[olavf]

That shouldn’t matter so long as the web host supports PHP? That’s the scripting language that Gallery2 (and about half the web) uses. But I don’t know much about FrontPage other than it spits out some funky code and requires hosts that support it for publishing.

[olavf]

i too have a pro account which i use for general internet sharing. my paid hosting has my website and separate folders for farktography and photoshop entries.

i really should learn how to create galleries for my flickr collections put them on my website and just let flickr go. part of the problem i have is not knowing how to set permissions and/or use htaccess.

I use Gallery2 http://gallery.menalto.com/ on my server, but I’ve been woefully bad at updating it for the contests. What I need to start doing is rather than posting both sizes in a folder, is have the small one in a contest folder, and the larger one in the gallery and linked.

The big thing you need there is access to a MySQL database, but your host should be able to do that for you.

[olavf]

Heh. I’m just reminding you that she may or may not be armed 😉

[olavf]

I think the intent was pretty clear there 😉

[olavf]

no knock intend but if a shot is that esoteric/far off theme IMHO it doesn’t deserve votes. now i have used captions to nudge folks to vote but it defeats the purpose of having a theme.

look those that know me know i’m anal about trying to maintain some purity to what i think the contests are all about. and that is first fun but then a place to post your shot at matching this weeks theme. at 640 pixels and all done in camera. and while i like votes as much as the next guy/gal sometimes it seems getting votes takes preference over the fun.

YMMV 🙂

I take a wide (more liberal?) stance to the contests, partially because it keeps the ‘fun factor’ open in my mind, and mostly because I (a) want to encourage anybody and everybody to participate, and (b) because I think that total creativity is the key thing here. Take the idea and run with it type-stuff.

But almost everything I shoot that i think is print-worthy gets a title, too. And as I think about it more, I will say that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a piece of art that didn’t have a caption of some sort or another. Maybe something as seemingly ordinary as “Experiment in Red #3”, but there’s always something there to point the viewer where the creator was going…

And I should digress. Yes, it’s about having fun. But it’s also about Photography, and about the “art” and about Fark too. It’s a weird mix of things. Sometimes it needs a little ‘splainin’.

And, I also sometimes secretly hope the weird and ‘out there’ shots win. Because I absolutely love that shiat. And I’ll keep doing it even if it doesn’t garner me a lot of votes 😉
/no knock felt. Just needed to be said, my friend.

[olavf]

Two years? Yikes.

I’d totally still give her credit though. She’s one of the silent regulars. I like her.

[olavf]

On the camera thing, I’d say 80% photographer, and 20% camera. And that 20% are the framed shots that require manual settings and whatnot that you can’t really get with a P&S. So a good photographer (someone with an eye for composition and lighting) can probably take a good picture with a P&S, but a someone lacking that can’t take a good picture with a $30K Hasselblaad (luck aside).
/I get a lot of questions along the lines of “what camera should I buy?” I usually ask, “what do you want to do with it?” back

And, most importantly, congrats Rav!

[olavf]

I agree that a lot of captions are waaaaay too long, and to be honest I tend to shy away from voting for them (even if they are good shots) because of that. I will aver that most of us do this for the photography, not to read someone’s photojournal. But, at the same time, ravnostic‘s Tempe Town lake shot is a perfect example: Would I have voted for the picture with no captions? Probably, because it’s an interesting shot and fit the theme. On the other hand, given the location and the newsworthy context also made it a much more interesting picture, which is also something that’s important to me as a viewer. That said, if it were a crappy picture, I wouldn’t have voted for it if it were the bloody Queen of Sheba.

And some shots are just so esoteric (many of mine included) that without a title of some sort to get the viewer thinking along the lines of the photographer, it can be difficult to see why the Farktographer thought that particular picture fit the theme – which is one of the main criteria I look for when voting.

*deep breath*

As far as popping larger (specifically for this contest)…I don’t have a problem with it. Most people don’t clicky-pop unless they were already inclined to vote for the shot in the first place. And honestly, I can only think of one picture in the two years I’ve done this where it influenced voting at all – I think it was Ranger Joe‘s but I can’t remember the contest now. Besides, you’d effectively have to say that no one that uses an image host that requires linkbacks (like Flickr) can participate, and I think that’s just a bad idea.

[olavf]

I personally like the ‘clicks to larger’. I don’t always click, but the 640x format is also really difficult to work with, especially for a more intricate photo. I don’t think it’s disingenuous unless the two pictures aren’t identical save for scale. In my mind stuff like ‘extreme cropping’ (cropping a 640x pic out of a 10MP picture) is much more disingenuous than that.

As for captioning, I kinda like a simple “who, what, when, where” to give the photos some context in most cases. “Ansel Adams in a bikini” would be much more significant than “some guy in a bikini” with no caption. I also think it cuts down on some of the chatter in the contest threads from people constantly asking “where is that?” “what is that?”, etc.

[olavf]

Oh I’ve been ready to hang up the hat at various points. Today is not that day, though, and probably not next week. I think it’s natural to have an ebb and flow in interest, both personal and general.

Yeah, this was one of those weeks for me. You can tell, by my votes :/ I haven’t missed one in a long time though 😛

[olavf]

/maybe it’s like the marriage after the dating. Still good, better in lots of ways, but less fireworks. 🙂

I will say the regulars, and the semi-regulars, still have a lot of the ‘passion’ that has made these threads what they are though.

But on that tack, maybe we should lean a little more towards ‘giggling like young lovers’ in our themes. Voting and winning aside, I think we all feel better about what we do here when we know that people that don’t even participate love what we’re doing.

[olavf]

What does this mean? My hunch is that we’ve got a lot of people looking at the contests, but not a whole lot of people bothering to vote these days.

That could well be true.
I hope we don’t go the way of Photoshop themes, which now generally seem to be lowly populated in terms of entrants, low-vote garners, and–I suspect–low in terms of views.

Part of the thing with the Photoshop themes is that is seems like there’s so darn many of them. I don’t know what the “sanctioning” rules are, but sometimes it seems like there’s multiple per day.
/that said, I’d be down for another mashup-collaboration.

[olavf]

July, 2009 vs July, 2010, it looks like we’re about 30% lower overall page views based on number of hits to my website on contest night/the day after. It’s kind of difficult to tell by that month though, because July of last year was bookended by “Dragons” and “Man’s Best Friend”, which were exceedingly popular and are about double anything I’ve seen for this month. June seems to correlate somewhat with the standout being ’tilt-shift’.

Poking around a bit, our popular contests seem to be as popular this year vs. last, but it feels like the less popular themes aren’t getting as much general attention. Again, this is based on website hits, which *should* equate roughly to page views somehow on Fark (obvious spikes on contest nights are obvious).

What does this mean? My hunch is that we’ve got a lot of people looking at the contests, but not a whole lot of people bothering to vote these days.

[olavf]

Um, yeah, I guess I should clarify, I’m a Vet Tech, so the patient was a Labrador Retriever…kind of relevant 😀

HA! Yeah, that is an important piece of info. I totally thought some dude ate underwear.

My theme idea = no photos yet. 🙁

I have two ideas, a few days, and several kids to get muddy though.

You and me both :/

I have, so far, one gloppy new-born calf that doesn’t look so gloppy on film. And a pic of Kat that’s so old that it predates everything that’s happened in the last two years, and I decided that all-in-all that I’d feel really, really weird using it.

[olavf]

Probably couldn’t earn a free ball now to save my life.

And you call yourself a submariner… 😉

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