blago

Mary, I didn't read the whole thread yesterday, because of the time difference, but I miss some of the comments I read (not mine).

They were witty, interesting, funny, and in no way offensive or personal. Now I lack arguments -- I made no copy of them. I'm not against tasteful manipulations. Imo, the question "manipulated/not manipulated" image is one of the most important questions in modern photography and it's a little strange to delete exactly these comments, especially when a manipulated image is discussed. (Good that Bob Hixon wrote again his comment.) Finally, I'm a little afraid of bulk censorship.

Yes, it is and it's working, thanks God. I'm really sorry for my suspicions ! (You know politicians around here act this way -- they want to break a law, they bring this law down, then break it, and finally return it back, "revised" . :-)) But this week POW could stress us on some important things. First of all, to save the constructive criticism on PN. The last citadel left is the POW discussion. Or we want only praise and 7s.

"But the requirement that comments be related to the photo will be relaxed. This will permit people to debate general topics that they feel are raised by the Photo of the Week, and will relieve the moderators of the onerous duty of keeping the POW comments on the topic of the photo."

 

That not only "seems like a pretty simple and entirely reasonable rule", but it's the rule itself, according to the "A new approach to the POW discussion" (or something like that) document - the link Cristian gave above. Strange things happen, however! This link is dead (file not found), 5 minutes after I checked it (!), and after a Cristian's comment and my comment were deleted from the POW discussion.

 

The quote above shows that the yesterday censorship was against the accepted rules. But it was yesterday. Now there is not a sign of the written rules. So, with me or in me ?

Sorry, I found it. Thanks. Regards.

What's "grinch", Carl, a name, a ghost, or some imaginery (bad) creature ? :-)

What's "grinch", John?

Right, Salvadore! Look here:

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00A06B

 

CIAs (Controversial Image Alerts) are working already. Regards.

"Death Plays Chess"

 

Painting with cigarette smoke is not a new technique, we know at least the works of Dave Barstow:

 

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=369362

 

A lot of playing chess photos around, too. And death drawn with cigarette smoke you could find on every second poster explaining us how harmful smoking is. But luck counts, as Carl said, and the photo is gaining originality simply because the figure of death is beautifully depicted and easily recognisable, and, from the other hand, not so easy to be taken.

 

I like a lot the composition of this photo. A small crop from the right could exclude the two separated black figures and a tiny crop from the bottom deletes the small black triangle in the LLC. The latter crop has the meaning of extending the table toward the viewer, thus giving him a place to put his elbows on it and watch closely the game. That hidden beauty of the photo I'm calling "originality".

 

Now see the player's hand. The top of it looks burnt. By the cigarette smoke wrapping it and going up, and gradually "eating up" the player's vital spark. O.K. it's a loose interpretation, but the chance to make it adds to the picture. I'd call it "originality" provoked by a visual component of the photo or "added originally". And I'm not even going to speculate about diagonals (hand crossing the smoke line) making something like a cross sign rejecting this kind of "sports".

 

The second strongest visual component of the photo is the ashtray showing the origin of the third player. It's simply beautiful, put on the right place, and serves as a balancing weight for the main subject - the figure of death. We say usually "I like this picture because all of its components work together." That's true, but for this picture I'll add "... and because every single component of the photo works separately."

 

I don't like the caption. Too poster-like.

Timothy

 

Everything could be original if the photographer has an eye and a mind for the original (unexpected, peculiar, incongruous, and so on), if he's making up (and not only taking) his pictures. Look here for original portraits

 

http://www.photo.net/photodb/top-rated-photographer-photos?user_id=482100

 

A lot of original stills around, I pointed to one of them in my previous post. And if you manage to capture a cat jumping across the disc of the setting sun I'll be the first to nail you a 7 for originality. Regards. Blago

Add but not subtract criteria

 

 

There's only one eternal binary choice - "like/not like" or "good/bad", or "go/no go". But PN is a site for learning and such a simple definition is just not working. I want to know why I like this photo and don't like the other one you like. I want to compare photos and photographers. That's why I need some more tools - not only the single aesthetics - even not only aesthetics and originality. "Impact" and "Technical quality" have been discussed many times. All these abstract terms are difficult to define, however, they could be extremely useful in the process of learning. They help learners to talk to each other, to analyse pictures, and to build an artistic taste (style). What's the most important, they help us to understand photography, because seeing is understanding, isn't it?

