nikos
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Posts posted by nikos
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Regarding navigation of static content in general, I think the best way is to create a manual index that can also serve as a simplistic site map - then you can use a free indexer/search engine to create a search on static content specifically. I am on of the authors of a widely used and powerful open source search engine that can do this very efficiently and with accurate results. If you want I can help you install it on the photo.net server, or maybe even offer to host it remotely for you. If you have more specific ideas and questions regarding navigation and information architecture do not hesitate to email me. I make my living doing this stuff, but I would be glad to donate my time for photo.net.
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If you're going to type these in manually, do yourself a favour and type them into a columnar format in excel, thus separating the URL and the term. Then you can use word's mail-merge to create the list of links with a <a href="URLfield">TERMfield</a> template. Any sorting or filtering that you might wish to do can be done either on the side of the source excel file or dynamically on word's side, at merge time.
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Very nice. Some of the photos are excellent on their own right, but also as a set they constitute a compelling and inviting profile of the place.
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I hate to see comments go, they are the most precious contribution to this site. Especially yours Jason, being articulate and generously detailed, is a real asset to the site I urge you to leave your contibutions in place.
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Carl, I didn't have too much time to spend on this, but I quickly browsed my list to find some good ones. I find many landscapes boring, but not these:<br>
<a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/1256680">http://www.photo.net/photo/1256680</a>
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I would like to add that many people seem to be confusing 'originality of a photograph' with 'originality of the subject matter'
Not all photos of cats, or all landscapes are trivial, mundane and boring. Originality is a measure of how clever, creative and uncommon the representation of a subject is. Hence, a flower shot can be original if it portrays a flower in a way that we haven't seen before or at least in one that we don't see very often. There are fine examples in this site and I invite you to look at my personal favourites to see what I mean. You will find flowers and landscapes and cats, but not the ones you have seen before.
On the other hand, it's again misleading to give high originality ratings for anything that merely has an exotic or rare subject. The fact that someone swam an Amazon tributary and got a candid shot of a hitherto unkown tribesman eating his breakfast doesn't mean that the shot is necessarily original. It can still be as much an uncreative snapshot as your kids in disneyland.
The question is, does the photo penetrate the portrayed reality to show something truly interesting? Does it present something in a new way, or in a way that makes us think about things that would not spring to mind with a normal 'depiction of reality'?
On the numerical scale now, I tend to use the following scheme, more or less:
1 - Please come to my folder and underrate me to oblivion
2 - Pretty bad, shouldn't make it past the contact print
3 - Can find one like that in every vacation roll (e.g. say cheese)
4 - Nothing trivial, nothing special (e.g. well-executed landscape)
5 - There's something interesting or innovative about it
6 - Thought-provoking, unconventional, stuff you learn from
7 - How do I sing-up with your followers' cult?
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I am glad to find out that photo.net is not willing to succumb to the threads plague!
Usability is part of my job, and I've always appreciated and rejoiced at the redabile, scannable, and straightforward format of this forum's format. Threaded forums, except in very special circumstances, is usually the result of feature creep and not of actual need for improvement.
The no-bells-and-whistles approach here makes participation much more enjoyable than in other forums I frequent where half of my time is spent discovering useless features under obscure icons or downloading entire graphical interfaces for something that normally only needs text, links and a reply box.
I have only one complaint: when people type in URLs the software should be smart enough to convert them to links automatically. It's a great pain to keep copy-pasting all the time (especially if you want to open the link in a new window) and it gets to my nerves considering how easy it is to implement. Brian, please, do something about it sometime soon. I've never asked for anything here in such a pressing manner, and I only do it now because I know that the bloody thing is not a lot of work while it will greatly improve the user experience.
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This is a very common misunderstanding that a misconfigured or otherwise confused browser may make. Browsers decide what to do with each address depending on what they *think* a file is. If the file is .html or some other well-known extension for a program that creates html, such as .asp .cgi .pl etc then the browser renders the output on screen assuming the input it gets will be html. Now .tcl is a quite unconventional language to program a web application in, so many browsers do not have it in their list of common page generators. They don't recognize it, so they assume it must be some file that has to be dowloaded instead of displayed. So they ask you if you want to open or save it. Brian's latest post explains exactly what would happen if you tried to save it.
In any case this is just a misunderstanding on the part of your browser and not an evil plot of photo.net to download files in your computer.
By the way, even though I make my living by being a security expert, and I do tend to be a little paranoid at times, I've got to tell you that being too paranoid, and installing all the software that scares the shit out of you, and taking everything they tell you for granted, and seeing evil plots and attacks and enemies everywhere, will eventually drive you crazy, while not neccessarily making you more secure realistically.
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Uxmal is also very good. As shown in Jeff's photo, there is great detail to capture in shadows if you go at the right time.
I have to disagree about the Ruta Puuc. The only really interesting site on it was Uxmal. The rest were mediocre.
Chichen Itza is nice, but it has been made into a dollhouse. Too much restoration in my opinion and almost impossible to enjoy with all the crowds. Surely worth going, but if you spend some time visiting the rest of the sites I'm sure you'll enjoy them much more.
