Photo Competitions

[north-north-west]

Entry fee plus ...

I wouldn't enter. It doesn't matter when it's just bragging right on some pissy little internet forum, but I wouldn't pay an entry fee or compete for prizes when there are so many entries that ignore the spirit of the anonymity concept.

btw, who would administer all this? Matt and the other mods already donate a fair chunk of their time to keep this place running, and you want to double the difficulty by having entry fees and formal judging panels and chasing sponsors etc. Leave the poor blokes a bit of spare time, please.

[wildwalks]

Hi Cams

Yep I did read your whole post - sorry for not responding in full.

I guess my question about prizes is 'what is the purpose?'. Maybe I am been negative. But my experience with prizes is they shift the focus for people. So in the current example people are motivated to take and share photos for a bunch of reasons. EG, share the passion of a place, for personal recognition, for feedback, because they like the image and hope others will enjoy it, in the hope that it will inspire people to bushwalk/protect places, and so on. Once you start having tangible prizes then thinking tends to shift to entering to win the prizes. Prize value is rarely of significant value to justify the effort. This is well studied in business - there are a number of studies that show if you pay people for soft skills (when they are already doing it for intrinsic motivation) that it generally demotivates people. (eg http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2012050 ... -the-money http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect)

Also once prizes are in the mix whole fairness issues pops up. People start getting upset because they were 'robbed' of the prize (weather they say it or not). Gathering significant prizes from sponsors is a lot of hard work (generally it is cheaper to just work at a few extra hours and buy a prize then it is too spend the time chasing up prizes). Prizes would likely vary greatly from month to month most prizes will be things like socks, torches, towels, water bottles - but every so often you get a bigger prizes that then starts up the whole fairness issue again. Currently I am trying to find ways to build the audience of people voting. We are currently getting around 45 unique people voting in each comp - I can't think of a company that would be happy to donate a prize of any significance to such a small potential audience. Companies give prizes as a form of advertising - the hope is that enough of the audience will shop with them to (at least) offset the cost .

Now that all assumes a significant dollar value prize (eg torch). Other options such as "Bushwalk.com photographer of the year 2014" badge for the pack would be different.

So this brings me back to the 'what is the purpose?' of prizes question. Will it help build the community here? Will it motivate more photographers to join in? Will it get more people voting? Maybe it would -- happy to chat more about it.

As for asking people to pay to enter a photo into a syndicate system - I am not excited either. At the moment people enter photos even if they are not really expecting to win - if you have to pay even just a dollar then you are only going to enter if you think you have a real chance of winning. So I think the effect will be less people participating.
Also I really like the idea of the community voting -- I would love to see how we get more people joining it. it is increasing - but not as fast as I would like. But the idea of having a set of judges I think takes something away from the community (you can have a community vote and a judges vote separate).

I would rather spend the time and energy helping build the intrinsic motivation for the photo comp.

Anyway -- that is my thinking - right or wrong - interested to keep hear other ideas.

Matt

[tom_brennan]

I tend to agree with Matt. I don't think that prizes are the way to go. It changes the motivation for entering, and probably not for the better.

That said, I do have a prize. I have a mug with my photo on it on my desk for winning the Australian Photo of the Year in 2010 - but I think that's probably about the level of prize that's sufficient for something like this.

I don't think there's enough interest to create new categories - the existing ones are just getting by - but perhaps there could be occasional challenges, with a longer timeframe for the photo to have been taken, and possibly a longer voting period. See
http://www.dpreview.com/challenges/
for examples of how it might work

[johnw]

Entry fee plus ...

I wouldn't enter.

