A website that has changed a lot

To be honest, when you mentioned "normal spotters" you lost me. This website is not for normal spotting Photos as the subtitle says: Creative Aviation photography.

Just my opinion.

Best regards, Jeff.

To be honest I do see where some people are coming from sometimes. It seems to me that a lot of the so called creative photos seem to get through onto the site whether they are soft, over processed, over sharp or what ever. I see some of the rejections that people post in the forums and to be honest they may not be up to standard to be uploaded on here but IMHO neither are the photos that have just been totally over edited. Over grunging photos on here is getting a little too much I think, maybe its a way of hiding flaws in the original photos, who knows. I thought creative photography was all about being different with the camera not making the photo radio active?..................I think standards have definately slipped in recent months. When a photographer with not a lot of experience uploads a photo and it gets rejected for being soft or something, its not great seeing a photo thats accepted straight after his that just looks like a painting, or a poor excuse of an HDR or something. HDR done properly can look really good but there seems to be competition for places on here sometimes who can over process and kill a photo the best, A-P needs a bit more moderation on here I think, sorry but thats just my 10 cents

This post has been edited by Darryl Morrell on 21st October 2014 - 19:48

I agree with Nano and Darryl. Screening standards have changed a lot recently, and most of the time they are very inconsistent between screeners. It's also very disappointing to have photos rejected for being a little oversharpened, then seeing poor quality, noisy, jagged images uploaded by full time members. What's the point of uploading here any more if I can upload on flickr and get more views without losing the fun of aviation photography?

This post has been edited by Tamas Kolos-Lakatos on 21st October 2014 - 20:02

Higher standards to photos is a good thing in my opinion.. too many 'spotters' photos recently, while we have sites like a.net and so for those. This should be a site for Creative Aviation Photography, not random shots for airplanes that happen to pass by at an airport.

On the other hand, I can understand that some of the extremely processed and HDR shots that sometimes pass by are ruining the sites reputation too. That's not photography in my eyes but a (failed) way to make an otherwise boring photo interesting. Or cover a lack of skills/creativity.

Where is the pure photographers eye now these days? Composition, good use of equipment and natural light?

Maybe the overflow of digital photography/software is generating its own balance now these days; real photos and skilled photographers will emerge from the huge pile of digital photographers now.

Same pics , same photos and same person. Not too much criteri with this people. And to another person so much "rules".

btw, the site is a large bank of images. if people stops to upload images the website dies!

Another thing, no one knows everthing about photography. So when you screen some pic you could be more friendly on your message ( Msg for screeners )

Jeffrey, it is wrong to criticise the contribution Nano Rodriguez, or for that matter by implication the contribution the vast majority of members, have made here. There are few members here that can truly aspire to the ideals of ‘creative aviation photography’. Even those members that can, do at times publish very simple and ordinary shots. If it was not for the vast majority of ordinary members there would be no website.

The word ‘spotting’ is a generic term in the English language that encompasses many words that all relate to aviation photography:-

- aircraft enthusiast

- airshow attendee

- airplane photographer

- avgeek

- et al

All of the above entail some ‘spotting’ in its most basic form.

JPC van Heijst, my experience of A-P.net has been that there is room for all kinds of aviation photographers here. If you think this or any other aviation website can survive on the small contribution made by pilots and their cockpit shots, you need to think again. I enjoy some of your work here, but if you consider all your pictures to represent ‘Creative Aviation Photography’ you are mistaken.

Marius Bekker;

Sorry to see that you take it personal, that was never my intention.

I think there is a thin line between creative photography and over the top editing, as I tried to explain. And I don't see where my job has to do anything with this discussion. Cockpit/flightdeck shots can be creative, but also very boring and/or over the top edited.

Just like any type of location its down to the use of light, angles and composition. I never, ever, claimed that shots from the flightdeck are special or exemplary for creative photography, or should be the standard as you suggest. Neither do I say that all my photos represent Creative Aviation Photography.

Please don't attack me personally, I don't do the same with you.

