[Kestrana]

Good to see you’re getting ideas already!

[Kestrana]

lower total vote count:

Date        Theme                                   Votes





2008-07-30  I Tawt I Taw A Puddytat                  5546

2008-06-04  Trees                                    4092

2010-01-20  Sunrise. Sunset.                         3691

2008-03-19  Nature Photography                       3559

2008-07-23  Farktography Classic: Blue II            3282

2010-09-22  Farktography Classic: Green 2            3067

2010-10-20  Travel Photography                       3047

2009-10-07  Farktography Classic: Black and White 2  3031

2010-01-06  Animals                                  3024

2009-05-27  Birds                                    2955

and here are the top ten in terms of viewer interest as indicated by votes/entry:

Date       Theme                                             Votes/Entry





2009-06-10 Tilt-Shift Faked Miniature Scenes                       17.38

2009-03-18 Tableau                                                 15.44

2009-08-26 Training Documents                                      15.41

2009-12-02 Win, Fail, or "I Like Where This Thread is Going"       15.10

2010-12-01 The Song Remains The Same                               14.80

2010-01-20 Sunrise. Sunset.                                        14.20

2010-09-22 Farktography Classic: Green 2                           14.20

2008-07-23 Farktography Classic: Blue II                           14.15

2009-01-21 Take Three                                              14.14

2009-04-29 Farkstronomy                                            13.80

The first one is no surprise there. Puddytats has been the biggest theme we ever had. The others on the list are all themes where the subject lends itself to easy access for casuals (as in people would have these pictures lying around anywhere, even at work) and somewhat “easy to take a good picture” even for someone with no photography experience (not to dumb them down but just sayin)

The second list is pretty interesting to me. The first 5 themes and the last 2 are ones that required more than average effort in the creativity department.

So the consensus would be then, the ultimate theme would be something uniquely creative that everyone has lying around… ><

[Kestrana]

So, a higher percentage of casual entrants in general somewhat equals a lower vote/entry.

This makes sense to me. With fewer entries it’s easier to generate a consensus/more popular entries rise to the top quicker. We’ve discussed voting proclivities ad nauseum over the past year and I do think it’s a general nature that people don’t feel/realize they can vote for multiple entries or many entries. Thus when there’s more total entries people have this instinctual habit to “save” their votes for the “really good ones” and not vote for ones that they like but maybe don’t consider as strong an entry.

[Kestrana]

It’s too pinkish for my tastes imo, sorry

[Kestrana]

I kind of have to stifle a laugh at the hypothesizing going on about voting correlation re: casual participants. To me it seemed perfectly obvious that themes with higher numbers of casual participants will garner higher numbers of total votes because if the theme generates more casual interest participants it will generate more casual interest viewers as well. Judging from how many of my and orionid‘s friends/family view the thread every week and DON’T vote, I suspect the Jack and Suzy calling up friend x,y, and z to vote for them is a pretty rare occurrence. Since you have the ability to graph by total votes, it would be most interesting to me to see a link to the total votes by contest and draw whatever general consensus we can about the similarities in those themes if we want to generate more themes with high participation.

Although December is always a huge fall-off month for participation and voting so no need to panic over this week’s total votes imho.

[Kestrana]

Hahaha “coont” made me literally lol.

[Kestrana]

Okay. That’s a damn good story. I especially liked the Vader “Try it in German” bit. LOL’ed at that.

Sie sind Teil der Rebellen Allianz und ein Verr?ter!

/yeah, OK, that is Babel’d, my D- High School German isn’t up to snuff

You’re the rebel alliance’s penis, and a traitor ? 😛 Which Star Wars was that, nad where do i get a copy…?

Star Wars: A New Hoe?

[Kestrana]

Was kind of curious what that comment about a denoument referred to.

[Kestrana]

I also like the ranking system the way it is now.

The only thing I can think of would be a way to fix OBO voting yourself. Like if there was a way to log in and give up votes to another person. Then we wouldn’t have to bug a mod to fix OBOs.

[Kestrana]

My personal feeling about the charity is this:

1. Choose only one to make the biggest impact. The more we split, the less weight (although still appreciated) the donation carries
2. Whatever charity we pick will get some publicity out of this, so choosing a lesser known charity may create more ancillary good than one everyone knows. I had planned for the dedication page in the book to have a note about whichever charity we pick
3. I agree that groups viewed as political in nature should be avoided but I’ll still list whatever gets nominated
4. I will get in touch with whatever charity we pick to see what kind of reciprocity they can offer us as far as plugging the book, since they would also benefit if we sell enough copies to generate royalties. A smaller charity is more likely to be helpful in that regard or have less hoops to jump through, a larger charity will reach more people.
5. I’m personally in favor of anything photography related. As I said in the email string, photography is the reason this book exists so I feel we should give back to it.
6. Since we represent an international community, finding a charity that is or potentially will be international would also be appropriate.

[Kestrana]

I’m more looking for essays in the categories of #1 or #3 (aside from Nature, that’s pretty well covered).

[Kestrana]

my very first time was on a K1000.
.

Sounds painful…

[Kestrana]

We will need ideas for the charities, yes.

[Kestrana]

Exciting news today! The agent loves the book sample and has guaranteed we will either find a publisher or be able to self-publish. The advance is estimated at 25-30K. Assuming about 5k for our party, that’s 20-25k for charity!

This also means I have to complete a finished copy of the book so if you think or know you owe me anything (forms, files, bios) please try to get that to me by the end of December. Starting next week I will be attempting to totally complete chapters and fix any outstanding mistakes.

I need a couple volunteers to proofread the final draft.

I still need essays about what Farktography/photography means to you or other photo related meanderings. I need about 6 more.

That’s all for now.

[Kestrana]

Well because of the shallowness of the depth of field you’re going to get bokeh no matter where your focus is. The one of the glitter pile really confused me as an observer because the focus was in a narrow band in the middle of the picture, I wasn’t sure where you were going with that. I’m by no means an expert in macro photography but if I can use my flower from this week as an example: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kestrana/4994382241/
You can see the water droplets just to the right of the center are already blurry and I actually cropped about 25 pica along the right hand because it was blurry and distracting from the in focus subject of the water droplets and stamen.

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