 

Usually we accept the aesthetics (A) and originality (O) criteria as interconnected vessels. If A is more, than O should be less and the opposite. "I don't like/understand your picture but I'm giving you more value in originality trying to say two things: I respect you as a photographer, from one hand, and I could be wrong, from the other." That approach is far more civilized that any senseless argument on the like/not like basis. Nevertheless it's not reasonable. The A and O criteria are strongly connected (I wrote about it somewhere) and their numeric values cannot differ a lot.

 

Is photography a VISUAL art? Sure, and we could find the originality in the unusual lines and forms, compositions, specific lighting conditions, visual tricks , and so on. Is photography a visual ART? "Art" in the general sense of means used by people to communicate with each other, to share visions, moods, emotions, thoughts, and so on ? Yes, it is. Here we have to search for the originality "behind" the picture - concepts, memories, stories, jokes, whatever you like, because understanding is seeing, isn't it? And we won't miss to search "in front of" the picture, too. Where the photographer himself is - the main subject of all his photos.

Could a photo that's not very attractive visually be beautiful. Of course, if very original, if there's something behind/in front of it that makes you think, cry, or sing. And that "something" is another aspect of the aesthetical judgement. In fact, we have a lot of different criteria for originality and aesthetics, never mind there are only two boxes under each photo. :-) Merging all of them on the like/not like basis is the worst decision. It means to replace knowledge with intuition.

 

Finally, let me point to a great photo, imo, though not having an immediate visual impact.

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/2119399

 

Sorry, I don't know the author's name (one of the Picture This club).

Regards. Blago

Seven

 

O.K., Seven. You're so fast: CIA = Controversial Image Alert. But after the approbation send CIAs to everybody willing to take part.

 

I know we cannot improve the rating system fighting with it. We need something different, where the ratings are of a secondary importance, to balance the TRPs. Remember that scene from "The Golden Rush" where C. Chaplin was cooking a boot. Of course, the Big Guy took the softer part of it for him, but after that began to envy the small man enjoying the sole dish. That's the balance. :-) Regards.

Dave

 

I haven't thought of this, Dave. The fact the critique-only photos have been selected by the photographers themselves and are supposed to be their best works makes them somewhat special. People are not willing to be very critical to photos already proved their values. On the contrary, "controversial" photos are arguable and pleasingly diverse - from snapshots to highly original experiments. And they are selected on the basis of the ratings given by other fellow photographers. That's the essential difference. Regards.

Tim, what you said is true. All abstract nouns and adjectives are only in the mind of the subject. It's a conditional name. And it's not the name that matters. What's important, imo, is the different (second) look on the photos with highly contradictory ratings. No new numbers (ratings) involved, nothing conceptually new proposed, just a new (weekly) selection.

 

Jacques, we, sure, could find such images using the other ways available. More easier is to use a separate selection.

Marc

 

Thanks, Marc. Sure, there will be some "porn garbage" but, in any case, less than in the 3-day selections. But we won't miss some very original photographers refusing to follow the popular tastes. Like this one:

 

http://www.photo.net/photodb/top-rated-photographer-photos?user_id=1004172

 

There are 15 different pairs of ratings (!) in my favourite picture of him:

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/2588593

 

This man's works really deserve greater visibility. Regards.

Seven

 

You are right, Seven, but, as many people, I prefer to be "organized". Jesus, Heavenly Mental, you sound like Leo Tolstoy: "If bad people are gathering together, than...".:-)

I'll be glad to be in your email loop, too.

 

I'm sharing this idea because I believe it could be very useful for the spirit of the site. Better discuss and talk about photography, than throw ratings against each other. And you know (PT experience) the best pictures to discuss are not the highest rated ones. Maybe, it's not so difficult to implement such an idea - a weekly selection derived from the set of the already rated images according to some simple conditions ?

 

Regards. Notsoheavy Butmental

Carl

 

 

Exactly, Carl. A difficult image and not so easy to comment or rate. If we have a weekly selection for such images it could be given more time and thought. I like better your previous upload. Again a difficult one. I'm not rating it 5/5 but 6/5 (forgive me ,God!). Thus the image has already 7 different pairs of ratings and qualify for the selection of controversial (difficult, peculiar, strange, shocking, pretentious, and so on) images. Here I can tune my ratings better.

Niranjn T

 

"Average length of comment" might be another interesting filter... " It might be, though I see no way for a program to check how meaningful a comment is. I was fond of using the "number of comments" filter, and I'm still using it, but you have to do a lot of manual work to find out where the comments are from an interesting discussion and where they are simple praise.

