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Technical Notes for Future Contest
This is mainly for the archive, so everyone else, bear with... like last
year, I am performing a sort of "autopsy" on the entry process, to improve
on it should we run the contest again next year. This message covers only
technical aspects of the entry process. And boy it's a doozy.
* UPLOADER: Several people had problems with the upload function, ranging
from timed-out incomplete uploads to only a single upload per session
allowed.
1. needs to better explain to user to leave browser alone until finished
2. avoid timeouts on slow links
3. some way of giving feedback on upload percentage?
4. Gomberg's netscape problem: only first file uploads per session!
5. Dave VanderWall's IE file corruption problem (nobody else saw
this in the whole contest, btw!)
* FILE FORMAT: People send the darndest things! BMP files, GIFs,
PowerPoint presentations, Word DOCs, MS-Publisher files. Though
participating in a game of "stump the computer geek" can be fun for a
while...
1. Better indication that JPEG is only format allowed for uploads
2. Quick post-upload verification of JPEG or not JPEG (combine with
incomplete file detection above)
3. Perhaps a message to contact the organizer for help with unknown
formats.
* PLANTING PLAN: Last year, most people followed our advice and sent in
simple hand-drawn planting plans which were scanned and looked very good
on the site. This year, it seems everyone took it upon themselves to use
some graphics program to do it, which ended up with a lot of files that
were too small to be effective on the final site. A few people hand-drew
their plans too "finely" -- using a thin pencil lead on a full page of
drawing. This does not translate well when turned into a web page.
Finally, the majority included the plant list in the drawing itself, which
required both re-typing of the plants into the caption, and cropping of
the planting plan itself.
1. Encourage people to hand-draw the plans again.
2. Encourage them to draw a full-page sketch with a sharpie, not a 0.2mm
pencil. Blocky reproduces very well on the final web page.
3. Encourage the list of plants ("legend") to be entered into the
caption instead of the drawing itself.
* FILE SIZE: I have scripts that automatically create versions of the
images for various display resolutions. Perhaps this confused people
entering; lots of folks entered digital images that maybe they thought
looked great on their monitor for the final website, but which will not
print very big. On the other hand, a few people went overboard and sent me
4 megabyte JPEGs which were blurry as heck and would have been just as
good at 1/2 or 1/4 the resolution.
1. Suggest 300 dpi scans from prints, or the original image if from a
digital camera.
* CROPPING and EDITING: Three or four entrants submitted images with huge
black or colored borders around their tanks. I'm not sure if this is some
kind of "artistic presentation" or a means to insure the copyright notice
doesn't touch the picture itself, but it means that up to 50% of the image
space (screen width + height) is unused. One person sent me an image
pre-burned with his copyright, which I then had to retouch out.
1. Encourage entrants to crop their photos.
2. Note that the final presentation will be on a black background.
3. Perhaps add something to the software to allow them to preview their
actual entry.
4. Stronger notice that the copyright will be automatically burned in
& they shouldn't do this themselves.
* MEDIA TRANSFORMATION, MEDIA FORMAT: One entrant submitted an 11x14
inkjet print of a digital image. Another submitted a 16x20 and several
11x14's. Most of these did not fit my scanner. While the second entrant
had the sense of thought to include the digital images, the first did not.
Worse, the inkjet print really degraded the color balance of the image,
while the size of the print added no value to quality of the image.
I accepted negatives this year, but nobody has yet taken me up on this.
Three entrants did submit slides (and I think their entries look
significantly better than the ones who scanned or submitted prints). They
(and the fellow who submitted the 16x20 prints) were glad to hear I
offered to return their media to them at the Chattanooga conference. I
would suggest that in future years, we encourage more submission of
original media (slides and negs) by offering to return them if they
include a SASE. I know there was a big haruckass about this from James and
others back in the planning process, but speaking as the one who actually
did the work, I can say that it's not hard to drop some prints or negs
back into the mail if the envelope is ready to go.
1. Encourage people to submit the ORIGINAL media, not a transformation.
Make it known that digital images are better than prints from them,
and negatives or slides are more useful than prints from them as well.
2. Change rules to allow entrants to get their media back if they submit
a SASE.
* ONLINE ENTERING:
Lots of people who entered via postal mail could have entered via the
website (evidenced by a printout of the webpage and e-mail addresses);
reasons cited included "didn't know", and "thought you could only do that
if you had digital images".
Most perplexing was an entrant who typed all the information into a WORD
document, including a novella of description... I had to retype every word
because he submitted only a printout!
1. Encourage people to use the website for entering. Note that partial
online entry is OK, and that they can correct mistakes online & check
their photos once they have been received by postal mail.
Whew. Too much information.
- Erik
--
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com
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