Flummoxed by certain websites screening criteria for photos

No worries at all, I just replied to your PM. 🙂

Don’t you think it’s possibly a little insulting for you to say to me as an experienced photographer that histograms are for “anoraks”? Have you even considered that? Good photography (just like good music) comes about as a result of artistic ability AND sound technical understanding. Ignorance towards one or the other is one of the most idiotic attitudes a photographer (or musician) can have.

You say you welcome criticism on all aspects of photography EXCEPT the histogram. Sorry pal, it doesn’t work like that. The histogram shows you how accurate your exposure is, and maybe you haven’ve realised this yet but exposure is quite a big part of photography. It’s also one of the easiest things in digital photography to get right because it’s one of the few things we can measure, and if you can’t get that right you don’t stand a chance in hell of getting your head around other things.

Anyway, I was going to try help you but frankly people with attitudes like yours aren’t worth the effort. At some point you have to stop questioning others and look to yourself for improvement.

Ok point taken and I apologise for being too sensitive here.

I can’t stand looking at many of the uploads on Airliners.net because the aircraft noses are rammed against the photo margins like darts in a dart board….am I alone?

I hate that aswel, I was always told by a great old photographer friend that an aircraft should have space to fly or taxi into, I always try and leave more space at the front (be it framing while shooting or editing), even it the picture is heavily cropped or zoomed into the subject.

Interesting one this, I think the disscussion of pixels and centering etc is irrelevant (as SkyMonster says), I have submitted photos to Airliners, some have been accepted and some haven’t, some of the ones used are technically worse than some of the rejections.
Reasons I have been given are repitition, so if 10 other people have submitted pictures of A380 G-BBCX, unless my picture is far superior it wouldn’t be accepted.
I have given up submitting to them as it is too time consuming to keep sending pics and have most of them come back.
I use Air Britain which is far more user friendly

I’m not asking anyone to say “yeah my photos are great”. I was questioning airliners.net rejection policy. I know the pics I submitted are not perfect. I am flummoxed by the fact that there are many inferior shots on there in composition an quality (forget the blooming histograms – that’s for anoraks).

Yeah you are obviously much smarter than me that’s clear to see.

Don’t you think it’s possibly a little insulting for you to say to me as an experienced photographer that histograms are for “anoraks”? Have you even considered that? Good photography (just like good music) comes about as a result of artistic ability AND sound technical understanding. Ignorance towards one or the other is one of the most idiotic attitudes a photographer (or musician) can have.

You say you welcome criticism on all aspects of photography EXCEPT the histogram. Sorry pal, it doesn’t work like that. The histogram shows you how accurate your exposure is, and maybe you haven’ve realised this yet but exposure is quite a big part of photography. It’s also one of the easiest things in digital photography to get right because it’s one of the few things we can measure, and if you can’t get that right you don’t stand a chance in hell of getting your head around other things.

Anyway, I was going to try help you but frankly people with attitudes like yours aren’t worth the effort. At some point you have to stop questioning others and look to yourself for improvement.

ps. I wish I hadn’t started this blooming thread. 🙁

I’m sorry but if you don’t like what’s been said then don’t post blurry overexposed photos then whinge they were rejected.

Let’s get one thing straight here. You posted whinging in the hope someone would look at your sub-standard photos and agree with you that they were rejected for stupid reasons. The simple fact of the matter is they both have flaws and were both rightfully rejected. Now, take this as a lecture or not; I honestly couldn’t care less, but if you want to improve what you do then lose the attitude and start listening to people who are trying to help you. Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean it’s nonsense and pretending it is won’t get you anywhere. Just to reiterate, that photo is overexposed and yes, there is a loss of detail. You may not be able to see it but I can.

The wonderful thing about photography is you can take it as far as you like and spend as much or as little time learning as suits you. If you’re happy with the standard you produce then that’s perfectly fine, but don’t think for a second you’ll get away with telling people who are only trying to help that they’re ‘lecturing you on how to take basic photos’ when they point out faults. If they were so basic then you’d have nailed them in the first place.

I’m not asking anyone to say “yeah my photos are great”. I was questioning airliners.net rejection policy. I know the pics I submitted are not perfect. I am flummoxed by the fact that there are many inferior shots on there in composition an quality (forget the blooming histograms – that’s for anoraks).

Yeah you are obviously much smarter than me that’s clear to see.

Please tell me why you think this is overexposed. I don’t think it is. “Oh lets check the histogram – oh yes it says it’s overexposed”. Why don’t people just look at photos not start checking histograms. People are obsessed with histograms !!!

Is there any loss of detail due to overexposure here ?

I have no issues with people criticising photos on face value but checking histograms seems nonsense to me.