The other argument lies with common sky-shots and non-creative photos that would normally not qualify in any respect as 'creative'. Though some are technically very good, the purpose of this site is (as it says); Creative Aviation Photography.

I think the strength of this website is the variation of different shots, different angles towards aviation photography and different editing styles from different people.

But there is also a difference between quantity and quality. Accepting as many photos as possible just to keep the site popular will lead to a site that will be a copy of the other, older, sites like a.net etc. And I think we all want to keep this site just a bit different and more towards the quality part then the quantity.

I'm not an editor/screener, nor do I aspire to be one, so I cannot judge about the standards here. Im just throwing in a few arguments because it would be a pity to see this site becoming a second a.net or something similar.

Also, lets all remember that this is a hobby for all of us. Lets try to learn from each other, be an inspiration to each other and have FUN while doing so. :)

Christiaan

JPC van Heijst,

May I quote the last three paragraphs from your previous post. My response is beneath each of them.

Quote “I think the strength of this website is the variation of different shots, different angles towards aviation photography and different editing styles from different people”. Unquote.

1. Precisely – is there any hope of seeing the implementation of that ethos?

Quote. “But there is also a difference between quantity and quality. Accepting as many photos as possible just to keep the site popular will lead to a site that will be a copy of the other, older, sites like a.net etc. And I think we all want to keep this site just a bit different and more towards the quality part then the quantity”. Unquote.

2. There is a screening system in place which filters the non-quality pictures from ordinary members. Remember without pictures there is no website. On the quality of some pictures from Full Members much has already been said.

Quote. “Also, lets all remember that this is a hobby for all of us. Lets try to learn from each other, be an inspiration to each other and have FUN while doing so”. Unquote.

3. Well said and thank you for saying it.

1- Appeal to the screeners and editors and direct your concerns to them, not with me since Im neither.

2- The fact that there is a screening system doesn't mean all photos are thus creative and adding to the site. I, together with some others, have expressed our opinion about the bar being raised on photos being accepted (this is how the topic started). Again; quantity against quality.

Of course, no photos = no website. But I still see many excellent photos uploaded by a huge number of different photographers, so I don't see a problem there. If you are in doubt about a certain Full Member upload, you're free to make a comment about that with the editors of this site.

3- You're welcome. For some reason I get the feeling there is something personal going on in your last two messages. I don't know how, or if I offended you, but there is no need since I can only hope that everybody will be able to enjoy our mutual hobby and eventually learns, gets inspired and gets better. Isn't that the reason why we joined this site?

It seems unless you post an over-processed photo, the odds are not good you will make it into the database.

Personally, I'm getting very tired of "Main object is not sharp", even after following tutorials posted on here. Most recently, I followed Mr. Bufalino's video on sharpening with Nik...I got 6 rejections in a row, and still have 5 more in queue waiting for the axe.

Just looking at my portfolio I can tell the standards have changed. One of my most popular shots was taken with a point-and-shoot and minimal editing skills. The comment from screeners was, "Thanks for choosing to upload this to A-P...to be honest its a bit soft in some places .. I accept as borderline. If this could be improved we do really appreciate. In case use the replace image tool provided".

JPC van Heijst wrote:-

Quote. "The fact that there is a screening system doesn't mean all photos are thus creative and adding to the site. I, together with some others, have expressed our opinion about the bar being raised on photos being accepted (this is how the topic started). Again; quantity against quality". Unquote.

So you together with some others have expressed your opinion about the bar being raised on photos being accepted. Well how revealing, at least we are getting some information now.

So what are the new parameters? What are the new guidelines for 'creative aviation photography'? How will ordinary members know whether their submission of pictures conforms to the new guidelines?

Anyone with answers?

I think there needs to be a standard set across the whole site, the problem is on one hand a guy is getting a photo rejected for being, overprocessed, soft, too much or little contrast etc, then on another hand a grunge photo gets accepted by a screener or uploaded by an FM with the same faults, there needs to be a balance. Its a hard one

Marius, you are getting paranoid. Christiaan is Full Member, not a site admin.

