ZooChat Photos

ZooChat Photos
09-02-2010

Like most of you, I love seeing all the photos here on ZooChat. I myself post quite a few. But I try to make them different, posting only one or two of each scene.

Every once in a while, someone will be what I would call overenthusiastic, and post dozens of shots of essentially the same thing. I mean like 8 to 12 photos of the same tiger sitting on the same platform, etc. Is it just me, or does this bother other people too? If a lot of people feel as I do, maybe we can try to get them to be more selective in their photo editing?

09-02-2010

I agree, some posters seem to put up everything they take on a visit.

09-02-2010

I try to avoid duplications in mine - very occasionally there's two I can't choose between so put up both! I agree there's not really a lot to be gained from whole pages of shots of the same animal in a slightly different position.

09-02-2010

No names here (though I suspect a lot of people could guess who), but there has been one gallery that's increased by nearly 20 pages of photos that essentially were taken within seconds of each other. Which makes it tiring trawling through the pages, and more likely to miss any stand-outs because of the similarities. I love to see lots of photos on ZooChat, but it needs variety. One of the thing my Dad is always reminding me when going through my photos is 'only keep the ones you like', which is a sensible rule if you want to keep the observer's interest.

09-02-2010

I think it's more like 25 pages now - lovely photos, but most will never get looked at in detail because there's just too many similar. Would be better to dump them on Photobucket or similar and provide a link if one wants a load to be available like that (and of course it can be fascinating to see 100 shots of one animal if you have a particular interest).

09-02-2010

One of my guiding principles for photography

less is more

Alan

09-02-2010

I was just thinking the same thing this morning as I browsed the new photos...

09-02-2010

I hate to admit having done this to some extent in the past, however I am far more selective in what I upload now.

09-02-2010

I'm still trying to come up with a better way of managing such large volumes of photos - I would love to make it easier for people to browse through the photos and find specific photos they are looking for. At the moment it is very cumbersome to manage when there are just so many of them.

Perhaps we need some form of moderation for the more popular galleries. I'll have to think about that some more.

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Sim'

Technical support: please post in the Help and Feedback Forum. Alternatively, use the Contact Form, or email me directly at support@zoochat.com

09-02-2010

I'll happily browse another set of "empty" Woodland Park Zoo exhibit shots over ten thousand closeups of some tiger or lemur in any random zoo! It really has gotten a bit out of control. Good luck moderators!

09-02-2010

Close-ups? No thanks.We all know what an elephant (or a tiger or a giraffe) look like.......
For me, the real interest is in those photos which illustrate some aspect of the exhibit/enclosure.

09-02-2010

mmm - perhaps I need to split the gallery into two halves ... one for zoos and their exhibits (animals in the photo are incidental) ... the other for just the animals (not zoo-specific) where we focus on looking for just the best photos of each species of animal?

Just thinking "out loud".

__________________
Sim'

Technical support: please post in the Help and Feedback Forum. Alternatively, use the Contact Form, or email me directly at support@zoochat.com

09-02-2010

A reasonable idea, but one of the things I like to do is to browse the gallery to see what animals are at a given zoo - I wouldn't like to think that all the animal close ups would be banished. The animals are very much part of the zoo.

09-02-2010

Which is exactly my problem isn't it ... keeping the volume of photos manageable vs allowing the flexibility to post a variety of photos.

If I could convince users to tag photos when they uploaded them (and/or for other users to add tags when they view them), then I think we could generate a really effective database of photos which could be browsed in a variety of ways, depending on what people want to see (eg "show me enclosure photos from XYZ zoo" or "show me photos of animals at XYZ zoo" or "show me photos of elephants from Europe" etc).

I'll have to think about this some more. I'm not happy with the performance of the photo gallery either (it's too slow), so I think a complete re-design may well be worthwhile in the long term.

__________________
Sim'

Technical support: please post in the Help and Feedback Forum. Alternatively, use the Contact Form, or email me directly at support@zoochat.com

09-02-2010

less is more.....
Marwell Wildlife Gallery