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Incidentally, the photo I've posted above is from the first roll of film I ever shot with an SLR camera. I had bought it and decided to take up photography when I was a student in the UK just before going to Mexico for a trip. On hidnsight it's not a bad photo, considering all my photographic knowledge was the Canon manual's explanation of aperture and shutter speed! Ok, how does that sound.. I post a picture and then I pop in to comment on it.. I think that's called mental masturbation. ;)
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Rent a car and drive to Edzna. It is somewhere around the middle of the Yucatan peninsula. Not more than 3 hours drive from Merida. I have visted most of the archaeological sites in the region and it was the most compelling and interesting. Best thing is it doesn't get any visitors. You will most likely be there by yourself.
It's a huge plaza with giant sloping walls on sides and a 6 or 7 levels pyramid in good condition. You can walk up on many of the highest spots of the structures and since there it's going to be empty it will be a great opportunity to take nice photos.
I will attach a badly processed and badly scanned one to this comment just to show you the place. I don't have any good ones right not with me.
My next favourites are Palenque in Chiapas (5 hours from Merida) and Calakmul (Border with Guatemala - if you go to Edzna you can stop somewhere near Calakmul, visit next morning and circle your way back, even visiting Coba and Tulum on the way)
Tulum is overrated and hard to get any interesting photos of. The cabanas on the beach south of the site are an excellent place to spend some time. If you want the real thing, no electricity, sand floor hut and the beach to yourself go to 'La Flor'<div>
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The advice above is very accurate. Which part of Borneo ar you going to? If you are going to Sabah you might be interested in <a href="http://www.xerolas.com/photography/borneo/">this photo-journal I have written of my recent trip there</a>
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I don't think it's a good idea. The friends list is not neccesarily a list of great photographers. You may have someone in the list because they are a great photographer, or because they are a prolific critiquer, or simply because it's a friend and you want to see when they log in an make posts/uploads. The meaning of this list is nothing near a list of 'best photographers' Making this list public will force us to either stop using this list as a notification list (which is what it is) or keep using it the same way and have a meaningless 'ranking' that people may misunderstand.
Having a way to point people to what they consider to be the best artists on site is not a bad idea though and maybe it could be implemented by a _different_ list. This should be something with the meaning: "if you want to see what kind of photography I appreciate, have a look at the work of these people" I would not put any sort of ranking there though. It's very silly to rank people, and it will be a new source of silly arguments for no good reason.
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Pascal is right. Posting public information about someone is one thing (like pointing ot their public page of top rated photos which is how it started) but posting their private emails is bad practice. Maybe James should reconsider and remove those last posts.
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Jonathan, you have been a member for about 2 months and in that time you have rated 3 photos and posted just a handful of comments, some of which are actually replies to comments on your own photos. In a community that is driven mainly by conversations and member contributions it is no wonder that you have not received massive feedback, in fact you should be pleased to have attracted some.
The best way to get some exposure is to start by contributing. Commenting on other member photos is a good start. Most people here are likely to take a look at the work of someone who gave them thoughtful critique, and try to provide their own feedback.
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To illustrate the above, here are two photos from my portfolio:
The <a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/736075">first photo</a> has been around for 2-3 years, and has collected 14k views. Given that I'm a pretty active member here, uploading frequently and occasionally getting some exposure, this is not an impressive number for what I consider the best photo in my portfolio.
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The <a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/1616704">second photo</a> is a recent upload (a couple of weeks ago) that happened to float up on the first or second page of top-rated. It quickly collected 32k views. It is clearly an inferior photo compared to the first example.
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Goes to show that views (and by extension, ratings) are not indicative of photo quality and that neither time, nor talent are guaranteed to yield exposure or scores. The good news is that exposure and scores never have been, and hopefully never will be, a measure of quality and significance in art.
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The 'number of views' you see listed on any photo's page does not represent the number of times a user has visited the page of the photo. It is the number of times any version of the photo (thumbnail or normal) has been served on a page. So, every time someone sees a page on the top rated photos, for example, that contains one of your images, the counter registers a hit. This doesn't actually mean someone took interest to see the particular photo, only that the photo got served along with dozens of others on a page. There is no way to tell how many of those 'views' counted and provided to us by photo.net are actual views of the photo's page.
The first page of the top-rated-photos must have tens of thousands of hits per day. So if a photo gets enough ratings to climb up to the first page, in the 1-3 days of its staying there it can easily gather tens of thousands of 'views'. Of course that doesn't mean anything per se. On the other hand, once a photo has passed its 3 days of glory and just rests in your portfolio, any extra views are only going to come from people viewing the thumbnail contact sheet of your folders or the images themselves. Such visits are less voluminous of course. So even if you leave a photo there for 5 years, it's not going to score the same number of views as it would have if it made the first page the day it was uploaded.
As to why and how some photos make the first page and some others don't, that is a completely different story of which too much has been written already.
Don't get too worried about 'views'. The key thing here is to participate in forums and critique, exchange views with other users, add your input to the community and eventually get some feedback in the form of ratings and critiques.
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Hey I just discovered <a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/member-
photos?include=top&user_id=192029">the new layout for a
photographer's most-rated photos</a>. A big improvement from the
previous format of the same view. Thanks Brian!
