Too Many Images

TJMc

:scratch I am sticking my neck out here but really want to know if there are other that feel the way I feel. I feel that 50 images of one person's event such as b-day party,adult party,wedding,family reunion and so on are to many and quickly become boring and you lose interest in the rest of images. There needs to be a limit on these event images I have stuck my neck out here so I hope if there is anyone that feels the same please say so. My intentions are not to offend.
Peace

flyingdutchie

TJMc wrote:

I am sticking my neck out here but really want to know if there are other that feel the way I feel. I feel that 50 images of one person's event such as b-day party,adult party,wedding,family reunion and so on are to many and quickly become boring and you lose interest in the popular images. Also the inappropriate images are rampart on there right now. I have potential clients browsing not to mention young children. There needs to be a limit on these event images and tighter monitoring on the images that do not meet the family friendly commitment of smugmug. I have stuck my neck out here so I hope if there is anyone that feels the same please say so. My intentions are not to offend but to protect my children and bring in more clients to smugmug and move away from my images being printed locally per request of my clients.

Peace

Maybe an update to the 'popular photos':
Implement a gallery-based limit of some kind. E.g. If more than 5 (or any other number of) pictures from one gallery would show up in the 'popular photos' section, only the first 5 will actually show. If all (these 5 and the others) of them are truly wonderful pics, the viewer can click on them and view the gallery itself.

Family friendly: everyone has his/her own definition of what exactly 'family friendly' means. Hard to police... Being too loose: raunchy pics may show up; being too strict: good images may get booted. My personal opinion is to err on the looser side

SteveM

I have to agree with the number of possible "popular" photos from one album. It's obvious to me that this feature is being taken advantage of for the exposure on the popular photos page and that even the author of the gallery cannot possibly feel EVERY SINGLE image in the gallery deserves a thumbs up, especially after seeing some of them that make it. Okay, the family dog... okay 17 photos OF the family dog, some out of focus, some catching his tail only even, but a photo of an empty room corner out of focus that missed the family dog...it's obvious this feature is being exploited.

Perhaps after 5 images from the same gallery, the thumbnails could be condensed with a small border that reads "Gallery!" at the bottom of either the MOST popular image from that gallery, or the featured thumbnail for that gallery, to indicate a popular GALLERY, and not 17 pages of someone's rabbit giving birth.

As for the revealing photos... I'm all for First Amendment rights. I have yet to see anything more provacative than SI Swimsuit type photos on the popular page. Admittedly, some are going to go too far and it has to be a daunting task to continuously monitor every photo that's uploaded to make sure it falls inline with the TOS, so my advice would be to quickly report those that are truly inappropriate. Consider Smugmug does allow for "anything you might see in a museum" which might suggest artistic nudity as well. Otherwise, I would suggest to link family and customers directly to your own pages where you have control over what is displayed, as I don't think 8 year olds make up very much of our paying customerbase.

To quote what one wise artist said, "I am a bit of a rebel when it comes to photography. I don't always like following the rules. I believe that leaves room for the unusual and unique art that define us as an artist." -TJMc Photography

Steve
http://www.downriverphotography.com

docwalker

I am betting that some of the photos that are problematic are coming from basic or power user accounts. Or from people that do not frequent the dgrin forums.

I occasionally go through the popular photos for fun. I have seen the blurry dog, or the room by room/wall by wall house photos. I have a feeling they are there because the owner does not know or just does not care that they are appearing on the pop photos page.

I also have seen some very suggestive and flat out (non artistic :wow ) nude photos on there. I have no problem with them. But it is a bit odd when you are showing off the site to prospective clients (and possible future smugmuggers) using the popular photos and you come accross someones springbreak "Girls Gone Wild" photos. I have had peoples kids watching the screen when this happened. Now I have to preface showing the popular photos with a warning and I do not use the slideshow anymore.

It would be nice if you could turn on popular photos for just your site. It would also be nice if you could sort gallery photos by popularity. I could allow my fans to tell me which photos they like. Yes, comments can do that, but for some reason they do not like the comments feature. They do use the thumbs.

mrcoons

TJMc wrote:

I am sticking my neck out here but really want to know if there are other that feel the way I feel. I feel that 50 images of one person's event such as b-day party,adult party,wedding,family reunion and so on are to many and quickly become boring and you lose interest in the rest of images. There needs to be a limit on these event images I have stuck my neck out here so I hope if there is anyone that feels the same please say so. My intentions are not to offend.
Peace

I do a lot of events and I've had customers tell me the same thing. I've polled my customers though and it ends up split down the middle. 50% of them want to see as many photos as I can post and the rest don't.

What my experience has shown me is that my sales remain the same no matter which way I go, limited or unlimited. So I have gone back to posting everything.

docwalker

Wait, After re-reading the original post I am not sure what you are saying. Are you saying that SM should limit the number of photos that I take at an event? Or are you refering to the display of those photos in the popular photos section?

If you a referring to limiting the uploading of photos that I take, forget it. I doubt you will find many here that will support you on that one. That is why we came here. SM offers unlimited uploads...

If you are referring to limiting the popular photos, I agree that can be improved.

