Nice but "dangerous" contest categories?

[sixten_imgs]

The photo contest of April seems to contain nice and interesting categories. I think they all are very good.

Same time it looks to me that at least two categories may lead to a little dangerous waters. The categories reflections and symmetry are very likely to gather loads of photos with photoshopped parts or other ways extremely artificial content. If I have understood the idea of Panoramio right that should not be the idea.

Suggestion 1: From the final contest results would be carefully removed photos if their reflections or symmetry are clearly made with computer and not with camera.

Of course it is possible that this kind of shots will gather many votes but because we do not ever see the contest statistics it would be very easy to the team to leave the manipulated symmetry and computer made reflections out of the winners.

Suggestion 2: On the contest's main page there would always be a note saying that shots with artificial or heavily manipulated elements can not be winners. They are left out of the final results in this kind of real world photo site.

All this would be useful when thinking about the Panoramio's original idea. Same time it would diminish the artificial contest photos.

For the time being it is quite possible that the manipulated fantasy scenes among the contest winners just lead to the situation where the Panoramio photo contest will be more and more photoshopping and wowlikeys-manipulation contest.

[Tom Cooper (AustinMN)]

My fear with this kind of rule (if published) would be accusations of "heavy manipulation" about _every_ winning photo (made by non-winners).

 

Austin

[Lady GooGoo La La]

This can work both ways, meaning that photos (like mine) that weren't photoshop-ed could be automatically discarded  as fake. I think one must look very carefully at these photos to tell. 

Most voters probably don't look that hard, but you can find reflection anomalies if you look hard enough.

Maybe up to the contest author/originator to decide, but one must remember it's a fun contest, however, I too would feel cheated if what I thought  a contest photo was a collage. 

Often very difficult to determine what is acceptable and what not, but easy where reflected images don't match.

[hvbemmel]

We had many discussions with the team about the contest, specially about the submitted photos where photoshopped was the least of the problems. More annoying I find the many portraits or the photos that haven nothing to do tih the theme of that contest.

The team is of the opinion that the contest is there because users like it. In the end the users decide what is acceptable by voting for photos they think are fit to win. So if a photo is obviously photoshopped and you don´t think this is in the spirit of the contest, you don´t vote for that photo. As long as the photos are acceptable for Panoramio, they are eligible to participate in the contest. (It´s an easy way to find photos / users that are not suitable for Panoramio, they present themselves everywhere they can ;-) )

IMO the team has enough trouble, meaning as part of the the workload, keeping the contest on the rails as it is. I wouldn´t think it wise to put more time in it

[sixten_imgs]

Nice to see the comments, thanks!

Austin, your vision is possible but at least partially avoidable. It requires that the contest rules and names are written clearly. Category names like "Real reflections" and "Natural symmetry" could be used to guide the contest photos to be real photographs.

With real or non-manipulated photographs I do not mean that the contest photos should be unprocessed, colourless or unsharp. If I have understood the nature of digital photography right some kind of processing is needed every time if you want to get the best out of the frame you have captured in the camera. With the artificial elements I meant only the copied and pasted things that were not in the place when someone took the contest photograph.

Lady GooGoo La La,  maybe the most effective way to search for the fake reflections and artificial symmetry is to start from the all too perfect or unbelievable looking photographs :). And when you do not find anything suspicious the photo feels even better. That's real fun and I vote for that!

Herman, I think that the contest is one of those things in Panoramio, where the team could easily stop to worry about the workload. By stopping the whole contest? Sorry, no :) I mean that the final checking about the 30 winner photos could be moved to some group of volunteers. 

Personally I'm not irritated if people send their driver's license photos to the contest. It feels just ridiculous. I just would not be surprised if someday a happy owner of the new license with lots of pals will be the winner of the "Reflections". Without any reflection.

[hvbemmel]

On Friday, April 19, 2013 8:08:17 AM UTC+2, sixten_imgs wrote:

Herman, I think that the contest is one of those things in Panoramio, where the team could easily stop to worry about the workload. By stopping the whole contest? Sorry, no :) I mean that the final checking about the 30 winner photos could be moved to some group of volunteers. 

 By stopping the whole contest? You don´t want to know how many times I suggested that already. Many others however think this contest adds something to Panoramio or users might think Google cannot afford the prizes.

We have several contests without prizes, all attended by enthusiastic volunteers, in my eyes we don´t need more. Sad thing is that Google decided to give us this "forum" where you easy can put photos from anywhere, only to put photos from the only Google photo site here, needs special instructions and the NPC´s suffer from that severely.   

[CliveM]

On Friday, April 19, 2013 7:08:17 AM UTC+1, sixten_imgs wrote:

Austin, your vision is possible but at least partially avoidable. It requires that the contest rules and names are written clearly. Category names like "Real reflections" and "Natural symmetry" could be used to guide the contest photos to be real photographs.

Personally I'm not irritated if people send their driver's license photos to the contest. It feels just ridiculous. I just would not be surprised if someday a happy owner of the new license with lots of pals will be the winner of the "Reflections". Without any reflection.

 

I think now that we can see the pictures that have been entered for "Reflections" we can see that however you manipulate the category title people are going to ignore it. I thought long and hard about entering one of my pictures, because the description under the title "Reflections" mentioned water. Because my reflection was on glass, I decided not to enter. I clearly shouldn't have worried - many of the pictures entered under "Reflections" lack any reflection whatsoever, on any surface!

[sixten_imgs]

It is easy to see what you mean, Clive. Maybe some of the photos you mentioned are related to photographer's self-reflection :) and in some cases the Google Translator has helped in choosing the contest shots. At least when using my language the Translator shows that the word reflection means the same as photo or image...

That's why I still think that a more accurate category titles would at least diminish the amount of wrong kind of photos. I'm afraid that all photographers do not read "the manual of the contest" as carefully as you did.