Ditto

[farefam]

Some positive feedback to the volunteers who run this site.... the new e-mag is great (only just discovered it) and the photo comp in it's current format is always interesting as are indeed the vast majority of topics on bushwalk.com
So far as the photocomp goes I wouldn't worry too much about prizes or even think of an entry fee as it might distort the focus of the entries and discourage others from sharing (surely on a forum, sharing should be the primary focus). Photography like all art is very much in the eye of the beholder, so I don't think prizes or "bragging rights" mean very much in any case. And there are plenty of serious photo comps elsewhere if some of the current contributors want to try their luck for a big prize or award.
The time limit on entering may well be a significant factor limiting the number of contributions to the photo comp... particularly from those who don't live in Tasmania. I know it is usually months before I get round to looking at the photos from a trip, let alone to sort through them and then do any final edits before posting them online. I can't think of any practical solution to the time limit issue for entries though.
I'll definitely vote for keeping Tassie as a separate section in the photo comp, both to honour the site's history and because there's something uniquely special about the Tasmanian wilderness.
If you want to encourage a more general sharing of bushwalking photos then perhaps it may be an idea to set up a separate post in the gallery section that contains a set of links to any websites/galleries/blogs that the site administrators think are of good general interest/value. David Noble's home page comes to mind as an example of a pretty comprehensive bushwalking photo gallery. There are several other pretty good, fairly comprehensive collections on the various photo sharing sites that some of the members of this forum use. It would be nice to have a collection of links in one spot. Just an idea.

[wildwalks]

Hi Farefam
Thanks for the feedback and encouragement.
Some interesting ideas.
There is some chat going on at the moment about a "Photo discussion/training" thread so that people can share images and get feedback on them.
This also adds to your idea of galleries.
Will think about these more.
thanks
Matt

[frenchy_84]

As far as more sharing of general images, make it easier to upload a gallery to the forum. It's currently quite tedious the fact you have to resize images and then load one at a time with a max of 5 per post. When instead you can just share on Facebook by selecting all images at once and then their site engine automatically resizes for you.

[icefest]

The problem with that is the bandwidth. Most simple setups will require you to upload the entire file, and then do the conversion on the server. Some java setups avoid this.
Some browsers support HTML5 resizing, others don't.
It seems that http://www.plupload.com/ have found a way do do what you want under a GPL ( they use a combination of HTML5, silverlight, flash and others).


Drag and drop shouldn't be too hard, there are many open source libraries that help: http://www.dropzonejs.com/

[wildwalks]

Thanks Icefest -- interesting code -- will look into this.
Would be good to make this forum more image friendly.

Matt

[wildwalks]

I did a quick bit of research into using plupload with phpbb (the software our forum runs on).
It is possible to use now (although not very clean)
There is an upgrade ver 3.1 - were pulpload will be integrated. The release date is not set but guess later this year.
I will upgrade once the release is stable and enable this option.

As per french_84's suggestion
I have increase the photos per post limit from 5 to 10 for now.
Once things settle in I can look at of increasing the photo per post limit higher - but don't like doing things to quickly incase because of potential cascading effects.

thanks

Matt

[icefest]

Thanks Matt.

I'd try to do it but I can't code. :/

[beardless]

Is it that time of the month that the photos for the June 2015 Photo Competition be up for voting? Always look forward to it as a virtual holiday around Australia, and at this time of the year without getting cold and wet.

[Tortoise]

Is there a simple way of shrinking the images to the 5 mb size limit without losing quality? My camera usually produces files a bit bigger than that - or the computer software that sets it up in iPhoto. I'm astonishingly technologically challenged. So I often stuff around for ages, then don't submit anything.

Edit: Of course, there might be the answer a few posts ago, but it doesn't mean anything to me.

[GPSGuided]

Is there a simple way of shrinking the images to the 5 mb size limit without loosing quality? My camera usually produces files a bit bigger than that - or the computer software that sets it up in iPhoto. I'm astonishingly technologically challenged. So I often stuff around for ages, then don't submit anything.

