Capture Arkansas: Vote Today
This photography book, sponsored by the Dem-Gaz, will have photographs by Arkansans and ranked by Arkansans. The cost will be about $30. There will be 128 pages in the book, but a DVD will also be included with most of the photographs on the site.
I normally don't blog about something twice (especially in a row), but apparently the pictures have been in the submission stages for a few months now, but today starts the official "voting week." If you vote for at least 150 photos this week, you get a discount code for the book.
That's what I spent this weekend doing: voting on endless photographs. Beautiful photographs that wll make you want to travel to hidden places in Arkansas.
By my estimates, the website has about 33,000 photographs of Arkansas, and most of are great photographs. I see a lot of names I recognize in the submitter category. Apparently everyone from professional photographers, reporters and even a zoo keeper or two have been busy building the book. The cool thing is, some of the amateur photographs are more stunning than the professionals!
Check out the site, place some votes and pimp your favorites here, in the comment section. So far my favorite photograph of all on the site is Kirk Jordan. I'd never heard of him before, but he's my new photo idol!
Comments
I strongly recommend looking at photos by Karen Caster, Paul Caster, and Amanda Galiano. I dont know these peope, but they ake great pics.
This one is my favorite:
http://www.capturearkansas.com/photo/10670
I’ve never heard of that place.
Actually this week isn’t the official voting week, it is only the week where submissions are no longer allowed and you can only vote.
I wouldn’t recommend going through based on chapter unless you select the most loved tab, otherwise you will have endless bad pictures you will need to nix inorder to get to a few good photos. When I say bad I mean REALLY bad, it seems that this site has gone from an attempt to get a good cross section of photography from across Arkansas to everyone with any kind of discount Wal-Mart digital point-and-shoot thinking they should post every single picture of their children for the world to see, even if the pictures are blurry, have the camera’s date stamp in the lower corner, or even are upside-down. This causes those people who have above-par (maybe not fabulous) pictures from being lost in the great mass of trash these people created. Unfortunately these people either don’t understand how bad their pictures are, or they don’t know what flickr is… which would be a way better place to post pictures so your family can see them. What really gets me is that a good portion of these people didn’t even take the time to use proper grammer in their photo’s comments or their profile description… it doesn’t paint Arkansans in a good light.
Good luck with the voting, I hope you have the patience, I sure don’t any more.
According to the site it is the official vote week. They call it “Vote Week” anyway, so I think that makes it official.
You could vote the whole time, but this is the last time you can.
Most of the photographs in the nature and scapes sections were good, if not great. I am on the people section now and some of them are just ordinary snapshots, but I expected that.
The date stamp puts me off to, but there were a few in scapes that were great aside from the stamp. I would have voted yes if it were just cloned out.
The good thing about photography is that it is accessible to everyone. Though, I do wish they would do the voting in two sections, one to weed out the snapshot type photos and then one to focus on the rest of the book. But, I imagine the editors are going to do a great job of getting it all together. I doubt vote counts count that much anyway. With 128 page book and 33,000 photographs, the editors are going to do much of the work.
I think the photos are worth glancing through though, especially the best of. Most of them are stunning!
I’m not sure where Bill gets off griping at everyone’s pictures. Who does he think he is Ansel Adams? I’ve put a lot of pictures out there with timestamps, BIG DEAL. I just like to take pictures of my kids and I think other people might like them too. My pictures might not belong in National Geographic or the newspaper, but this is Capture Arkansas. Last time I checked, Arkansas is the NATURAL STATE. What’s more natural than a picture of Dylan on his training potty?
http://www.capturearkansas.com/photo/107669
First off, I think its funny the last person who commented says that they don’t know the Casters, yet they are both Zoo Keepers, and Galiano just happens to be the person’s blog that we are commenting on. I’m just saying.
Second, I agree with Bill, just because you take a picture of your child or pet or grandparent or some flower doesn’t mean it should be put on that site. Have your stuff relate to Arkansas, not just say it’s from Arkansas, have it show Arkansas. Through our states personality or history or culture. Not just some picture of a child or flower in your backyard.
Third, whatever happened to criticism? Seriously people, just because you criticize does not mean you are being hateful. But to not criticize at all gives people a false sense that there crap is actually good.
