G Dan Mitchell Photography

Reflections… on photo.net and online ratings

Posted on 27 June 2006

First, know that I write this with my sense of humor intact. It isn’t an angry rant… :-)

A couple of observations and experiences from the last couple days have reminded me how to and how not to respond to certain types of “criticism.”

Exhibit 1: The first two ratings of a photo I recently posted at photo.net:

Personally, I sort of like one of them better than the other, but I suppose that both may be equally suspect. (For those who don’t know, at photo.net member ratings of 7 mean “excellent” and ratings of 3 mean “below average.” (According to some reports, photo.net converts all ratings of 1 (“very bad”) and 2 (“bad”) into 3′s, so the truth may be even worse… ;-)

Exhibit 2: The Online Photographer included a wonderful story (“Great Photographers on the Internet” – find it here – you’ll need to scroll down) in which photographic classics are subjected to tongue in cheek “reviews” in the style of the public forums. (For a nice follow-up, see “Photography Rules” at the same web site.)

Exhibit 3: As if on cue, various web sources pointed to this amazing thread on Flickr: Cartier-Bresson Booted From Flickr and Mario’s Bike of Flickr.
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