stefan_ballard1

Currently all photos are given a rating of 1-10 in two categories -- "cleverness" and "aesthetics." I'm sure these two categories have meaning to the people at services photonet -- but I don't think they mean the same thing to every visitor who logs in here...I also think 1-10 is too big a spread --- a "7" might seem like an average/good score to me, but to someone else (especially a student enrolled in one of our grade inflated universities), a 7 might seem terribly low. The meaning of the numbers themselves is open to interpretation...and since we all obviously don't agree maybe a smaller spread (like poor-average-good) would be less subject to the whims of interpretation.<p>

In a perfect world, I would only want to see written commentary on the photos. Then again, if I ran the world, universities wouldn't give grades, either -- hopefully then people would be encoraged to learn rather than attempt to achieve high grades or good scores. That's probably unrealistic, though. Maybe scores of 1-3, 1 being low (or poor), 2 being average and three being good. And maybe more categories -- like "technical excellence," "interesting vantage point," "novel idea for a photograph," "good title," "good use of the frame," and so on -- I'm afraid I don't have very good ideas for categories --- but hopefully if more ways in which to rate a picture were introduced, we could get a better idea of why people did or did not like a photo. Right now I have one photo in critique which has been rated 5 or 6 times --- one person gave it a "10" for cleverness, another gave it a "1." All that means to me is one person liked it and one didn't --- but it doesn't help me by teaching me anything about the photo. If participants were invited to justify, whenever possible, the ratings they gave then maybe that might make us at least understand why we got the ratings we did. For example, if there was a rating for "technical excellence" and I gave it a low score, I might write: <i>I gave a low score because the picture looked underexposed to me.</i> Then whomever got the low score could decide A) Stephan is crazy -- the picture is fine, or B) Maybe I ought to work a little harder in the darkroom or really read the scanner manual...<p>I think we need more criteria in which the scores people give are justified or explained. I wouldn't submit pictures if I wasn't interested in opinions -- but when opinions are only a number, I get a little frustrated -- people are trying to send me a message when they give my photo a "3" or a "9" but I never really know why they gave it a low or high score.<p>Maybe there could also be a limit to how many photos a person could post...and a photo which did not get a certain number of ratings within a certain time period could be bumped from the critique --- right now there are far too many photos in the critique and the few which I might like to see get lost in the crowd; I think a lot of members should be discouraged from posting a picture every day just because they can...maybe post when you really feel that you have a photo that can spark interesting discussion or illustrate a point. After all, if people want to just see my photos, my web page is availible...

I have had good success with a 50/50 ratio. It doesn't last indefinitely -- you should spray it on shortly before you expect to shoot film. Any more water, and the drops tend to run. Any less, and it clogs the sprayer. Use a cotton swab dipped in windex to clean off drops from where you don't want them.<p>The real trick is finding a good sprayer. Spray bottles for cleaning solution/plant misters tend to make the drops too big and then the mixture just runs down the side of the glass, leaving a "run" mark. I buy little plastic cologne/hairspay bottles at the beauty supply -- they ten to make a finer mist. After a while the gelatin clogs the spayer and ruins it -- I have found soaking the spay gun to clean it after use prolongs its life.<p>I also dip a toothpick in pure gelatin ans use that th apply drops exactly where I want them.<p>