ESS Gallery Change??

In general, I don’t have an issue with most of the galleries (some I don’t visit very often), but having been a member for only a couple of months thought I’d make a few observations. My thoughts are not about the images included in any gallery, only how they are organized.

First, an observation about on how much churn there is per page per gallery. All galleries have 48 images on the 1st page; ever wonder how long an image stays on the 1st page? Big variation. Post something in ESS and a day and a half later it’s out of sight on the 2nd page. Here’s the breakdown (rounded to nearest hour) as noted on 12/17 early am:

Earth, Sea & Sky: 1 day, 19 hrs.
Avian: 2 days, 9 hrs.
Man & Nature: 6 days, 12 hrs.
Flora: 6 days, 20 hrs.
Fauna: 7 days, 2 hrs.
Photo Art: 8 days, 4 hrs.
Weekly Challenge: 15 days, 17 hrs.
Macro: 22 days, 6 hrs.
EPJ: 7 months, 13 days, 3 hrs.

Why is this important? Well, I suspect that most viewers like to see what’s currently being posted in a gallery and they rarely will dig further than the 1st page – at least I know I don’t. Some may start with All Photos, but I suspect they are in the minority. “All Photos” churn: 15 hrs. [This change wouldn’t affect them at all.]

I think dividing ESS would give viewers more opportunity to see and comment on more images. ESS is very large and not very focused; compared to say Avian, Flora or Fauna. About half the images include water, but it includes more rivers, streams and lakes than it does images of the ocean. So why is "Sea" in the title? It also has more moderators because of the volume.

Couldn’t this be divided up into at least Earth & Water, and Earth & Sky? There are endless sub-categories possible, like: Forests & Streams, Mountains & Skies, Oceans &Lakes, Deserts & Skies, etc. But it can become too specialized and unwieldy.

I’m just suggesting two separate galleries; really images with water and images without. ESS-Wet, or ESS-Dry? More manageable, more focused, more specialized, but still large galleries with lots of participants. Divide the moderator duty; two for each. Page churn: Approx. 2.5 days.

Any wiggle room on dividing this, or am I disturbing hallowed ground here?

Regards, Ron

Ron - I wonder about the concern with the 1st page. While the images move away from it faster in ESS, there is also more people using the gallery and giving comments. I, personally, use "All Photos" and then the "Next" arrow. I never even look at the thumbnails for the most part, so I may be in the minority. That said, I'm curious as to how others view being on the 1st page, and if it's important.

Rather than dividing the ESS gallery, if you want to slow down the "churn" rate, just make the posting time 3 days between posts per member instead of the current 2 days. Just a idea...

Another possibility if there were to be a change is an ESS gallery for grand landscapes and an ESS gallery for images that are not grand landscapes.

I'm guessing most non-members look at ESS for the purpose of seeing the grand landscapes, and if you separated all the rest from those they would probably stay on the first page longer.

I like the variety of images posted to ESS as they provide inspiration and ideas that I may choose to implement in my own work.

Additionally, there are more critique galleries at NPN than I can keep up with on a daily basis. So, creating yet another gallery would be counterproductive, in my opinion. Also, I believe there are cost implications for Jim in terms of programming and maintenance.

In my experience, most (but not all) nature photographers begin their photographic journey making earth, sea, and sky-type images. Some will continue to 'specialize' in such images while others see avian, macro, or fauna as a more fitting outlet for their creative bent. Until these folks branch out, they post their images at ESS. I believe that this, in part, is the reason for the high usage of the ESS gallery.

My recommendation is to maintain the status quo, including the 48-hour posting limit.

Perhaps this thread will encourage folks to look beyond page one of each of the galleries and comment on images they may have missed.

--P

Personally, I would hate to see the 48-hour limit made longer. That would have slowed down my initial development by 50 percent. :(

First, I agree with Preston on this. I don't see a problem with the "churn rate", I look through the images on every gallery the same, I keep going down the page, or pages, until I get to the images that were posted the last time I visited the site. I don't think having to click one button to go to the next page is too much of a burden.

Even though ESS's churn is fast it also gets more views and comments than most if not all galleries. I compared ESS to Weekly Challenge since WC has a much longer turnover rate:

ESS: 6,717 views/478 comments for 48 images on first page = 151 views/10 comments average per photo
WC: 2,384 views/293 comments for 48 images on first page = 50 views/6 comments average per photo

So even though the photos move through faster, ESS is getting more views and more comments.

Ron,

I don't find the high churn rate in ES&S to be a problem. It means a lot of people are posting images and that's a good thing. I also think the 48 hour limit is fine.