There are a number of ways but unfortunately I've already moved across to Apple's new Photo app and don't have a copy of iPhoto to exact describe the process. In general, you can select the photo and export it as a file. In the process, it'll ask you for the quality you want to export. In any case, given the browser presentation of all these photos, a much smaller file will suffice for the purpose. Alternatively, just drag the image to your desktop and a duplicate file will appear. Open this with Apple's Preview app. Then go up to the drop down menu and choose Tools -> Adjust Size. If you reduce the image size to 15" across and then save to high JPEG quality, you'll find your resulting image file will be well under the 5Mb limit.

Hope this helps.

[north-north-west]

Is there a simple way of shrinking the images to the 5 mb size limit without loosing quality? My camera usually produces files a bit bigger than that - or the computer software that sets it up in iPhoto. I'm astonishingly technologically challenged. So I often stuff around for ages, then don't submit anything.

There are a number of ways but unfortunately I've already moved across to Apple's new Photo app and don't have a copy of iPhoto to exact describe the process. In general, you can select the photo and export it as a file. In the process, it'll ask you for the quality you want to export. In any case, given the browser presentation of all these photos, a much smaller file will suffice for the purpose. Alternatively, just drag the image to your desktop and a duplicate file will appear. Open this with Apple's Preview app. Then go up to the drop down menu and choose Tools -> Adjust Size. If you reduce the image size to 15" across and then save to high JPEG quality, you'll find your resulting image file will be well under the 5Mb limit.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for that. Shall try to remember to give it a go next time around. Assuming I enter anything. Forgot to for the current one . . .

[Tortoise]

I now officially concede defeat by technology. Can't waste any more days trying to get images to fit the criteria. Follow advice to the letter, Mac tells me it has shrunk the image to <5mb. But the actual file size in fact enlarges from its previous >5mb size.

Or it tells me that, after about 10 attempts, it is still too small to submit. Or... or... or...

Or it refuses to change the date when I inadvertently fail to fix the date on a new camera (fair enough, that one), then rubs it in next time when it refuses to recognise the original (this time correct date) if I want to do any very basic tweakage.

I'm not inviting advice here - I've followed lots of that (thanks to all who tried!), without success, and really do have other things that need doing. Just opening the window on how it is for us technologically-challenged people who, in spite of their limitations, still want to be part of a great online community.

Any advance on the 5mb size limit? No, stop it, Tortoise. You shall waste no more time on this!

[DanShell]

I now officially concede defeat by technology. Can't waste any more days trying to get images to fit the criteria. Follow advice to the letter, Mac tells me it has shrunk the image to <5mb. But the actual file size in fact enlarges from its previous >5mb size.

Or it tells me that, after about 10 attempts, it is still too small to submit. Or... or... or...

Or it refuses to change the date when I inadvertently fail to fix the date on a new camera (fair enough, that one), then rubs it in next time when it refuses to recognise the original (this time correct date) if I want to do any very basic tweakage.

I'm not inviting advice here - I've followed lots of that (thanks to all who tried!), without success, and really do have other things that need doing. Just opening the window on how it is for us technologically-challenged people who, in spite of their limitations, still want to be part of a great online community.

Any advance on the 5mb size limit? No, stop it, Tortoise. You shall waste no more time on this!

Hi Tortoise
It sounds like you have had a heap of advice and I haven't read any of it but resizing the file size of your images for a photo comp without effecting the quality too much is really simple.

If you use the 'Photos' app on a mac simply select the photo you want to use and go to file-export. Don't use 'export unmodified original'. Just use the export function.

Then use these settings in your export options.........

snap1.tiff

I just exported an image thats original was over 10mb and it exported to just over 1mb and the quality is still good enough for an online photo comp.

I hope that helps

[neilmny]

Hi Dan, I see snap1.tiff and it's been viewed 6 times at this stage but I can't see a thing other than the filename.

[DanShell]

Hi Dan, I see snap1.tiff and it's been viewed 6 times at this stage but I can't see a thing other than the filename.

Hmm maybe the forum doesn't like tiff's.