I hope you don't mind if I share some of your statistics. Your acceptance ratio is as follows:

70% for the last 20 photos

78% for the last 50 photos

75% for the last 100 photos

Based on the figures above I do not see your point.

If you think the photo was rejected for the wrong reason you should appeal. Out of the last 4 rejections you have not appealed any of the photos (I cannot tell if the appeal would be successful, it is up to the Senior Admin).

I am not going to oppose your opinion if we implement the think different ethos, it is up to the AP visitors to tell.

We do not want to be the largest database. Our mission is simple - to publish great photos. It is difficult to get the bar right and we will always be accused of being too harsh while at the same time people will complain that poor photos are being published.

We are not interested whether you are a spotter, photographer, enthusiast, etc. We do not judge you based on your equipment, nationality, age or whatever. We do not judge if you are a good or bad photographer, we do not even judge whether your photo is good or bad. We only decide whether we publish it.

This post has been edited by Martin Krupka on 22nd October 2014 - 19:30

Good Evening Martin

Thank you for your response.

As you will know, I have more than once expressed my appreciation and gratitude to you and all of The Team for providing and managing the facilities this site provides. May I do so again.

I know Christiaan van Heijst is not Site Admin. However, when a Full Member expresses the opinions that he has expressed, right here on this site, bearing in mind that his opinions are controversial, it is logical that there will be a response. If I may, and I say so with all respect to all concerned, perhaps he should leave opinions on site policy and the do's and don'ts of A-P.net to you and Site Admin. How the site is run and managed is your domain and it should remain so.

Nowhere have I in this discussion complained about Screeners or rejected photos. I play by the rules, some pictures are published and some not. Please also check my appeals ratio, it is almost zero. I have respect for the Screeners and Senior Admin and I know that respect is mutual.

If there are new parameters, new guidelines, changing the height of the bar, please communicate that to members. It will prevent confusion because members will have a better understanding of what is acceptable and what not.

Thank you for the positive message in your last paragraph.

Best regards to you and The Team.

Marius,

Thanks for your reply. I tried to express that there has not been any intended or organized increase of the bar.

I agree with all of you who noticed that the bar is higher than it used to be at the beginning, but it has been a natural slow process over the years. By the world natural I mean that there has never been a change of policy, but rather the photographers and Screeners improved their skills. I am aware that individual experience of AP photographers may differ though.

Christiaan described the direction we intend to go really well and I am happy that we managed to convey it across the community.

Marius Bekker;

I have as much right on an opinion about this site and its policy as you do.

Neither is my opinion controversial. Perhaps not the same as yours but no need to bring it down to a personal level. Thanks.

Nano, I think your photo is not sharp enough. It's not about the way of editing it - I suppose that image taken directly from the camera is not sharp as well. There is no way to create good final effect if your source has any significant flaws.

Nano, I looked for this image and didn't find it. Did you appeal if it was rejected??

I've Joined A-P.net in january 2013 with a 'attitude' that every one of my pictures are eyecatcher... Got rejected and rejected over and over.

At one point i found a workflow and (after three months of trying) and i've got some pics accepted. But after that it was all missery again, and i really start to hate this site. Jeffrey Schäfer knows because i've mentioned it on FB multiple times.

I didn't visit this site for almost an year. Since a couple of months i've changed my way of editing. I started to use Photoshop CS6 with the Nik collection. So a few weeks back i was satisfied with my editing results. Tried to learn a lot from other aviation photographers and their editing skills.

I've uploaded this pictures and some got accepted and some got rejected. But some screeners gave advise on what was wrong with the pic. I've worked on it and found the youtube tutorials from Angelo Bufalino.

Uploaded again, also re-edited pics of rejected ones. And now i got a very good score on accepted pictures, even with less 'second opinion' comments.

So what i try to say is, be hard on yourself, and try to improve yourself every day. It works, it really does. One tip for the screeners: when you reject a picture, try to say way. Not in 2 words but in a way it makes sense to the photographer. It works both ways.

