Catagories redo according to Photography genres by wikipedia

Mohamed.Ghuloom

Hello all,
I was kind of lost deciding what photography genres I'm really good at. So I started researching on Google. I read about fine art photography, fashion photography, glamor photography, etc.. until i found this wikipedia page that lists all the photography genres available
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Photography_by_genre

What i usually face with the default smugmug categories is that sometimes the categories overlap in the concept. So I end up confused what catagory to choose for my new gallery. I have so many pictures I haven't uploaded, simply because I don't know where they fit.

What if we recreate the smugmug catagories according to the official photography genres from Wikipedia?
Is there anyway we can do to make it more automated?
Some wizard or automatic analyse that suggests automatically what catagories would suit your new gallery? I have always liked the wizard kind of websites. I write the gallery name, and in the same time, smugmug suggests what catagories suit my gallery the best, then I choose the most relevant.

Maybe we can discuss this together to furthur brainstorm the idea. :scratch

Mohamed.Ghuloom

Yes

And this too:
After recreating the catagories according to wikipedia photogrpahy genres.. We put a "?" mark next to each catagory where when the user hover, it gives a summary of what this type of photography is.

For example:
Kinetic photography [?]
Street photography [?]
Fashion photography [?]


You hover on respectively and you get:
Kinetic photography is an experimental photographic technique in which the photographer uses movement resulting from physics to create an image. This typically involves the artist not directly holding the camera, but allowing the camera to react to forces applied to it in order to make a photograph.

Street photography is a type of documentary photography that features subjects in candid situations within public places such as streets, parks, beaches, malls, political conventions, and other settings.


Fashion photography is a genre of photography devoted to displaying clothing and other fashion items.

jfriend

Mohamed.Ghuloom wrote:

And this too:
After recreating the catagories according to wikipedia photogrpahy genres.. We put a "?" mark next to each catagory where when the user hover, it gives a summary of what this type of photography is.

For example:
Kinetic photography [?]
Street photography [?]
Fashion photography [?]


You hover on respectively and you get:
Kinetic photography is an experimental photographic technique in which the photographer uses movement resulting from physics to create an image. This typically involves the artist not directly holding the camera, but allowing the camera to react to forces applied to it in order to make a photograph.

Street photography is a type of documentary photography that features subjects in candid situations within public places such as streets, parks, beaches, malls, political conventions, and other settings.


Fashion photography is a genre of photography devoted to displaying clothing and other fashion items.

I think this is a common misconception about Smugmug categories.

If this was some computerized filing system, I would understand your logic, but that is not what Smugmug categories are for. Your comments make me think that you aren't realizing that category names and assignment are purely for the benefit of your likely viewers to aid in navigating your site and finding what they are interested in. That is all they are for. They are not used to classify your photos in some larger catalog that includes thousands of other photographers. Since your viewers likely don't know any standard set of photographic genre definitions, that would NOT be the best way to lay out your site and it does your viewers absolutely no good for you to use standard wikipedia-defined category names that don't help them find the images they want.

Instead, you should use category names that would be familiar to your likely viewers and would not require a "?" next to them in order to explain what they mean.

Mohamed.Ghuloom

Yes

It is obvious that categories are there to categorize your photos, but what is better than categorizing them under standard genre that is known to everyone worldwide..

Today I didn't know that airplane photography is called Aviation Photography. I would have put a catagory name called Airplanes instead of that. To professional aviation photographers, this would be a laugh at me! Plus why not make people get familiarized by the standard known terms than everyone using their own?
In addition to that, we have have the existing custom catagory feature for users to further tune to their needs.

I would seriously suggest this feature as you said is has been taken as a common misconception about Smugmug categories.

ivar

Mohamed.Ghuloom wrote:

Today I didn't know that airplane photography is called Aviation Photography. I would have put a catagory name called Airplanes instead of that. To professional aviation photographers, this would be a laugh at me!

Why would he/she laugh? I don't understand. And even if he did laugh? who cares? Like John says, you should make the categories so that those looking at you photos, understand where to go. I have a category called "airplanes". Why? because the photos in it are from airplanes. Who cares if others call them 'aviation', if I know where to go? Aviation is much broader than just airplanes, by the way.

The problem is also, everyone uses a different 'standard'... why would the categories you see on Wikipedia be "THE" official categories? They are not, if you ask me. Wikipedia is as unofficial as can be, maintained by people like you and me. If I want to add a category on Wikipedia, I can. Does that make it official? Why not use the IPTC codes then? or...?

denisegoldberg

Mohamed.Ghuloom wrote:

I would seriously suggest this feature as you said is has been taken as a common misconception about Smugmug categories.

It really doesn't matter what default categories are supplied. You should define and use categories that make sense for your photography. There is no way that there will ever be a set of categories that everyone will agree are "right". And there is no need for them either.

As far as wikipedia goes, there is a lot of very good information there, but there is bad there too. Just because you see something in wikipedia doesn't mean it is the right answer.

--- Denise

Mohamed.Ghuloom

Yes

Thanks guys for replying.

I still think that things should get standardized. If not Wikipedia then where are the real standards? When someone says I'm a professional still life photographer, we don't go and say: "I take the exact type of photos you take, but I call them "the life of still", just because still life doesn't sound good to me." I know that Wikipedia doesn't mean it's THE genre, but if you go to that link I gave u, each photography genre is linked, and when you visit it, it tells u about the history of this genre, and who was the first one who shot in this type. Things coming from 1800s, by people who worked hard to keep those names. They should be respected and kept alive.

I don't know if I sound right for you guys or not, sorry anyhow. My English language is not that good as well. It just doesn't make sense to not use official names of genres that people have started since long time just because we don't feel like, or we want to use whatever is good for us! Fine art photography is known as artistic photogrpahy, or art photography. Just because someday someone wanted to use another name for it. Which one is easier? Having one name? or 3? There are genres of photography that have more than 10 names! Long-term we're not making things easy; we're making them even harder.

pilotdave

No

I think your idea is fine, but you can add all the categories to your site that you want. You only have to add them once, so it's not a big deal. If you want your visitors to see categories for still life, street photography, etc, that's fine. But there's really no advantage to have smugmug use those names as their default categories. If your site calls a category "street photography" and someone else places similar pictures in a category called "candid photography," who cares? Your sites are separate. Call your categories whatever you want. I personally would prefer if they let us erase the default categories from the list since I don't use them.

Dave