded. Give me some time, and maybe by monday I can have an independent message board set up on my site that we can use for the critique group. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r.m. Posted January 10, 2003 Share Posted January 10, 2003 Carl, I had proposed that time be set aside in the beginning and end of the 4 week cycle to focus solely on critique & discussion. My thinking was 1) It gives everyone a chance to evaluate what's considered excellent/average/below average in given genres and thus provides us with a basis to critique our own work, and 2) perhaps it was a bit distracting having to work on preparing images for submission & devoting the time required to evaluate others works at the same time. If you have 10 people or more in a group with several images each it can become quite time consuming to have to do both things at the same time. How do you feel about that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
root Posted January 10, 2003 Share Posted January 10, 2003 I have hundreds of images on CDs ready to resize for PN, so that's not an issue for me and, I think, for a lot of other people. If you're starting with a raw digital file or negative or transparency, then, yes, you're not going to be able to prepare more than a couple a week. Critiquing, on the other hand, doesn't take much time at all. I think maybe you're right that we should limit people to two per week but try to get twenty, rather than ten people to make the committment. I'm not sure what suggestion you're making about categories and genre preferences, but I'm open to ideas. We don't really need a bulletin board. We can use my ATGET group's list. you can't post images, but anyone can visit and post a comment on recent uploads. I could post one image that would serve the purpose of allowing everyone to notify us of the URL for the image they want us to critique. . . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scott bulger Posted January 10, 2003 Share Posted January 10, 2003 I'll play. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r.m. Posted January 10, 2003 Share Posted January 10, 2003 Carl, please forgive my naivete. I'm a beginner, and while I have an understanding of the basics of photography from the courses I've taken & books I've read, I do not have, as an example, your grasp of what may be involved in creating a photograph/image in various genres or settings. It might be nice to have an understanding of each members' preferences so that I could study various photos in that genre and perhaps provide a better critique. Perhaps this is something that will evolve in the discussions of the images submitted & isn't required at the start of the cycle....Just a thought. At any rate, should we start another thread (as I believe this one is archived) asking for interested members? How does everyone propose we get started? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
root Posted January 10, 2003 Share Posted January 10, 2003 This is archived, but it's a dead thread. There are only four of us talking at the moment. Scott were you in one of the original circles? I consider myself an advanced amateur and have been taught a way to look at images that I find useful. You will be sick of my critiques about a month from now, but more improtantly, you might want to take some time and look at the images that were uploaded into the Atget Circle and make a note of my shooting style and my comments. If you don't like either, and not everyone does, then you might not like the direction my critiques would take you. That's one of the benefits of having this organized along category lines, so that all the landscape images would be in one place, portaits in another, altered images in another, etc., but we don't have nearly enough interested folks to organize along those lines. That's another reason we need about twenty people . . . . so we'll have a wide range of experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r.m. Posted January 10, 2003 Share Posted January 10, 2003 Carl, I've already seen quite a bit of both your images & critiques and haven't a problem with either. In fact, I've never found your critiques to be unfair or harsh, just honest, thought provoking comments. So, unless you have a problem with mine :), I'd very much like to play. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scott bulger Posted January 11, 2003 Share Posted January 11, 2003 Yes, I was in one of the original circles. It quickly dwindled when they realized that it was actually a critique circle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
root Posted January 11, 2003 Share Posted January 11, 2003 What does that say about the future of any circle and about the constant complaints from new members that they are not getting critiques? Makes you wonder what they expected instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricardojmendez Posted January 11, 2003 Author Share Posted January 11, 2003 A suggestion, don't know if this might be overkill. I'm testing PHPNuke. Combined with Gallery and installing both on my site, I think I can give people a way to add images and comments to these - sort as a mini micro tiny Photo.net, created just for the purpose of the circles. More details tomorrow or Monday as I finish testing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
root Posted January 11, 2003 Share Posted January 11, 2003 Are you talking about loading images into a place where only the circle members would be able to see it? I'm not interested in a separate site. Images uploaded for critique in the old circles could be seen, rated, and commented on by everyone, not just the circle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r.m. Posted January 11, 2003 Share Posted January 11, 2003 I agree with Carl here. I think this should be kept on the photonet site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricardojmendez Posted January 11, 2003 Author Share Posted January 11, 2003 Great, makes the set up simpler then. Lets me concentrate on the forums. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mg Posted January 13, 2003 Share Posted January 13, 2003 Again the 4 or 5 same names, huh ? :-) Well let me add mine and a few ideas... I basically share the same experience as described here by Scott, except for the fact that the Kertesz Circle had a few motivated people in the pack. It wasn't all that bad, but again, a few spoilt the fun I was having discussing things with the majority... With you guys and some of the former constructive participants from my circle, we could actually put up a great discussion group. As I have said elsewhere, I am very open to suggestions, and even to invest a bit of my time to revive these circles. <p> The trouble is that the intitiative to do so, and the structure for the whole thing should in my opinion come from photo.net, then I wouldn't mind helping if the structure makes sense. <p> My view on how circles should work is rather narrow, though... I don't think ratings should be allowed within a circle, or else the soup will quickly gets spoilt again, and I also feel that the groups should be self-controled and started by those who are keen to discuss with each other - not open to just anybody. <p> If photo.net is interested to set up something of that sort, I surely believe circles could work. Not my call unfortunately. Cheers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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