With my photos I always work on the assumption that I am self screening, when i started photography in 2006 i used to get photos rejected all the time, even when i joined A-P in 2008 i used to get loads of rejections. Over the years you develop your own style, there are loads of people on here that have their own style, some more creative than others and some that deliver quality over creativity. You just got to keep plugging away and take rejections on the chin. Remember the photo is only as good as it comes out of the camera, so if its lacking quality from there then rejections are going to be higher. Get the basics right and editing is the easy part

This site is becoming too much like those sites where screeners are there looking for the tiniest faults and totally missing the bigger picture. There's a new set of screeners and often one will reject and the other will back him up and vice versa. And yes - there's more and more double standards. And here's a classic example: http://www.airplane-pictures.net/images/rejected-images/2014-10/475134.jpg

where the screener ()

Lvcivs - 23. 10. 2014, 23:42:37 "Heat haze is visible. Main object is not sharp. Lacks highlights, whites are gray."

Heat haze near the wheels is visible - but not on the aircraft

Main object not sharp - where is it not sharp?

lacks highlights - that's a new one and I have no idea what it means

whites are gray - define gray!

Frankly this is ridiculous.

This post has been edited by Shabbir A Bashar on 24th October 2014 - 03:00

Shabbir, I saw your image, I think 'I agree with the screener'. Some flaw are certainly visible.

But personal attacks will not do it. If you are convinced that the rejection was wrong, please appeal.

shabbir, and the others that say that the screeners are wrong .. know why they are screeners. Most are very long in this business they know what is right or wrong. If you disagree with it then appeal. You should not think that all your photos are good .. there are than many not accepted. View your pictures in the eyes of the screeners. Then it goes much better. I also started that all my photos were rejected. because I thought that all my photos were good. when I came to realize that my pictures were not always good. and looking through the eyes of the screeners on my pictures. that did well and I am very satisfied with this site.

regards Mitchel

Coenraad said: "So what i try to say is, be hard on yourself, and try to improve yourself every day. It works, it really does. One tip for the screeners: when you reject a picture, try to say way. Not in 2 words but in a way it makes sense to the photographer. It works both ways."

Couldn't agree more with everything you said, but especially the last paragraph. I'm fairly new to this site and had a stockpile of photos from this summer that I thought were pretty good. The screeners (certain ones anyways) have really helped me up my game over a span of a few months. Certain photo's I'll submit even though I know they will likely get rejected just to have some honest feedback on them. Hope that doesn't bother them :)

In the end, I stopped caring how many get accepted because I know the ones that do are the best of what I can get out of my gear and workflow. If you're new and can't tolerate having your shots being scrutinized then maybe this isn't the best site for you.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm all ok with rejections that make sense. Comments like "main object blurred - main object not sharp" really does not help in 90% of the cases. This is because I have sharpened them till further sharpening will cause the glaring jagged edges. So may be a tiny part of the "main object" may not be sharp - it would help to point out where that is. However, calling "whites are gray" is seriously pulling teeth - any objective definition requires the color white to be specified in color temperature range because depending on the lighting, whites could take up a range of colors - because white surfaces reflect ALL colors. So what was the basis of using "whites are gray" as one of the reasons for rejection?

Yes I appealed - and it was rejected again without the slightest bit of explanation. This is not a personal attack but a reflection of how a growing number of screeners have been acting lately compared to screeners in the past when they were much more friendly towards submissions; Angelo B. certainly comes to mind - he literally walked me through the steps on how to improve on my post processing.

I always thought constructive feedback from the screeners on this site was what set it apart from others ... I have clearly noticed a change and that is why I have joined this conversation. If you don't agree with me, that's ok too!

This post has been edited by Shabbir A Bashar on 25th October 2014 - 03:02

Shabbir;

I honestly dont think that this belongs in this thread about the site, but I'll reply none the less.

If you dont mind I can give you a little feedback as a non-screener, maybe this will be something you can use for future editing and photography.

I looked at your image and in general the quality is not too great, sorry to say. The composition is nice, but overall I hope I can explain a little bit what I see.