I welcome advice on aspects of photography but don’t really appreciate being lectured on how to take basic photos.

I’m sorry but if you don’t like what’s been said then don’t post blurry overexposed photos then whinge they were rejected.

Let’s get one thing straight here. You posted whinging in the hope someone would look at your sub-standard photos and agree with you that they were rejected for stupid reasons. The simple fact of the matter is they both have flaws and were both rightfully rejected. Now, take this as a lecture or not; I honestly couldn’t care less, but if you want to improve what you do then lose the attitude and start listening to people who are trying to help you. Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean it’s nonsense and pretending it is won’t get you anywhere. Just to reiterate, that photo is overexposed and yes, there is a loss of detail. You may not be able to see it but I can.

The wonderful thing about photography is you can take it as far as you like and spend as much or as little time learning as suits you. If you’re happy with the standard you produce then that’s perfectly fine, but don’t think for a second you’ll get away with telling people who are only trying to help that they’re ‘lecturing you on how to take basic photos’ when they point out faults. If they were so basic then you’d have nailed them in the first place.

Culpano….apologies for ‘drifting’ your thread….I like both shots you posted….it’s a shame composition doesn’t count for as much as other attributes on A.net

Thanks for advice everyone but I’m not getting into this thread anymore. All I am trying to say is I think airliners.net is over-critical. Either a shot is good or it isn’t in my view. No I don’t want to change airliners – I just won’t post up there any more if they are examining every pixel on the shot and rejecting for, in my opinion, ridiculous reasons. Especially when there are many inferior shots on there both in quality and composition.

Andy…Only quotes 1&2 came from me….I would like to try to change Airliners.net because they are boxing themselves into a corner….one solution that occurs to me is a pay to upload site [where viewers can pay to view :)]

Well I’m no expert on airliners.net these days because its quite a while since I uploaded there (and even longer since I was a screener there). But I will offer some observations…

The screeners have a concept called ‘centred’ which clashes with the classic photographic ‘rule of thirds’ and also is at odds with the shjape of modern airliners (pointed noses/sharply raked tail-feathers)

It matters not a jot whether the pictures on airliners.net comply with the “claissic” photographic rule of thirds – airliners.net set the criteria for the pictures they accept, and if they want neatly centered airplanes with a minimum of space around them that’s what you have to provide if you want pictures on their database. You and I may disagree with the criteria they apply, but we won’t be able to change it! So for the most part (and in this I mean “run of the mill” type pictures as the one’s you’ve linked to are) you work to it, or forget about airliners.net

The same applies to cropping ratios, quality etc… They set the rules, and we either work to them, and if not we should expect rejections or move to another platform to display our images.

One I admire
http://www.airliners.net/photo/Japan…346/0067206/L/

No point in sarcastically pointing fingers – that image was accepted by airliners.net TEN YEARS ago and the quality criteria has moved on hugely since then – heck, that probably wasn’t even a digital image but more likely a scan from a print, negative or slide. If the airliners.net photo ID isn’t at least into SIX figures (excluding the leading zeros, i.e. 01XXXXX or above) then the quality of the image in the airliners.net database is going to be absolutely no guide to what they will and will not now accept.

This got rejected for poor quality but I’ve seen much worse A380 shots on that website.

That pic is never going to be accepted. It is not sharp (I suspect that the underlying original is not sharp) and there is evidence of minor motion blur that can be seen in the “MA” on the top of the tail.

Furthermore, even if the base image was really sharp (I don’t believe it is) there are artifacts fringing the border between the blue tail and the sky which to me may be indicative of either (a) too much compression in the original jpeg as produced by the camera or (b) too much compression when saving the image as linked to on this topic or (c) rather clumsy re-sizing and or sharpening. So even if the original was sharp (and not over-compressed out of camera), then some improvements to the post-processing is required. Photoshop Elements (already mentioned) is a good cheap package for photo processing – its bicubic resizing works really well and its unsharp mask (with the right parameters set) will also do a good job on sharpening up the image. But of course all that is irrelevent if the base image is NBG.

Please tell me why you think this is overexposed. I don’t think it is. “Oh lets check the histogram – oh yes it says it’s overexposed”. Why don’t people just look at photos not start checking histograms. People are obsessed with histograms !!! Is there any loss of detail due to overexposure here ?

Actually I don’t think its overtly overexposed… But there is some clipping of the whites at the top end and that’s noticable both on screen and looking at the histogram. If you can’t see it, maybe you need to consider recalibrating your monitor?

—–

It would help diagnosis to know things like:

(i) what camera are you using (this may give some clues as to whether there is any salvation or not)?
(ii) are you shooting raw or jpeg (I suspec the latter)?
(iii) what compression / quality settings are you using on of the camera (these MUST be set to best quality, minimum compression)?
(iv) what post processing are you doing – what are you doing with levels (histogram), resizing, sharpening, etc?
(v) what quality settings are you using when saving the reworked photo?

