[Kestrana]

As orionid stated I’m on board with his idea. We can afford to be really picky and include really awesome shots this way while leaving plenty of room open for another edition if we want to. I think the 2009 edition idea had just been put forward both as a combination of easy to get a hold of the photographers + giving us a smaller pool to wade through + self-publishing. But with Drew’s assistance in putting this together we will have resources previously unavailable to help us get the licensing aspect taken care of.

[Kestrana]

Ok so I did the other spreadsheet actually before work so this is the difference: 272 total pictures and 71 unique photographers. This list is arranged by total pictures then alphabetical.

advisorgee
ArcticFox
ChimpMitten
CitizenTed
Curious
Deveyn
dprathbun
DynoFARKjr
Eternal
GallopingGoulash
jekxrb
jimpoz
JohnBEsq
kashari
Linguine
monsieurstabby
No Catchy Nickname
nugz4lunch
PandyFarmer
RcMacStudent
sclark5150
Sinnocent
SkyPig
SoCalChris
somewebguy
sweetc
t_xerox
Uranus
USAF Retired
wrayvynn
zenprowler

Choc-Ful-A x 2
dompydude x 2
FutherMucker x 2
hackhix x 2
HagarTheHorrible x 2
idle_hands x 2
IncorrigibleKitty x 2
Jpatten x 2
lady_nocturne x 2
markie_farkie x 2
mattietoldhattie x 2
Megain x 2
No Such User x 2
staplermofo x 2
stupido x 2

Ennuipoet x 3
just kat x 3
kestrana x 3
Lord Ezekiel x 3
nutkick_42 x 3

MorningBreath x 4
pangolyn x 4
schnee x 4

harpo x 5
QueenBee x 5

continental_sausage x 6
Mopsy x 6
sleeping x 6

bucky_bacon x 7
corsec67 x 7

SilverStag x 8

I’m No Big Deal x 9
olavf x 9
Ranger Joe x 9

swampa2 x 11

millera9 x 13
soosh x 13

Elsinore x 15

orionid x 19

U-Man x 35

With a working number of 128 more pictures, that would total 400. That would give everyone on the list the opportunity to add 1 more picture + some room for anyone who isn’t on the list also. U-Man at 35 is still less than 10% of total pictures and everyone else I think is ok. If we can’t get permission from some of the less active people we can go down the rankings. My brain kind of hurts now.

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Or, alternate square one idea is to totally scrap the idea of using only 2009 photos, the contests as categories and the rankings at all. Come up with new chapter categories for the book and have all photographers submit pictures to those categories provided they were used in a farktography contest at any time. Create pools on Flickr for said categories. Upload picture in largest available resolution to said pools. Then vote on uploaded pictures via the favorites feature or comments on Flickr. Chapter categories relate to overall theme of the book and photography on the internet as staplermofo was positing.

[Kestrana]

Was it in 2009? I only looked at the contests from “Money Shots” to “Farktography Classic: Season’s Greetings III”. If it is, let me know, but I was using the FSM data to compile the list.

[Kestrana]

Ok so here’s the data from the spreadsheet I put together of top 5s and how many pictures that entails. It’s a total of 265 pictures from 67 unique photographers.

advisorgee
ArcticFox
bucky_bacon x 8
ChimpMitten
Choc-Ful-A x 2
CitizenTed
continental_sausage x 5
corsec67 x 6
Curious
Deveyn
dompydude x 2
dprathbun
Elsinore x 16
Ennuipoet x 2
Eternal
FutherMucker x 2
GallopingGoulash
hackhix x 2
HagarTheHorrible x 2
harpo x 3
idle_hands
I’m No Big Deal x 8
IncorrigibleKitty x 2
jekxrb
jimpoz
JohnBEsq
Jpatten x 2
just kat x 2
kashari
kestrana x 3
lady_nocturne x 2
Linguine
Lord Ezekiel x 3
markie_farkie x 2
mattietoldhattie
Megain x 2
millera9 x 12
Mopsy x 4
MorningBreath x 4
No Catchy Nickname
No Such User x 2
nugz4lunch
nutkick_42 x 2
olavf x 7
orionid x 21
PandyFarmer
pangolyn x 4
QueenBee x 3
Ranger Joe x 8
RcMacStudent
schnee x 4
sclark5150
SilverStag x6
Sinnocent
sleeping x 6
SoCalChris
somewebguy
soosh x 14
stupido x 2
swampa2 x 9
sweetc
t_xerox
U-Man x 50
Uranus
USAF Retired
wrayvynn
zenprowler

One thought is, if you have more than 1 picture in the top 5, only one could be used in the book and we take the next place(s) down. You would get to pick which one goes in. Then we can fill up to 400 pictures with nominees? I’ll finish spreadsheet data about how that would change the spread of pictures when I get home from work.