And last, yes there are a bunch of good photos. I’m not trying to be completely negative here. And this book is supposed to be of Amateur photographers and Arkansas Democrat photographers. I just hope that this does not turn out to be a book of solely professional Democrat photographers.
Jack I think you have a long ways to go before you start critisizing people’s pictures. And why do you think only Democrats can be professional photograhers? What about Republicans?
Yeah, there’s definitely some fishy stuff going on there. If you notice in the results to the “Festivals and Events” contest there are four pictures from Emily C. Jones. In her last photo shown, three down and three across in the bottom thumbnails, there’s a picture of some fireworks and it’s not a good picture, but that photograph was mentioned anyways. Why would a rather lame photo like that get an honorable mention? Because she a freelance photographer for the Democrat-Gazette… at least that’s what she claims in here profile description. Here’s the picture I’m refering to:
http://www.capturearkansas.com/photo/167471
That potty shot was good, I totally think that deserves to be on the cover. What Arkansan wouldn’t want a book with that on the cover sitting on their coffee table next to a full ashtray.
Democrat Gazatte, the ones who are doing the book. I just hope they don’t use people they are only. It would be nice if it wasn’t a majority of professional photographers pictures. Not saying it will be I just hope it won’t.
And again, I say, what is wrong with criticism? Why are people so fragile these days?
Oh, did I accidentally paste the wrong link in? Sorry, here’s the one I was refering to…
http://www.capturearkansas.com/photo/65706
Sorry Amanda, but your photo of the dog exhibits exactly what I’ve been refering to.
You guys need to get a grip. It’s only a book for goodness sakes. Everyone should feel free to submit whatever photo they desire and everyone has the chance to vote each one up or down. And of course, the votes are going to determine which photos are included. It is only intended to narrow the field. The editors will certainly have the final say. I’ve voted on every single photo (although I will say that a few keep trickling to me, a glitch I suppose) and there are plenty of great photos from all kinds of people. And yes, there are some I haven’t cared for, but that really isn’t the point. Until I read these posts, everyone I’ve spoken to has found it a wonderful experience not to mention a lot of fun! As for me, I don’t know if any of my photos will find the book. I hope so, but if not I’ve still enjoyed this and would love to do it again. If anyone reading this would like to see more Arkansas photography, there are a number of Arkansas groups on Flickr and MANY of the photographers who have submitted to “Capture Arkansas” are well represented there.
I’m sorry, I mistyped a sentence in the above post. It should have read the votes are NOT going to determine which photos are in the book.
I agree. Who knew this would be a controversial topic?
If you notice, Emily C Jones also leads in the “shares” and gold stars category. Maybe her friends are voting for her? That would make more sense than a grand conspiracy.
As for my dog photo, sure it does! Did I think it would be in the book? Heck no. Do I care? No. I submitted it because I considered the category fun and frivolous, like the people category. I’m sure the Dem-Gaz considered that those would be a mixed category anyway.
I don’t think my Oaklawn or Riverfest photos are that great either, right off hand. I would consider those “snapshots” too. I bet I could find some photos that aren’t off the cover of a magazine in your bunch too, but you didn’t post a link.
I only suggested voting in two courses because of the massive amount of photographs. I imagine a lot of people are missing the cream of the crop due to sheer vote exhausting (but I guess they should but the book and DVD…that is the point). I don’t have a problem with people posting snapshots, I just don’t think they can compete against the better photos of the book, and I don’t know that any of mine belong in there, but it’s fun anyway.
But anyway, like Tony said, it is no big deal. The editors have the ultimate say. Buy the book and see what falls out or don’t. Like someone said, not everyone is Ansel Adams, but I betcha everyone has at least one good shot on there.
Oh, and I thought it was obvious that Derfla was kidding when he said he didn’t know us. I know Paul, Karen and Derfla well, and they know each other. I do think Karen has some of the best shots of the zoo on the site. I don’t know how I feel about “zoo photos” being in a book about Arkansas (I also submitted some), because Arkansas has so much native nature, but, they’re well received so people must want to see them. I guess that’s a decision for the editors, not us.
Something else I found interesting is that the Dem-Gaz really has a lot less to do with this than you would think. Right now there are these contests going on all over the country. I’ve seen Capture Memphis, Capture the American Heartland, Capture the Pacific Coast, Capture Cincinnati….I could go on. I imagine the publishers make a great deal of money of these books. Imagine convincing folks to submit their own work and then getting them to pay for it. Maybe we’re all suckers!