Of course, the above is all irrelevent if all you want to do is go against what airliners.net wants – because as I said at the top of this reply, you aren’t going to change their minds!

Andy

The Afriqiyah doesn’t look overexposed, it is overexposed! It’s a simple straightforward technical fact and this is why you need to understand the histogram. Overexposure will cause rejections so you need to learn how to avoid it.

Please tell me why you think this is overexposed. I don’t think it is. “Oh lets check the histogram – oh yes it says it’s overexposed”. Why don’t people just look at photos not start checking histograms. People are obsessed with histograms !!!

Is there any loss of detail due to overexposure here ?

I have no issues with people criticising photos on face value but checking histograms seems nonsense to me.

I welcome advice on aspects of photography but don’t really appreciate being lectured on how to take basic photos.

Longshot, it’s not quite as easy as that! 1600 pixel wide images are MUCH more difficult to sharpen and nail in terms of quality. Basically the original has to be almost perfect to get serious quality at 1600 pixels wide. If everyone uploaded to aviation photography sites that wide there’d probably only be a fraction of the images to look at because most would have been rejected!

What I meant was if the picture is uploaded larger than 1024 people can do their own crops, [should they wish :)]…..in the obsession with sharpness and ‘quality’ the content. background and composition of photos has been largely ignored. The screeners have a concept called ‘centred’ which clashes with the classic photographic ‘rule of thirds’ and also is at odds with the shjape of modern airliners (pointed noses/sharply raked tail-feathers)

These photos are much reduced than the ones I sent to Airliners. Also the aspect ratio I sent was different to these. These are my personal copies that I use to display on widescreen : ratio 16:9.

Any quality issues will show massively more on a larger size, so that blur would have been even more apparent at 1600 wide.

Sharpening like almost any digital image editing process only gives a false look if you overdo it. Digital photography as a medium is inherently soft and that’s why we need processing like sharpening to make the images look acceptable. All digital cameras employ sharpening techniques, the difference between a point and shoot and a DSLR being you can turn that processing off on a DSLR and do it on the computer which generally gives much better results (if well applied).

I don’t have Paint so can’t recommend any sharpening settings, but I’d strongly recommend a slightly better program for editing if you really want to start uploading to aviation photography sites. Even a basic version of Elements will be better than Paint and because more people use it you’ll be able to get better advice on things like sharpening. No amount of sharpening will sort blur out though, so you need to try avoid that in the first place. What camera settings were you using for the A380?

Paul

P.S. The Afriqiyah doesn’t look overexposed, it is overexposed! It’s a simple straightforward technical fact and this is why you need to understand the histogram. Overexposure will cause rejections so you need to learn how to avoid it.

The Afriqiyah has a lot of overexposure

Paul

I do fade correct my photos to bring the colours out and that’s why they may look like they are overexposed.

Longshot, it’s not quite as easy as that! 1600 pixel wide images are MUCH more difficult to sharpen and nail in terms of quality. Basically the original has to be almost perfect to get serious quality at 1600 pixels wide. If everyone uploaded to aviation photography sites that wide there’d probably only be a fraction of the images to look at because most would have been rejected!

This is my main problem. The original JPG from the camera looks fine but when reduced to 1600 wide (or 1024 wide on Jetphotos) the quality is degraged. Sharpening always gives a false look to the picture. Does anyone have any tips on what settings in the paint programs to do resizes ?

These photos are much reduced than the ones I sent to Airliners. Also the aspect ratio I sent was different to these. These are my personal copies that I use to display on widescreen : ratio 16:9.

Longshot, it’s not quite as easy as that! 1600 pixel wide images are MUCH more difficult to sharpen and nail in terms of quality. Basically the original has to be almost perfect to get serious quality at 1600 pixels wide. If everyone uploaded to aviation photography sites that wide there’d probably only be a fraction of the images to look at because most would have been rejected!

One I admire
http://www.airliners.net/photo/Japan-Asia-Airways/Boeing-767-346/0067206/L/

I’d like to see the original uncropped version of this one
http://www.airliners.net/photo/Air-Canada/Boeing-777-333-ER/1777323/L/

Since you can upload at sizes up to 1600 pixels it seems unnecessary to crop so much

The Afriqiyah has a lot of overexposure and again the aspect ratio isn’t standard. It’s totally unreasonable to expect to be able to do what you want to a digital photo and still have it look good. Digital photography has certain technical limits and you need to understand them if you’re to get the best out of it. Do some research on histograms and how to use them, it will help you avoid problems like overexposing.

Paul