PBase

I took a look to the 7 days pop galleries today and was quite surprised to find that first three top gallery IMO are full of quite mediocre pictures. What's going on? Are we collectively on Pbase lost sense of what is a good and interesting photography....? Yeah, I understand there are different opinions and people like different things, but still, I can't understand reasoning for them to be there.

Michael.

the popular galleries are POPULAR which is not the same as good photography. The Brooklyn Museum recently organized a crowd sourced exhibit (much like pbase pops, the voters decided what made it to the exhibition) and, guess what, the outcome was that the pictures pretty much conformed to a "sameness" in what people thought was good photography. It's an artifact of being immersed in images and the thought that the untrained eye is every bit as good at determining excellence as one that is educated. After all, individuality is paramount in modern society.... until all individuals decide that the same thing is their thing

Mary in SW Florida, USA

the reason that there are not stellar photos posted is because they are being censured, as I found out last eventing

photodocsj wrote:the reason that there are not stellar photos posted is because they are being censured, as I found out last eventing

Censured? Explain yourself. I do not see anything that can be censured in the galleries I've mentioned. The fact that other potentially censured images are not on the top does not explain the fact that these photos are. Do you want to say that only images that a potentially censured are good? That quite a statement

Michael.

Censured (an administrative punishment meted out by congress) or censored these are somewhat different words.. I get the point though. There is a fair amount of pedestrian fair posted here, I myself am probably guilty, but given that many of us post for friends and family, the subject matter may not be Ansel Adams or even Warhol. It does however have merit to the photographer and his audience, regardless of what he rest of us think of it.

photodocsj wrote:the reason that there are not stellar photos posted is because they are being censured, as I found out last eventing

Nudes - artistic or otherwise - are disqualified from popular when they are identified. Perhaps this is what you are referring to?

dougj wrote:

photodocsj wrote:the reason that there are not stellar photos posted is because they are being censured, as I found out last eventing

Nudes - artistic or otherwise - are disqualified from popular when they are identified. Perhaps this is what you are referring to?

Interesting the implication of the first statement, that "stellar" photos must somehow be offensive...... and that all "stellar" photos are censored.

If you want to see a good example of "popular" photographs take a look at what wins the most votes on various contests on facebook. what appeals and what is a good photo is not always the same thing. in my sale of prints I may have one that I consider superior in terms of composition etc but will not sell. I have learned that "ugly" prints like ugly people will find someone to love them eventually. photographers and the general public look at photos in a different way.

The "problem" of the "Popular Galleries" and "Popular Photos" is that they are based on the number of votes received, which boils down to the network of pals you have on PBase and your activity on the site. Sometimes they are very good galleries or images and sometimes they are not. Despite that I still think PBase is the best web environment for photographers having tried trial accounts with picasa, smugmug, trekearth, zenfolio, photo.net, etc.