Spaghetti Western

 

"...so you need to dig under the very top pages." - that's what I'm proposing: to dig starting down from the last image in the weekly Top 500. Not up, and not because you cannot find controversial images here, but because Top 500 selection gives enough visibility for these images. So, the images between 10.66 and 11.2 you found today will qualify if fulfilling other requirements. I'm saying again, the figures I'm giving are only to clarify the idea.

 

"controversial isn't numerical" - right, as aesthetics and originality are not. But for the site to operate we have to use numbers. :-)

It's simple, Adrian. Maybe, this 11.2 is confusing. It's a variable. Better to give it as a procedure. We start to check images for "controversy" from the 501-st down in the weekly Top 500 and select an image if it has 7 or more different pairs of ratings & a sum higher than 6. So the selected controversial images don't intersect with the TRP images.

Controversial image - having 7 or more different pairs of ratings &

having a sum of ratings between 6 and 11.2 .(Today the last image in

weekly Top 500 has a sum of 11.2.)

 

What could we gain having such a selection (in fact, a sub-selection

of already rated images) ? We could help some images accidentally or

deliberately lowered go up. We could help the photographer

wondering "What does it mean?". We could learn technically and

conceptually from some new experimental work usually underestimated

in the beginning, and so not entering the TRP pages. I suppose more

comments and discussions are likely to appear on controversial

images. Mate raters and low raters would hardly have any interest

here. It could be a quieter place to learn and share balancing

somehow the tension on the TRP.

 

I know some technical problems are involved. The figures given above

should be selected so to be statistically reasonable what could be

done only by Brian.

 

It's only a rough idea. Please be critical. Thanks.

Spaghetti Western

 

By the standards here 4/4 means "average" what I (many of us) could understand. 1/7 means "very bad but excellent" what only a few of us could grasp. Not me, in any case. It's difficult to accept immediately the most original images - they carry a specific beauty (aesthetics) that needs time to be perceived. From the other hand, if a photo is extremely beautiful it's already original because it's more beautiful (that means EXTREMELY) than the other beautiful photos. I think, the two categories were introduced to help us analyse pictures, what's very important in the photography learning process. (Some proposed a "technical quality" category to be added.) Not that they exist separately in the photos taken.

Franz, it's rather a slip of the mouse. A robot could easily delete all pairs of ratings with a difference of 5 or 6 points. They have no photographic sense. 4/4 has a meaning but 1/7 is meaningless in every aspect.

Good move, Brian! What about the low raters? I know they're difficult to define because 1, 2, and 3 are enough to deprive a picture of visibility, but sometimes they are justified. Additionally there are a lot of bogus accounts used by mate raters (and not only) to retaliate for a low rating received or simply to displace a "competitor". An indicative example:

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/2822048

 

I left a (strongly) negative comment, even not rated, and see what happened.

Carl

 

We don't know what the site best interests are. Maybe, we are not supposed to know. Big money is needed for the site to be maintained and developed. The natural way to collect this money is to promote digital cameras and technologies connected with them. Everything is going digital, no matter if we like it or not. So, the newcomer with a new digital camera in hand is entering PN and sees a lot of fantastic digital images "made with cameras" similar to his own. And many of the newcomers are just not realizing what they see are not real photos but their replacements - greatly simplified software images of reality, to put it in this way. What to ask more - bright images, pure and (over)saturated colors, sharp lines ? This shocking beauty is enough for many beginners to open the bag with 7s and to start pouring them forth. Later some of them are subject also to "corruption" by some of the recipients of their generosity. "Jesus, my first 7/7 !", and so on. We call it "mate-rating". It comes naturally (imo) and not as a result of some perfidious plot. But mate-rating is stimulated also by the low raters. Afraid of low ratings mate-raters are pushing their rates higher what in turn makes low raters go lower. Both practices are abusing the existing system because they have nothing to do with photography. These are some simple calculations and computer gaming. Mate raters and low raters - both sides of the same coin - successfully ruining the efforts of the vast majority of the gallery members. It was already proposed: zero all the ratings and limit the recourses (number of high and low ratings) permitted monthly per user. Not a perfect solution but at least some regulation.

Brian

 

But usually the photographer is not seeing the flare when taking pictures. Thus removing it by color adjustments results in a more accurate or realistic representation of what he saw.