The people (of the Photography forum) have spoken!

Well, we had a poll last week concerning the size restrictions for the monthly photography contests, and the people have spoken. The vote was forty in favor of eliminating the size restrictions, and zero in favor of keeping them.

https://democraticunderground.com/1036123217

Therefore, going forward, entrants will not have to restrict their entries with regards to dimensions or file sizes. Hopefully, more DU members will consider entering since they won't have to deal with this. Also, this should make things quite a bit easier for the members running the contest. It's possible that it may take longer for the page to load, but the payoff should be better quality images.

On a personal note, I do have one suggestion. Even though it won't be required to resize an image, it's still not a bad idea in some cases. For instance, I have noticed that some of my own vertical photos prove a little too tall, and people have to scroll up and down to see entire image. Also, very wide images don't always have the impact that I would like them to. You can adjust the dimensions of a photograph without reducing the resolution. You can still produce a clear, sharp image and just cut dimensions slightly to better fit the web browser.

Just my humble opinion.

Anyway, let's have at it, and see how it works out. We can always revisit the issue if it turns out to be problematic. For now, the people have spoken!

Good luck!

Grumpy Old Guy

Full Beaver Moon rising behind Downtown L.A.

Some random shots from Kauai & Maui.

Kihei Sunset


Opaekaa Falls


Hanalei Valley


Napali Coast


Napali Coast


Kilauea Point Lighthouse


Waimea Valkey


Poipu Beach sunset


Kuilau Ridge rainforest

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Great Frigate Bird


Green Sea Turtle (Honu)


Paia Windsurfing


Princeville at dusk


Cattle Egret

Rules change for the monthly photo contests, please vote!

A few months ago there were some discussions here concerning the requirement to resize photos for the monthly contests. Several of us feel that it’s unnecessary, and creates an extra burden for the person who is running the contest. At the time we took an informal poll, and the vote was overwhelming in favor of scrapping the requirement. (I think the vote was seven in favor of scrapping the rule, and one in favor of keeping it. I don’t know for sure because I can’t look back that far with the new interface).

Therefore we’re going to do another poll, and this time we can make the results official. Here are some salient points to consider.

1. The requirement to resize places a burden on the member who is running the contest. These contests are not easy to run. There is a lot of cutting and pasting, and double and triple checking to avoid mistakes. It’s very time consuming. There is usually a large percentage of the entries that are not correctly sized, and the person running the contest has to check all the sizes and contact all the people who entered over sized pics. It’s a lot of extra work.

2. There really is no advantage to entering larger photos, since the web browsers automatically resize the photos. In fact, a larger photo may actually be at a disadvantage, since the viewer might have to scroll up or down a little to see the entire image.

3. Many photographers strive to produce sharp, clear images, and it’s disheartening to see them lose sharpness due to the downsizing of files.

4. There are many members of DU here who would like to get involved in the contests, but they don’t have the skills or experience to properly resize the entries. There would probably be greater participation from the membership at large without the resizing requirements.

5. One argument for keeping the resizing requirements is that there are some members who still have slower internet connections, and it takes longer to load the pages. That is a valid point. However, is it fair to ask the contest runners to do all that extra work for the sake of just a few individuals? Yes, it might take longer for the pages to load, but if they’re patient those users may enjoy having much higher quality images to vote on.

We would like to get everyone’s input on this. Please add your two cents worth to the comments and vote in the poll.

Sincerely,

Grumpy Old Guy
CaliforniaPeggy
AndyS
Tom Kitten

We're on our way home from Hawaii.

Here is my first image from our two week vacation. Purely by luck we were in Maui for a unique event. There was an algae bloom that turned the pond at the Kealia Wildlife Preserve into a combination of purple and pink water, depending on the light. The algae isn't harming the wildlife.

Another eclipse image

Here is my shot of the Annular Eclipse in Tropic, Utah.

I tried posting it on Saturday, but I couldn't get the images to upload to Imgur correctly from my cellphone while I was on the road. Better late than never.

A couple of nature photos

Snowy egret with dinner



Perching dragonfly

Please check out my photos of the Pacific Air Show in the photography forum.

The 2023 Pacific Air Show in Huntington Beach, California

I shot over 256 gb of images the other day. Here are a few good ones.