The main object seems pretty unsharp. This is not because its out of focus but probably because of the heat haze between you and the object. Heat haze is our worst enemy since no kind of editing can really get rid of the distortions from the blurred hot air :(

The blurriness can especially be seen on the cabin windows on the right of the image.

The whites in the picture are not really white indeed. This can be checked in a histogram (very useful for judging and editing pictures, see this tutorial http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/histograms.htm) and seems quite 'grey'. I don't know if you calibrate your monitor, but I recommend buying something like a Spider Express or so if you dont have one yet. Every week or two I calibrate my display and its amazing how different the colors and the contrast looks like sometimes before and after calibrating.

Next to that, it seems there is quite a lot of chromatic aberration (see this link for more background information http://www.dpreview.com/glossary/optical/chromatic-aberration). You can see for example the purple line running over the top of the fuselage from left to right.

As an extra bonus for the screening, you could try to get rid of the lampposts and the aircraft tail on the upper left too, if you have the skills and time. If you have Photoshop, just google cloning and 'content-aware' filling and you'll get rid of them easily. And if I look closely, there is even a little UFO hovering in the middle part of the sky ;)

I dont know if its because of the heathaze above the fence or only partially cloned out.

Anyway, good luck and I hope you found this helpful.

Now lets try not to deviate too much from the main subject in this thread again. :)

Dear JPC van Heijst,

Thanks for some very useful pointers.

We all over time see this post arise from the grave... But i myself have been to the end of the earth and back with screeners sometimes feel they dont look at comments and replies made by myself. I have uploaded pictures and had rejections, by the masses for none sharp and contrast after following many steps given to me. This is my latest picture that failed i have placed an appeal for a second look.

Tell me what you think.

Attached photos:

I'm sorry but I got to ask, how does one define creative?? As a designer I am open to using new ideas and styles of photography to create an interesting image that tells something. But after suffering rejects by the team here, i'm getting the impression that they are only interested in crisp sharp spotting images. Thats more documentative than creative in my opinion. Honestly trying to get approved photos on this site has been quite a frustrating experience. I've followed the tutorials, explained that some shots ARE NOT SKY shots but are creative graphic shots etc. I really feel the team has some double standards going around, and that is really unfair to all members here. The least they can do is explain more precisely on the reasons for rejection...

Hi Galen82, would you like to share the examples with the community?

This post has been edited by Martin Krupka on 28th October 2014 - 20:07

I totally agree with Crossley here. Every time I upload a photo with a comment or description as to why the photo is the way it is, it seems as if the screener does't look at what I have to say at all. I'm not gonna lie, I have been uploading here since September of 2012. My first accepted photo wasn't until November of 2013. And since then, my acceptance ratio has gone up from .17 to now at .32. That's a big improvement! But it has taken almost 2 years to get to this point, and I still get rejected 3-4 times out of 5. How am I supposed to improve when the only feedback I get is "main object not sharp. too noisy"? And then I go make the change and get the same reply, or a reply that was never mentioned in the first rejection such as "lacks contrast." It would be super helpful if the screeners would adequately address the problem with the photo and give an explanation of where the defects are. It's a win win for everyone. The screeners get a better practice of examining photos and the photographers get a better idea on what to look for and how to fix them. Just my 2 cents.

Crossley,

If that's the exact image you had rejected, it's suffering quite badly from compression (which can make it look oversharpened).

After some rejections I can now see what you're taking here.

Looks like you can only upload boring shots to be free of "main object is not sharp". You'll get photos technically correct, but boring after all.

well, I would love to see more options to share a Photo. Esp. the Thumbnail size ("large" is quite really tiny). If the Admins could set it on the list, it would be great

Hi Norman, I am not sure I understand. If you want we can discuss it via e-mail (Team@Airplane-Pictures.net).

Hello Martin,

I would love to see an Option like on FlickR where you can choose the size of the Thumbnail. If you want, I can send you a Photo/Screenshot.

Thank you for your quick response.

Best regards,

Norman

I love submitting photos that were taken years apart with different cameras, edited on different computers with different programs and techniques, yet within minutes of each-other getting a reject vote by the same screener for the same reason.