velvetgoodnite

Dear Alan, Thankyou for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate the effort you went to - to make two comments here and then go look at my folder and then comment there as well.

As I mentioned above I was in hindsight a little impatient in asking my question and apologise for that. However as you pointed out, with the link to the other query on similiar lines - Im not alone.- {from which I've learned some things as well} . It's interesting as my post here stirred a few people to email me privately and tell me well done for asking it as they were too nervous to ask. This brings me back to my earlier comment that someone should collate the information about FAQ"S for newbies on this site and somehow make it easy to find on the signup page, or alternatively a FAQ could be automatically emailed

to the new person when signup is complete. I actually run a health support group with yahoo groups and yahoo groups has this feature, but I'm not sure how difficult it would be to set up on this forum but might be worthwhile to keep in mind for someone with the technical skills to do it.

Thank you for giving me links to Jacques and Nana's portfolios. I will be studying their work, you can count on it. I've had a brief look at your India folder and will be returning to it to study your work more. {along with many other talented people here}. I've always wanted to go there {India} but it hasn't happened yet, when I do I imagine I will be go into a phototaking frenzy, but by then I hope that I will be sufficiently good enough to capture what I'm meaning to capture and not come home empty handed or with a lot of duds.

I appreciate your comments on my Indonesian boy. The lack of tone there in the face {looking at the print years later} confounded me and after your comments i dug out the box with negs and reject prints of it. I noted that in several other reject prints there is tone on the face, and I looked at the neg and it's there also. There is in fact on the print I scanned some tone{although not as much as in one or two of the reject prints} but wht was on that one was washed out by the scanning process. I have a relatively old scanner and it has been giving me some problems of late with flare and the dpi setting which I think is faulty. Although I do not blame it all on that. I can see that the fault is mostly due to my development in the darkroom. Perhaps I underexposed a little too much on the face {but have no notes on whether I dodged or burnt in and no memory of doing that for this roll}, but think more likely that I probably took it out of developer tray too early and the tone did not have time to develop enough as that was a common problem for me back then as I was using shared/crowded darkroom with time limits. (I don't have a darkroom set up now or I would go back and print the whole lot again, my house is too small at the moment}.

But talking here has been beneficial,even if it is about my old prints as it helps one see things one might have missed at the time. btw. Pretty much all the B&W photos I will probably post here {at least for the time being} were taken with gelatin silver film, which has been out of production for quite a while now. {they took the silver content out of the film}. I've not done any darkroom development since then. I should by rights do some research into the differences and will when I get the time, but feel that there are probably quite a few differences in the photo quality between silver content films and those without. There used to be also a whole host of issues in regard to various papers that worked best with gelatin silver depending on the effect one wanted. I am so out of touch not sure if any of that is relevant anymore. {Another reason why I joined up here}. I can certainly see the attraction to digital as a huge part of photography skill needed has been wiped out. There are no darkroom skills needed at all. {Which is sort of a shame as I found it really soothing}.

Regards

Sharon

Mike, thank you for your comments, it's very interesting to get several varying opinions about a subject. I can totally relate to the sunsets etc that you mentioned and can see if one spent a lot of time here that sort of thing too many times in one day would make you press the skip button. It's also good to hear from people what constitutes a particular rating as it is hard as a new person here to judge at first those standards. I find the box at the side of the critique quite valuable - as after you have rated, it compares your vote to what others think and thats a great thing, as you can begin to see if you are way off beam or not. Actually I've been pleasantly surprised that on the whole my views matched other peoples. I'm starting to appreciate this site a lot more. Apologies for this belated reply I've been doing exams the last two weeks and also had some computer troubles.

Sharon

Thank you all for your comments about critiques & posting. I was probably in hindsight a little impatient, but then as a "newbie" probably not unusual in my questions. I appreciate the fact that the site is community run and built, and know how hard it is to do {am just learning html now myself}, but wonder if it would be a good idea to collate some of the info you have just given me and put it into a FAQ on how the critque set up works and also what to expect when one first joins up. It might prevent a lot of frustration from people who don't understand how it all works. I apologise if I have opened up a can of worms so to speak. An idea ?- I don't know how you would set this up but maybe newcomers could be accorded a symbol of some sort which indicates their new status - therefore being able to be taken under the wing of older members gently when they make some fauxpas, and also as their ratings grow they can lose the new symbol, or something to that effect. {Just an idea}.

Regards

Sharon

Reply to Michael Chang and Nikos Moraitakis,

Thank you both for all your comments, you have both given much food for thought, and much of what you both said I expected [in relation to my newness here etc, and have no issue with that]. However please understand that I was not complaining so much as trying to get "the lay of the land" - as I have still yet to find a "how this site works & what to expect" page and will no doubt come across it at some point.

Michael your point about Asian scenes being mundane to you makes sense to me, as to me living in rural Australia certain rural scenes feel the same way to me, and no doubt there are scenes which are so commonplace to the inhabitants of a country that they would not rate them. But that in itself is interesting information - I would think if you were trying to sell those photos in that country or a magazine there. If you were not aware of it you'd be wasting your time, so it's still valuable information. And having said that I would not have discovered it [so soon] without posting a question here because there were so few comments.

Nikos, your comments about mass appeal were interesting to me, & obviously everyone's likes are different. I imagine people who join up here at photo.net all have different aims and expectations in doing so, and some like in other forums create images specifically to cater for a particular taste although I imagine that many people are more interested in following their own desires {ie subject matter} and just wish for a decent appraisal of their work standard.

In my case, {well I won't go into a life story here right now}, but have been out of the workforce & photography a while. I guess I'm reassessing things and my photography.Styles and fashions change and I'm interested in seeing what does appeal but also interested in feedback on my previous work. I'm also new to the concept of posting work on www. {had a few works published and a few exhibitions in the past}, and obviously the etiquette is entirely different and I will absorb it over time. The images in my Indonesian folder are old work [from 1976 in fact] although the {c} date is only recent. It's just not been seen before. I have later works which I will eventually upload, which may or may not have mass appeal. But without showing them I won't know, which is why I joined up here...I don't know anymore what is the current "in" thing!

I appreciate both of you taking time out to give me your opinions and will enjoy watching both your folders.

regards

Sharon Perrin

Hi I'm new here and this question may have been addressed before but

am still getting used to finding my way around the site {which isn't

so easy!} so please excuse if so.

I was highly recommended to this site from someone at gfx.artist {of

where I am an active member}, and I joined here hoping for more

response to my photographs as this is a purely photographic site

{whereas gfx is more for art/illustration etc}. {I do both}.

I realise that actually commenting on someones work takes more time

than just clicking the ratings. However, I'm just a bit disappointed

in the response of actual comments that I've got so far. One photo

actually surprised me and has to date 2107 views, but no one has

commented except about the title not fitting the work.

Comments are more important to me than the ratings. I try and comment

to a lot of the photos I rate...that is when I am not having

bandwidth issues. I've been wandering around the site and looking at

people's portfolios and commenting on work I like {not just in the

automated rating thing}, and just feel if something is worth taking

the time to view it, why not comment as well?

The quality of work is excellent here and am very impressed. I just

use an SLR not digital and wondering whether in the ratings people

take into account processing,darkroom,printing that goes into

standard photography as opposed to digital where there is none of

that?

Thanks for your time and looking forward to talking with some of you

in the future..

Sharon Perrin