You mention the “shares” and “gold stars”. I decided early on I wouldn’t harass my friends with this. I wonder how many other folks like me are out there? Or if I’m in the minority. In any case I don’t have any photos with 200 votes yet so, well, there you have it.
I looked at the publisher’s early on when I was first looking at the project. They work with newspapers all over the country to produce these books and similar books. Some places do books strictly of newspapers photographs and some do “Capture” books.
I haven’t really linked my friends to my photographs much, but I have pimped the site. There are way better photographers than I on the site.
Funny, one of my friends said, “I don’t get the point?” My reply was similar to your observation. I said, “I think the point is to convince us that it’s cool and trendy to submit photographs for them to use for free so they can sell a book and make money from it.” He laughed
One last comment and then I’m off to do a restaurant review. The site reminded me that my photography links section of this site is lacking.
Tonight (or tomorrow) I’m going to through all my loved photos (and the Flickr page) and make a little page about photographing Arkansas with links to everyone’s Flickr feeds and/or websites. There are some great photo websites out there that I’d love to remember later.
My point about the bad photos is because this book is intended to show the good things about Arkansas. It should be a compilation of some of the best photography in the state, be it Amateur or Professional. That is where the criticism comes in to play. When someone submits a very bad photo to this website and nobody tells them its bad, that makes other people think “hey maybe people want to see my [bad] photo’s.”
That’s not the intention of Capture Arkansas, that is what flickr or photobucket or picasa are for.
And for that matter, the people that put 700 or 800 photo’s on there is not the intention of this book either. People should have picked some of there best work to contribute; I think 50 tops should have been a limit. Quantity does not equal quality.
And when you are charging people for a book it would be nice to know that it would be something that they can be proud to put on your coffee table because it does show Arkansas in its best light.
Jack, it WILL be something to be proud of. The snap shots you are so concerned about won’t be in the book. I’m sure many will find their way onto the DVD but the book will be quality photography. As for the 50 photo limit, I would not have minded that since seeing and voting on all of them would have taken less time but Fred Garcia submitted 719 photos. I did not see ANY I would call a snapshot and most were very good. John Citron submitted 408, most of them excellent. Paul Barrows submitted 373 and I didn’t see any that could be dismissed out of hand and most of his were beautiful work. That is not to say I didn’t nix some of these guys shots but limiting them to 50 each would have been a net loss for the project. Even I submitted about 175 and while I’m sure they don’t all measure up I would not have submitted any I would have been embarrassed to see published, and just picking 50, while a fun challenge, would have resulted in passing on some that deserved inclusion. I’ve had several that I considered less than my best receive positive response I never anticipated.
I’m guessing none of these guys has ever judged a public photo contest before. If you’ve ever judged or been in a real life photo contest, even with submission fees and rules for number of submissions, you get some photographs that you think, “Someone PAID to submit this?” (those are normally mine…I kid). People submit because it’s fun. And it doesn’t matter because they can submit 90 photographs and there will still be x number of winners, just like there will be x number of pages in the book.
In a real life contest, you go through them as a judge and sort a group of them out and then come together and vote on your favorites. That’s just the way it’s done, in my experience. A great photo to you may not be great to Judge B, but you hope that when all of you come together, you’ll at least get a good cross section of the best for awards.
It doesn’t hurt for someone to submit a photograph of their kid in hopes it will be displayed in the contest “show.” Some contests I’ve been in display all, some display the top 10%, etc. Who cares? It doesn’t make Arkansas look bad or the contest look bad. It’s a photo contest. That is what happens here and I bet if you went to Michigan it happens there or Denver or Colorado. It says nothing about the state. As a matter of fact, look here for equally embarrassing photos from other states:
https://purchase.pictorialbook.com/
And you know what? Even with all the photos that are submitted that you think, “They paid to submit that?,” the winners of public photo contests are almost always great photos. They aren’t snapshots or time coded photos. They’re always artful, and there are always leftovers that were almost as good (or maybe some people would say better, art is subjective). I promise you, there are at the very least 128 pages of great photos on that site, even if you put 4-5 photos on a page. I assume some will get a full page. I could fill 128 pages just with the nature section.
And to some, a photo of their son potty training, time stamp and all, is the best of Arkansas