12-08-10 – Optimus Prime

Well I am glad it’s not just that my pictures suck this week. I can understand lack of interest. I have a lot of friends and family who just look at me funny if I mention photography or farktography even. Some of them do use their cellphone cameras but most don’t even do snapshots. Probably why I get so few votes each week. No dedicated following. Well that and maybe I am not the great photographer I wish I was and try to be.

hey Elsinore, there’s a Demotivationals poster posted in the thread. Don’t know if you want to remove it or not.

I just have ONE question for everyone who posted a macro/close shot of their cats (Rav!) howinhell did you convince the cat to stay still long enough to compose and shoot? My cats SEE a camera and they become furry blurs.

Fat Load is really lazy so if you catch him in a laying about mood, he won’t get up for anything but a plate of tuna. Our other cat is scared of his own shadow so there are far fewer pictures of him.

IIRC, it was U-Man or NBD that said Holga’s are so bad, they’re good. Each one seems to have it’s own little quirks, but if you cruise flickr, you’ll see that holgas seem to have all manner of light leaks, flare, falloff, and other “unwanted” effects. Mine (before I chopped it up) was mostly prone to falloff/vignetting.

I was out shooting with my Yashica over the Summer when some girl asked me about it. I told her what it was and she says: “Oh, it’s like a Holga!” I looked at her for a moment and said “No, it’s nothing like a Holga, this…is a good camera”. I don’t think she really understood.

Blimey, it is a quiet one this week. I just cast my votes and was amazed to see how few votes some really great pictures had garnered.
Lowest. Voting. Evah?

EdenLiesObscured
I love the picture of your boxer bouncing off the tree. Is she (?) always that barmy?

Blimey, it is a quiet one this week. I just cast my votes and was amazed to see how few votes some really great pictures had garnered.
Lowest. Voting. Evah?

Not quite, but it’s looking to be in the lower 1/3. The lowest vote count ever was “Pinhole Camera” on 3-Dec-08 with 333 votes cast.

This contest is at 954 with a bit more than a day left. The average for the last 6 contests at this point in time is 1522, but there’ve been 70 contests with fewer than 954 total, including 5 this year:

Date        Theme                Votes





2010-07-21  These Foolish Games    836

2010-05-26  Kid at Heart           739

2010-04-21  Potent Potables        672

2010-03-24  Pan Fried              716

2010-03-03  Something's Mising     772

I had an idea for a data string a while back that I suggested to Schnee, that I think would be neat to see.

Basically, I figured the overall vote drive is driven by the number of casuals, and the way to find any truth in that would be by creating an algorithm as such:

Create a list, sort of like the “active farktographers” on the FSM. Use some sort of criterion to determine “regular” maybe participation in 8 of the last 15 contests or something. Have the list moving, so for any given contest, you can see who the “regulars” were, and if they participated or not.

Then graph participation of regulars vs. casuals for any given thread. My suspicion is that the threads with a higher ratio of casuals to regulars than the average thread are the ones that coincide with higher vote totals.

This also gave rise to the idea of a chart “full of win” where the top ten contests by average votes per picture would be listed. Then make the matching “full of crap.” Perhaps this could give us slightly better insight than just “total votes” as to what types of themes generate the most activity.

Well, best pay attention then, LeicaLens, ’cause there will be a quiz later. And did I mention I grade on a curve? (Always wanted to turn the tables on a teacher :))

But seriously, thanks for the thanks – glad to know I’m not the only one who finds it interesting. And I always get a chuckle out of y’alls use of maths (plural). Didn’t they teach you in Englishes class that it was singular? 😆

orionid: Very interesting. I suspect you’re right. Jack and Suzy see a theme they’ve got the perfect picture for and enter it, then let their friends and family know about it, who then end up voting for others as well. They then disappear into the sunset until the next perfect theme comes along. Or as the data seems to indicate, most of them disappear forever. I’ve got 5596 unique entrants in my database and only 411 of those have entered more than 10 contests and 3211 (57%) have entered only one.

I’ll add your ideas to my features list – thanks!

And finally, it looks to be safe to congratulate Elsinore, so congrats!