[Kestrana]

Thanks Choc-Ful-A the more voices the better I’ll feel about consensus

[Kestrana]

Or maybe not as I’m putting together this spreadsheet…

[Kestrana]

Well the first thing to do would be to make a quick list of everyone who would be included automatically if we take the contests Top 5, and how many times. If someone has 60 pictures that fit in that maybe it’s excessive. I don’t want to exclude really good pictures though. But without that data we might be making a mountain out of a molehill but I really think the numbers break down is only going to reveal maybe a handful of people who have large numbers and a wider diversity than we think.

[Kestrana]

I have seen people in the state/local parks here eying me nervously when I have my camera. Because my 60mm macro lens is great for telephoto portraiture. Ironically, the place I was taking pictures of randoms was at the beach and no one gave a crap there where there was much more potential for unflattering and pervy photography. *shrug*

Sorry to hear your story, it would have ruined my day too. Maybe people are just more worried about privacy now and photographs aren’t the novelty they once were.

[Kestrana]

The reason I see for using top X amount from each contest is because we need to have chapters or some sort of structure to the book otherwise it just becomes a hodgepodge of random images. Some of our best pictures only make sense in the context of the contest. But I also want to include everyone who wants to be included so taking the top 5 + or – 0 to 3 others from each contest (and dropping the Anniversary one entirely) puts us between 250-400 pictures which I think is reasonable to work with and definitely would fit within a 200 page limit.

I’m not onboard with everyone who wants in getting the same number of pictures. I only participated from September onward, so I feel I shouldn’t have the same representation as someone who played all year. And even though it feels like some people win all the time, looking at just the month of January there are only 2 people who had 2 pictures in the top 5 and no one with more than that. I think once we actually break out the whole year it will be pretty diverse.

Tell me what you guys think about this: I started a dummy draft today just playing with ideas and I divided up chapters by month. Then on the preface page for each chapter I listed the contests in that month and the t&d for each. The 1st place picture got its own page, the others were arranged 2 or 3 to a page depending how they fit. If for some reason there’s a picture that we don’t get rights to, we take 6th place or more group-selected pictures. Also at this time skipping pictures that depict family/friends (but not self-portraits at this time) since it was brought up earlier.

I like the idea of people nominating their favorite pictures and everyone kind of voting on them. I wonder if we could run a special farktography thread separate from the contest inviting people to submit 3 previously submitted pictures from 2009 and take the votes from there to decide what images make the cut? Everyone who posted would have at least 1 picture in the book, their highest voted picture no matter what standing and we can take the top X number of places depending on space left over? If we could link in the thread some sort of online permission slip for the rights to the picture that would probably also help us in finding some of those casual farktographers and getting their permission.

olavf What kind of information were you gathering with your spreadsheet?

[Kestrana]

Me too lokisbong, that’s why you just gotta keep playing

[Kestrana]

Ok well why don’t we talk about how we are going to decide which photos make the cut?

[Kestrana]

Touche

[Kestrana]

Initial page count is much lower than we were estimating, so for right now in making dummy book chapters I’m taking the top 5 from each contest and we can determine a number of extra nominated pictures and how to conduct that nomination process at a later date.

On that note, anyone want to research the dimensions and page count of the average coffee table book?

[Kestrana]

Cool, we don’t have any deadlines yet so as long as we just keep momentum going there’s not tons of rush.

[Kestrana]

Yeah I was thinking in the car that relating what we do to the overall function of fark would be difficult because really it doesn’t have anything to do with the concept of “fark” itself but those are actually some good ideas. We definitely need an introduction to the book and we’ll need that explanation for the publisher why the book will sell.

I should see if I can pull some statistics of people who participated in 2009 out of the FSM to get an idea of sales.

staplermofo do you have time/inclination to do any writing on that note? Maybe you and SilverStag could work together if you need help since he enjoys writing and mentioned he likes to blurb.

Also are you guys ok with me pushing this forward? It would be nice to have everybody saying “yeah let’s do this” even if you don’t have the time/energy/motivation to do more than sign the piece of paper letting us use your photographs. Conversely, is anyone downright against this and doesn’t want to be included?

[Author]

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