Your mention of sub-categories got me thinking. That might be useful. I'm envisioning a set of 8 or 12 broad sub-categories like Desert, Sea, Forest, Sunrise/Sunset, Storm, Waterfall and so on. When someone posts an image they could click a check box for all the appropriate sub-categories. The ES&S gallery view would start with all sub-categories selected but allow people to narrow down the view to, say, mountain waterfalls at sunrise/sunset images by clicking the same check boxes in the header of the gallery page. [Edit: Some sort of AND/OR check box would come in handy. Users selections could be ANDed together or ORed together]

This concept could be applied to other galleries too. I can see Avian having sub-categories like Raptors, Waterfowl, Shorebirds, etc.

Think of it as a limited form of keyword tagging. I think free-form tagging gets anarchic and wouldn't be very useful.

Ron, thanks for kicking my brain into gear this morning. I needed a little jump start.

I fully agree with Preston and Scott. I like the variety in ESS and I do tend to go deeper into the gallery (page 2, 3, ....... etc.) especially if I missed viewing NPN for a day or two. I also tend to look at the galleries of my favorite photographers to see if I missed any recent images. So churn is really not an issue in the way I view NPN galleries. Additional galleries are not the answer in my opinion. More galleries = more chances to put an image in the wrong gallery.

I wouldn't want to divide the ESS gallery into sub-galleries, when I view the images on those pages I want to see the thumbnails all at once, I would not want to have to go to seperate galleries.

It would be like dividing Avian into Raptors and non-raptors, or birds in flight and birds that aren't in flight. Raptors will always get more views and comments even when the IQ isn't always stellar than non-raptors.

Another thing in ESS is that if it were divided, wouldn't each sub-gallery need to have a seperate EP?

Additionally; I get new comments on images I posted months or even years ago so people do seem to scroll through the pages and or the person's personal gallery.

Hmmm. One thing I forgot to mention is that I am limited to dial-up, and pulling up those other pages is slow because it takes time to load the images, so I tend to sit and wait for the 1st page in one gallery, and rarely go beyond. Maybe some day we'll have high speed internet, but heck we're so far out in the boonies we don't even have electricity.

I'm not sure how having a divided ESS gallery would help with the dial-up, you would still have to pull up another gallery with the same number of photos. There would be no time savings that I can see.

I think if any gallery should be split it is fauna. Seperate mammals out to its own gallery that way the slinking, buzzing creatues with or without backbones can have their own place. If, ESS should divide I believe it should be sea/water, and with or without mountians. Just my 2 cents.

If there were fewer manufacturers, camera stores and online dealers then everyone and their brother wouldn't have a nice pro level dslr and be making all these nice images. The field is flooded with us! It often makes it hard to find anything new, exciting and original. Sorry this does not address the OP's concerns, I'm a roots cause kinda guy. I don't think we need additional forums. I can never visit all the ones that interest me in any given week. I still have a job.

Ron,

I wouldn't consider ES&S "hallowed" ground by any stretch. Jim is always open to suggestions and comments and he has made many improvements to the site this year and many just recently.

I can understand you raising the questions simply because of the "churn rate" and how active ES&S is and that images roll frequently. Clearly it's simply related to the popularity of the forum and with new members joining all the time, the activity keeps increasing.

I would offer a couple thoughts that are kind of out of the box relative to your comments. As far as carving up ES&S in to sub categories, I tend to think of ES&S not in terms of earth, sea, sky, mountains, water, rivers, prairies, etc., but rather simply NATURE Photography minus the hand of man. For me, that keeps it real simple. Now I don't say that to start a discussion on what defines the "hand of man," that's not my point. I'm just saying that it's very simple to sum up ES&S without carving it up in to sub-categories.

The other inside-out thinking is this. Perhaps the activity and volume of ES&S is the standard, and not the problem? If you turn this around, one could say that the solution should be increasing activity in the other galleries??? Who's to say that a churn rate of 1day 19hrs is a problem? Even though an image is on the front page for less than two days, these images are still getting more views and more comments than any other gallery on NPN.

I hear what you're saying, but I'm not sure there's a solution, nor am I sure that there's a problem.

Personally, I'm more concerned that an image will reach the bottom of the page and only have 1 or 2 comments. I would like to see more critiques, more comments on more images. But what you can't do is regulate or force that behavior. That too would be counter productive. All we can do is encourage folks to participate at their own comfort levels and leave it at that.

It's a good topic for discussion. Who knows, someone may come up with a brilliant idea along the way.

Lon

One way to increase the time on the first page would be to increase the number of images on the first page. 1 day, 19 hours does seems a bit short. Would actually like to see this doubled so that tuning in 2-3 times/week will still show you most of the images. I would tend to agree that an image every 48-hours could be extended. If you stretched it every 72-hours, that's still 10 images a month.

I don't create 10 worthy images a month. I like the longer page one idea.