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There is a difference between what is a *manipulated* image and what is a *generated* image. Darkroom manipulations, composites, or even heavy artistic alterations that derive from one or more original photographs can stand in the context of the photographic medium as manipulations.
A ball on a checkerboard, rendered by a raytracer is a generated image in its totality. It does not derive from the process of capturing the imprint of light. Instead it derives from a programmatic synthesis of an arbitrary but formally described pseudo-world, generated by a computer software in photo-realistic rendering.
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No, It think the cause of the problem is that the 'rate recent' interface prompts people with photos that have well over 20 ratings already. I went through dozens of photos on the 'rate recent' interface and hardly found any that had less than 20 ratings. I guess this needs to be fine tuned. Once a photo has accumulated 20 ratings, the photographer already has received some feedback, some visibility on the TRP, and possibly some comments. It's then time for the system to give way to feed critiquers with photos that haven't yet had a share of the rating feedback. I uploaded a new photo a couple of days ago, and it was stuck with 1 rate for about 24 hours. Much worse than the old system, where you would get at least 5-6 ratings in the first day. I could understand it if the queues were full of new requests, but currently they're full of OLD requests that already have been getting enough attention.
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If you have a credit card, you can use PayPal just fine. I am in Europe and I paid with PayPal. I don't see the problem. It was simple and straightforward. It only took 3-4 minutes more than a regular credit card form would have taken if it was on site. No big deal.
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As an earlier poste wisely pointed out, you're not going to get any reasonably accurate weather forecast for a 30-day window. But climatic statistics can tell you what to expect for a given period of the year at a specific place. Depending on the variability of the weather patterns on each part of the world, the chance you have to experience what is consider 'normal' for that time of year may vary from 'dead sure' to 'not sure'. For example, when they say it never rains in Atacama, Chile, they bloody mean it. When they say it never rains in August in Athens, Greece, this means it's just unlikely, but there were 2-day downpours in August both last year and the year before last.
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For decades' worth of climatic statistics check ouy <b><a href="http://www.worldclimate.com/">worldclimate.com</a></b>
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Also, a good place to look for weather-related sites and services is <b><a href="http://www1.drive.net/evird.acgi$pass*4485237!_h-www.landings.com/_landings/pages/weather.html">Landings</a></b> - there's plenty of good links to be found there.
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I can understand that many photographers want to cycle their work and present only part of it as an exhibition here. On the other hand I hate it when an interesting comment on a photo gets lost along with its context. For that I am reluctant in removing some of my photos that have a lot of good comments.
I would wish the site to have a mechanism to preserve the context of comments, even after a photo has been deleted. When a photo is deleted, I'd like to be able to see the list of comments, even without the photo. Why? Sometimes a discussion has a lot of good information even without the photo itself. Why lose it, just because the user removed the photo?
Another suggestion: I would like to see a 'remove but archive' option. This would let a user remove an image from their portfolio, so it doesn't get cluttered, but not from the database. So, when someone clicks a link from a comment page or gallery view, they would be taken to the archived version of the photo's page. This could also be a static page, frozen, without the ability to add rates or comments. This way users who remove their photos just to unclutter their portfolio and give exposure to recent work can do so without trashing valuable comments. It would also be a good idea to be able to 'revive' a frozen photo, in case a user wants to showcase it with some new and similar photos.
I can understand that programming this enhancement to protfolio management will not be a trivial task, even if not too complex. But I hope Brian will consider something along these lines at some point, because it really adds depth to the portfolio service of photo.net to its subscribers. Add to that the ability to store large, high-res versions as well, and many users could possibly see it as a replacement of their regular photo album software. (and be willing to pay extra for it)
You can go on even further: Let the users order prints of the hi-res images, or even set up their shops to sell them through the photo.net gallery, and make a slice of the profit. (then you'll have to think seriously on how to battle abuse on the ratings system, because if profits come into play people will be ruthless in cheating the system)
Ok, I went too far away, but I think these are ideas worth keeping in mind for future reference.
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Yesterday, I decided to go on an self-rate most of my images. I did this by the same standards I rate other people's images. I even did it a little bit more conservatively to discount for my personal attachment. Of 40 images, I gave out mostly a mix of 4s and 5s, two or three 6s and a few 3s. Quite reasonable I believe, give that I'm a young amateur and I'm still discovering and experimenting with the art.
I think self-rating is not a bad thing if done with the proper measure and honesty. I have decided that I will stick to rating my own photos (as long as photo.net permits this) sumnitting my self-rating after a considerable amount of other users have already offered their opinion. (because the primary purpose hear is to see unbiased, unaffected opinions of other photographers)
I think it's interesting information to be able to see how the photographer sees his/her own work, and I can't see how it could significantly affect the functioning of the gallery/rating mechanisms.
Also, since ratings are public, there is not much margin for abuse. If you go about rating all of your stuff with 7/7 you're just ridiculing yourself in the eyes of your fellow members. Anybody can see it and of course they can draw their own conclusions about how serious you are with regards to both your works and the community.
Aliases vs. Real Names
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