Sorry for the confusion for not reading the original post.

TJMc

TJMc wrote:

I am sticking my neck out here but really want to know if there are other that feel the way I feel. I feel that 50 images of one person's event such as b-day party,adult party,wedding,family reunion and so on are to many and quickly become boring and you lose interest in the rest of images. There needs to be a limit on these event images I have stuck my neck out here so I hope if there is anyone that feels the same please say so. My intentions are not to offend.
Peace

Let me say some of this a little different. I don't send my clients to the popular images, They browes, maybe looking for a better photographer, just kidding. The photos that I think are inappropiate I have had a change of heart thanks to a photographer that can open your eyes with your own words and for that I am greatful, Thanks Steve, we all need reminders when our views get clouded. I am only saying the number of images from a particular gallery, I guess would be the best way to put it. I have seen to many of my own and have decided the only way to stop it myself is after a while turn off photo rank in that gallery. Now that is to say if I happen to be available to do so at the time. Sorry, I am so long winded this am.

docwalker

There are times when working with clients that showing them the site before the event can help. Then they go home and look around and find the popular photos.

Lately it has been amateur photogs friends. A few have expressed an interest in starting SM sites for themselves. I show them the popular photos as a feature.

I have also shown others the popular photos when one of mine has made it to the list. It can be a little uncomfortable to show my flower photos beside a set of hooters :wow and I don't mean one of Harry's birds.

Now I just warn people that this is photography and that anything is possible. I also run the kids out of the room.

Phyxius

SteveM wrote:

but a photo of an empty room corner out of focus that missed the family dog..

For a few seconds I was worried this was me! As posted in This Thread.

I remembered taking one such fuzzy corner picture when the puppy decided to "attack" me. THEN, I realized that the album is "private" (since I just wanted to get them on and I haven't had time to remove some) and I have no "popular pics". I was worried I was accidently posting them on there. :nono :oogle





A quick check of the control panel assured me I'm all good

sirsloop

I shoot horse events and post as many clean crisp photos as I can. If I have a lot of photos I seperate them out into times. I try to keep them down to a few hundred per gallery. I dont watermark thumbs to make it easier for people to rip through the pages to find their shots. The more photos of a customer the better. They have a better choice, and you have better odds that they will buy more than one photo.

As far as one client photos like a wedding, I would still post up all of the good photos and let the customer decide what they want.

jfriend

I definitely try to limit photos per gallery by using separate galleries

TJMc wrote:

I am sticking my neck out here but really want to know if there are other that feel the way I feel. I feel that 50 images of one person's event such as b-day party,adult party,wedding,family reunion and so on are to many and quickly become boring and you lose interest in the rest of images. There needs to be a limit on these event images I have stuck my neck out here so I hope if there is anyone that feels the same please say so. My intentions are not to offend.
Peace

I shoot a number of events (school talent shows, soccer tournaments, etc...) and it's not uncommon that I end up with 800 keepers from an event (technically good photos that someone might be interested in).

Obviously, nobody wants to scroll through 800 photos to find a few that are interesting to them. But, at the same time, the needs of the audience are varied enough that I'd be doing some people a disservice if I automatically just trimmed this down to what I thought was the best 25. So, I endeavor to do several things:

1) First, I categorize the photos so that a viewer can quickly find the subset of photos that they are most likely interested in. For a soccer tournament, I divide the photos by player so there is a gallery for each player. For a school talent show, I make a gallery for each scene. Then, parents or players can quickly go right to the photos of their maximum interest. In that case, they generally want me to present all decent photos and are fine with 20-30 images. They may also visit galleries of friends too, but will not look through lots of the galleries. I create a category for the event and then put each photo gallery for the event into that category.

2) I typically also make a "highlights" gallery that contains what I consider to be the 15-20 best photos. These would be duplicates of images contained in the other galleries, just grouped together for viewing convenience.

3) Then, if there's some other type of categorizations that folks would find useful, I don't hesitate to add those also. Again these are likely duplicates of images in other galleries. Continuing with the soccer tournament example, I might have a couple galleries here for things like "goalie saves" or "best air" or "throw-ins" or "sideline shots".

The entire goal here is to make it so that the viewer can quickly find the subset of images they are most interested in. Because Smugmug doesn't have virtual galleries and keyword queries don't work in password protected galleries (which I usually have to use), I just upload duplicates into the separately named galleries (e.g. the same image will appear under the name of the soccer player and in the higlights gallery).

Phyxius

Okay, so what I don't understand is why what people upload in their OWN gallery does that effects you? I'm still new here so I may be missing something, but I don't see how on photographer uploading 50, 100, or 1000 images from one event in to their own albums adversly effects you.

Is there a "recent uploads" album that dumps everyone's stuff in there? Sorry if I'm just a bit confused on that matter.