"12 significant images in a year is a good take" Ansel Adams.

I don't create 10 worthy images a month. I like the longer page one idea.


"12 significant images in a year is a good take" Ansel Adams.

Jeffrey, this seems to me to not be representative of what I think NPN is supposed to be. Yes, we should all be posting the best images we can, but if we are all supposed to be posting whatever you or anyone else considers "worthy" images already then why do we have critique galleries?

I have seen people express dismay at the number of images other people post before, and I just don't understand that. Why does anyone care? Would people rather have 12 posts per year from each member? What would be the benefit of that?

I am not, nor will I ever be, Ansel Adams. From my own point of view in my own life, if I thought I could only take 12 significant (whatever that might mean) images a year, I wouldn't bother. I see absolutely no enjoyment in that.

This is part of the reason I asked the question in another thread about how non-newbies feel about newbies to nature photography. Sometimes it seems to me that there are NPN members who would like to draw a line for membership and posting somewhere other than where it's drawn.

Appreciate the feedback on this so far; after 48-hours I can see the majority of folks responding like the status quo – which comes as no surprise to me, and some good points were made. I see there are a wide variety of viewing habits, and that other ideas are blossoming as well. But, there have been some comments that reinforced the idea of dividing ESS into two galleries, although that may not have been their intention.

1) Viewing anything and everything easily doesn’t seem to be a problem for most, so another gallery shouldn’t be an obstacle. No idea about costs associated with that…

2) I used “churn rate” as a way of comparing utilization, which is only one way of many. Scott Fricke & Lon Overacher reaffirmed that ESS gets the most viewers and the most comments. Okay, another point well-taken. Lots of viewer activity and more comments on average. I did a little more digging using a sample of the 1st 12 images on the 2nd page from four galleries – better chance of receiving comments. ESS has more comments, but the ratio of comments per view was less for ESS; percent of comments/view: Avian: 11.9%, Macro-9.1%, ESS-5.9% and Photo Art-5.2%.

3) As for the EP (Mia brought this up), one weekly pick throughout the year, then eventually 3 EP’s for each gallery. EPJ would have less than 100 images a year (I’m using them because they’re at the other end of the volume scale), that’s a weekly pick for roughly every 2nd image submitted and 3 EP’s for ~ 100 images. ESS gets a weekly pick from every 250-300 images – 3EP’s for 13,000+ images. Divide the ESS gallery in two and you’d be able to give recognition to twice as many photographers now using the ESS gallery. And as has been stated before and by many – the quality and excellence of the photography in ESS is exceptional; more recognition would be well deserved and it would still be very competitive.

4) A couple of folks don’t necessarily agree with splitting the gallery, but would like to see more thumbnails on the first page, or have advocated limiting postings to 72 hrs/gallery to accomplish this (Tony Kuyper, Jeffery Sipress & Bill Chambers). Having 2 ESS galleries would accomplish the same thing, but keep the 48-hr limit. I agree with Barbara Graham on this, those of us moving up the learning curve aren’t trying to showcase our Best – we’re hoping to solicit feedback on what could be improved.

This thread didn’t end up where I thought it might, but I appreciate that a few folks took the time to respond (5% of viewers). I’m guessing that at some point Jim will weigh-in and decide if this idea (or some of the other ideas) has legs or not.

Thanks for listening,

Ron

I do see your point about the churn rate, but I do like the ESS gallery the way it is. If there was a change, I would lean towards having a 72 hour limit instead of 48 hours - that would keep images on the first page for a longer period.

Ron, have you done any calculations to determine the number of people who post images every 48 hours? I'm wondering if there are enough of these posteres that changing the 48 to 72 hours would make that much of a difference in the churn rate. I guess we would have to determine that before changing the posting hours should even be considered.

Ron,

I hope I don't come across as being argumentative and my intent is really just to challenge the numbers, because numbers can be interpreted in so many ways, even though people say that numbers don't lie.

2) Comment/view ratio. Is being low bad? I'm assuming because ESS is lower than the others and ESS is the one that you think should be split, then a low ratio supports your case. Did you notice that Marc Adamus' image is in the first twelve of page 2? I'm assuming it was there when you ran the numbers. He's got over 1,000 views and 54 comments, a ratio of 5.3%

All that ratio tells me is that there are a boatload of people who view certain images and therefore galleries, but don't post a comment. And as Jim always points out, there are way more non-members viewing NPN pages than there are members. ES&S and PhotoArt are the most visually appealing to all people who visit the site. I expect these galleries to have more views/comment than the other galleries.

