[Kestrana]

Yikes!

[Kestrana]

But where do you put your cauldron?

[Kestrana]

Strawberry Fields Forever by kestrana, on Flickr

This is the picture I was taking, in ennuipoet’s picture.

[Kestrana]

After minor editing, I’m using that and it’s probably going on the back cover.

[Kestrana]

ZeroExponent I wanted to thank you for the little gift you gave to a newb farktographer. She and my grandpa were very close and his death was a very hard time for our family.

[Kestrana]

We used to roast Stay Puft marshmallows by the fire at Camp Wakonda.

[Kestrana]

You mean like “Roy G. Biv” which we did within the past year?

[Kestrana]

He was in Independence Day!

[Kestrana]

Other than the very large lenses I leave them on and reversed when not in use because they feel so flimsy in my backpack, I don’t want them to get broken clinking around in there with all the other lenses and cameras.

[Kestrana]

See, this theme has fringe benefits!

[Kestrana]

I too would like this to be the first of more books we put together. I may even survive to do the next ones 😛

One other thing that occurred to me in the last few days of thinking about this is that one of the things I like about what we did was choosing themes, which is a Farktography Thing ™ that lend structure and context to the book. If we just had 3 from each participant we could still use the chapter divisions but the contests would be meaningless without taking time to list every single contest we’ve ever had.

At this time I’m very leery of adding any more photos to this edition as we are way over the estimated page count already and we’ve very few people pull out. However if you’re one of the photographers with a lot of pictures and you want to pull some of your less favorite entries, that’s fine. Alternately, all those pictures were invited and I’m not embarrassed by anyone’s picture count – after all it wasn’t my decision to put them in the top 5, it was the fark voters saying they like your style.

[Kestrana]

The thing is that I’m very open to discussing changes and ideas for the book and I feel I have been from the beginning. The method we used to select pictures was the only one that gathered critical mass. If “contact all and pick three” had been suggested and agreed to, I would have run with that as easily as anything else. However it got to a point where I felt I was the only person talking and no one was replying.

But I see the merit to what was suggested and the criticism of some small number of people having a larger percentage of page space. Just because the person who initially raised this point is in the minority doesn’t make their criticism any less valid. Ultimately we are trying to produce something that will be reflective of our world here and that we’re proud of, and that will actually sell to the public. Maybe this is a good point to consider.

I have no problem at all and won’t be personally hurt if the consensus is to scrap what has been done and go back to the drawing board in terms of asking people to suggest their favorite 3 or 5, and putting that together again. But I have to say, I won’t be the driving force if we start over. I’m happy to do a book layout again with people’s selections, but if we choose to start the selection process over I don’t think I can summon the will to re-coordinate everything. I have a very comprehensive spreadsheet and contact information though, so it wouldn’t be difficult for someone else to take over.

[Kestrana]

updated layout: http://www.kestrana.com/Farkbookv3.pdf

Already aware that Cuddly title page credits are incorrect, will be fixed next iteration

[Kestrana]

I’m sorry if someone is being dickish about it. Did you explain the process to them? and that it wasn’t just one person making the decision? The specific themes were choosen and then it was the top 5, no? Altho, come to think of it, I don’t think one of mine was in the top 5….Now that I think about it, there was a group of people helping pick, right? So I don’t know why the person would just pick you to blame too..

You can only fit so much in the book and you’re right, not everyone is going to be happy but such is life. Is there a backup list/plan B if there are a lot of people who don’t ever get back to you?

I wouldn’t say dickish. I just received a couple emails today with some concerns about the project in general, not even really blame. That’s not even a bad thing but it makes me re-evaluate how much am I listening to the community and how much am I just doing what I want to do because I want it that way, and whether or not this project was flawed from the beginning.

When it came to photo selection we started with top 5 but we included 7-10 photos from each contest. The others were picked to 1. incorporate more people 2. bulk up some people’s total photos 3. recognize great photos that didn’t get votes

Even though I lobbied some for a different method I’d say this was fair. When you’re dealing with as many photographers and photographs as we are for this no system was going to be perfectly fair. The way I look at it is regardless of how the photos are chosen theres going to be a lot of good photographs by a lot of good photographers.

I am so relieved to hear you say this. I was actually worried that I’d offended you by countering your arguments. But I agree there’s no perfectly fair system.

Thanks Choc-Ful-A for the advice. I’m a very empathic person so I always try to see people’s sides and arguments which makes it easy for me to get down on myself for not being able to please everyone.

Thanks NBD and I agree with you that we have been talking about this a long time and I felt like I tried to stir up discussion a lot here and on facebook before I pushed forward with it.

[Kestrana]

Today I’m in need of moral support. Do you think we’ve been fair in the manner we used to select content for the book? I know that unless we included every picture ever we’re not going to please everyone and that there will always be critics of your work no matter how good but I’m feeling overwhelmed today. I certainly didn’t take on this project to create enemies or piss anyone off.

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