Also, I was just the (horse) show photographer where there were 59 rides, now out of each of those each rider had at least 5 pictures. So I have at least 295 pictures, now most riders get more pictures than that and I shot around 1000 that day. I'm currently going through to make sure i'm not uploading any soft focus, bad timing shots, but even then I'm happy to say I'll have about 500-600 pictures to upload.:ivar

SteveM

Phyxius wrote:

Okay, so what I don't understand is why what people upload in their OWN gallery does that effects you? I

No sir! You go right along with any plans or needs of your customers! This is a pretty small issue we're discussing and in no way should affect your use of your account or Smugmug. It has to do with the "Today's Popular Photos" entry on the main Smugmug landing page. This shows photos based on "Thumbs up" or "Thumbs down" ratings as well as highly commented/rated photos, then organizes them according to popularity out of all the rated photos throughout Smugmug (minus Private/Passworded galleries). Occasionally someone will go "horse crazy" or "toddler crazy" and highly rate an entire gallery of photos, that in turn shows pages and pages of the same (similar) content on the popular photos page. This only happens occasionally, even more rarely involving suggestive content. If you wanted to avoid contributing to this, people are suggesting limiting the number of photos per gallery (which may not help, since anyone could go into 5 galleries, each with 100 photos and highly rate each gallery, anyhoo), or turn off the rating system for any high quantity galleries. This should in no way effect or sway your use of Smugmug, as we're just in think-tank mode.

Steve
http://www.downriverphotography.com

TJMc

Thanks Steve, I haven't been able to get back to the thread and you answered that so well, I am now putting you in charge of all inquiries!!

TJ

jfriend

An idea

Phyxius wrote:

Okay, so what I don't understand is why what people upload in their OWN gallery does that effects you? I'm still new here so I may be missing something, but I don't see how on photographer uploading 50, 100, or 1000 images from one event in to their own albums adversly effects you.

Is there a "recent uploads" album that dumps everyone's stuff in there? Sorry if I'm just a bit confused on that matter.

Also, I was just the (horse) show photographer where there were 59 rides, now out of each of those each rider had at least 5 pictures. So I have at least 295 pictures, now most riders get more pictures than that and I shot around 1000 that day. I'm currently going through to make sure i'm not uploading any soft focus, bad timing shots, but even then I'm happy to say I'll have about 500-600 pictures to upload.:ivar

I think Steve answered your original question here, but I'd like to share a technique I use in circumstances like you just described (600 horse show shots of many different riders).

If you upload all of these to a single gallery, you will challenge your customers to sort through them all to find the shots of the particular riders they are interested in. Chances are, they don't really want to see all 600 shots, but are really interested in 10-15 of those shots or maybe as many as 25-30.

If there is any way for you to categorize them by rider (by number or name or to just group each rider's photos together even if not by number or name) and separate each grouping into it's own gallery, you will instantly make the viewing experience a ton more useful for your viewers. They will be able to much more quickly find the shots they are most interested in. If you're selling, this will probably result in greater sales. The ideal organization would be to have a separate gallery for each rider, named by rider. It's definitely more work for you and you have to decide if it's worth it to put in that extra work, but it does really, really improve things for your viewers.

Phyxius

Yay, my first post I responding thinking it was a popular gallery problem and since I don't have any "popular" picture I was like, oh good! Then I reread it and was worried that I was wrong again, that uploading to your own galleries also uploads temp files to public albums and that I was hogging space. Now everything is clear.

jfriend wrote:

If you upload all of these to a single gallery, you will challenge your customers to sort through them all to find the shots of the particular riders they are interested in. Chances are, they don't really want to see all 600 shots, but are really interested in 10-15 of those shots or maybe as many as 25-30.

JFriend, I'm definatly doing this next time, but I promised photos up by today from a show on Sunday and unforunatly, my day job prevents me from being up to upload photos all day. I did break it down by levels (dressage show) so I have Training, First, Second, Third and Fourth, and FEI & Prix. St. Georges.

I read something about an attempt to make and uploader that will upload folders as seperate galleries automatically. That would be awesome! I could seperate all files in to subfolders under a main folder and the program would place them all in seperate galleries, BRILLIANT! Can't wait until if/when that's a possibility!

jfriend

Check out StarExplorer for multiple gallery unattended uploads

Phyxius wrote:

I read something about an attempt to make and uploader that will upload folders as seperate galleries automatically. That would be awesome! I could seperate all files in to subfolders under a main folder and the program would place them all in seperate galleries, BRILLIANT! Can't wait until if/when that's a possibility!

I use StarExplorer as my uploader. It allows me to create multiple galleries and then upload all my photos across all my galleries in one unattended session. I've uploaded 1200 photos across 35 galleries in one unattended session before. This is absolutely the way to do uploads for event photography. There may be other options that can do this in addition to StarExplorer, but I've been using StarExplorer for more than a year and been happy with it so I haven't kept current with the other options. The standard version of StarExplorer costs $14.99.

NikonGirl

One day I was going through "Today's popular photos page and found one of my photos on pg. 7 or 8. I never would have known it was there had I not looked. The next day I looked again, and after paging through 20 or so pages, I stopped looking.

My question is this - how do I know if one of my photos ends up in the Popular Photos gallery? Is there an easy way to find out? I'm just curious...
Thanks!

TJMc

The only way I have found mine there is if I receive a comment in my control panel or browse popular photos. I really do like looking at the popular photos because I find the most phenomenal images, it exposes me to more photographers I become to admire, and when the well runs dry I get newly inspired.