3) Not sure how you counted those numbers for ES&S. This last week was less than 150, the week before ~160 images. In the last 365 days, ~2,880 images. 13,000 is a little high. So for ES&S, there is approximately 1 EP for every ~57 images posted (there's only 50 EP's per year.)
Personally, I would feel more gratified to receive an EP in ES&S simply because of the competition and what an EP would mean to someone. Where as in EPJ as you note, you could win lots of EP's simply by posting more than 2 images a week in the gallery.

I'm not responding to this simply to maintain "status quo," but lets talk about what I think is the root of your request. Originally you stated: "
I think dividing ESS would give viewers more opportunity to see and comment on more images."

Let's face it, everyone would like to receive more comments. That's been a topic of discussion as long as I can remember and it's certainly a valid topic. We all want to get the best feedback we can to improve our photography. So really, it's not about getting people to see more images and provide more comments, it's about us as individuals wanting to RECEIVE more comments and more feedback. Totally understandable and I suspect that is at the heart of the issue.

And to that end, I don't see adding more galleries or getting more specialized ES&S categories is going to increase the number of comments folks receive. That's a whole 'nuther topic.....

Good discussion folks!

Lon

...but if we are all supposed to be posting whatever you or anyone else considers "worthy" images already then why do we have critique galleries?

Exactly! Although there is merit to posting things you already know are good, but aren't sure how to make better. By the same token, if there are images you're not happy with and already know why, there's not much point to posting them.

Most people seem to fall on the first side, where they want to post things they really like and think are good, but want to see if they can be better, and/or if everyone else agrees.

I have seen people express dismay at the number of images other people post before...

I think there are two reasons for this :

1) On other sites much more than this, people tend to post tons of stuff, even when they know what the response will be. That means that they don't seem to be thinking about their own images and trying to actually learn. They aren't posting productively or constructively, and just looking for some kudos or quickie feedback. So sometimes the knee-jerk when you see a lot of posts from someone is to tell them to slow down and really consider things.

But if you're already doing that, and just working enough at your images and have enough thought behind things that you are in a learning mode, posting the max amount of times is great. Of course, I think you can learn as much if not more by commenting and thinking about how others got their results, but posting is great too. There IS a limit of course imposed by the 48 hour rule, and shrinking that would probably lead to more shotgunning of images.

2) People who post a lot are sort of monopolizing the commenters. I don't really feel this way, but the more images that are out there, the less comments each one is likely to get. So if the posts are limited a bit, perhaps more comments would be garnered. I'd guess people especially feel this way if they don't take many photos, and don't have many to post, so when they finally do, they really hope to get some comments.

Either way, the time limit serves both of these purposes, and I wouldn't be opposed to lengthening it a bit, but too long can have as many or more drawbacks.

...12 significant (whatever that might mean) images a year

I think what he meant was 12 images that he considered worthy of his art and of being included in his best body of work. I think that many artists produce a lot of good things, and a lot of stuff that people love, but most don't produce things they themselves truly think are great very often. I think that was what he was trying to express. Even though he might take 100 pictures a year that are worth printing (or selling, or displaying, etc.) one a month would be a likely amount that he would actually be really happy with.

Thanks very much, David, for those insights. I really appreciate the time you took in carefully considering and addressing my thoughts.

3) Not sure how you counted those numbers for ES&S. This last week was less than 150, the week before ~160 images. In the last 365 days, ~2,880 images. 13,000 is a little high.
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Wow. Thanks for pointing that out Lon; that blows my credibility right out of the water – you were right to question the numbers. Abject apologies to everyone for getting the numbers wrong…I can’t defend that number of 13,000. I thought my sampling was perhaps too small and it skewed the number (it was), but it looks like the major culprit was more likely my big fat finger on a small calculator pad – inexcusable on my behalf. In any case, I revisited the numbers and I probably should have used a range since it could only be based on a sample. I didn’t logically follow-up and got in too big of a hurry.

13,000 would mean about 35-36 new images a day and the average number of new images per day based on my original sample was more like 26. The largest number I found was on 12/15 when 29 images were posted; extrapolated, even that (29 x 365 = 10,585 images) is well shy of the 13K.

I checked the count for the last month, it was 632 images; or 21/day. So, my original sample was too small. In any case, even assuming an average of 600/month, that only translates into 7,200 images per year. I can’t explain the difference between a number like that and the actual number you indicated – unless the growth this year has been exponential.

So, once again a big apology and I’ll crawl back under the snow covered rock.

Ron,

No worries and no need to apologize. I too some times get caught up in numbers so I know... In the end, I think we can all agree that ES&S gets a lot of traffic and just shows why ES&S is just about the best place on the planet for great nature photography.

Lon

Admittedly, I have a strong prejudice, but I would like to see ESS divided into seascapes and landscapes. Looking at the page in question, I found most of the shots had no sea. A large portion had no sky. Some had no earth. I remember one shot that had none of these elements. I did not see a single shot of a tidepool and that is a shame.