Here it is as a jpg, that should work This image thing IS complicated!

snap1.jpg

[Tortoise]

Hi Tortoise
It sounds like you have had a heap of advice and I haven't read any of it but resizing the file size of your images for a photo comp without effecting the quality too much is really simple.

If you use the 'Photos' app on a mac simply select the photo you want to use and go to file-export. Don't use 'export unmodified original'. Just use the export function.

Then use these settings in your export options.........

snap1.tiff

I just exported an image thats original was over 10mb and it exported to just over 1mb and the quality is still good enough for an online photo comp.

I hope that helps

Weeeeell, Dan, maybe one more try...

OK, starts ok. Using 'max' quality and 'large' size did get it to <2mb. Yay!! But there are still 2 obstacles:
1.

Screen Shot 2016-02-14 at 6.49.29 PM.png

2. The date, if I do anything at all to it (I always allow a bit extra on one side for cropping to print 6x4s etc), the image is rejected as Preview and GIMP (unlike last time) both embed today's date, not the date on which the shot was taken. Neither would do that last time when I was trying to correct the wrong date I didn't realise was still on the camera.

[DanShell]

Ok well lets keep this simple. I am simple and I find its best

Seeing as you have resolution size restrictions as well as file size restrictions you will need to export the photo in perhaps Medium size (instead of large) to get one of the dimensions below 2000px.

As for the Exif data, you are correct it will show it as the date you resized it being the last time it was modified but the forums software should recognise the actual date it was taken. If it doesn't then it would be impossible for anyone to enter unless they uploaded the original images. (which in most cases would be larger than 2000px and larger than 5mb in size).

Let me know how you go. If all else fails just email me the image and Ill sort it out for you

[Tortoise]

Ok well lets keep this simple. I am simple and I find its best

Seeing as you have resolution size restrictions as well as file size restrictions you will need to export the photo in perhaps Medium size (instead of large) to get one of the dimensions below 2000px.

As for the Exif data, you are correct it will show it as the date you resized it being the last time it was modified but the forums software should recognise the actual date it was taken. If it doesn't then it would be impossible for anyone to enter unless they uploaded the original images. (which in most cases would be larger than 2000px and larger than 5mb in size).

Let me know how you go. If all else fails just email me the image and Ill sort it out for you

You're a very kind man, Dan! And I like simple.
But I think the issue in the error message is saying it's too small, not too big??

[DanShell]

You're a very kind man, Dan! And I like simple.
But I think the issue in the error message is saying it's too small, not too big??

Oh dear yes of course it did, perhaps I'm a little too simple

Well let's try exporting at the maximum size and see if it's OVER 2000px on one dimension but under 5mb in file size.

You may need to reduce the quality one step further to get it below 5mb.

Again if all else fails I'll do it for you in Adobe Photoshop

[Tortoise]

By George, we appear to have got it! Still waiting for an error message to appear, as I think it might have done that belatedly once.

So keep the file full size and reduce the quality till autobot is apparently happy.
One down, two to go...?...

[Tortoise]

date error.png

Aaaaarrghh! It was not!!!!!

[DanShell]

date error.png

Aaaaarrghh! It was not!!!!!

Lol ok obviously apples photo program doesn't keep the exif data properly.

I'll pm you my email and I'll do it in Photoshop for you.

[Tortoise]

Thank you!! I'm sure someone else with my computer and programs could manage it without any probs. I think it's my magnetic field... or lack thereof... or something...

[iandsmith]

Is it only me that's worried about whatever happened to the February contest?
I sort of got the impression that a day or two delay usually happened but this time it's nearly a week and no sign here of the February comp.
Have a happy Easter all.

[north-north-west]

I wouldn't mind if the delay meant I could sneak an entry in (forgot this time around).

Probably just means Matt's busy out walking (or whatevering).

[johnw]

Anyone know what's happened to the October comp?