i've enjoyed 99.99% of the comments i've gotten. just a few that bugged me for some silly-butt reason ;-)
"Was this a Nikon camera that shot this?"
there's just no pleasing some people...
"I don't usually like comments or give them, but since candids are near and dear to my heart, I have decided to comment on every photo in this challenge.
Photo is very grainy to me. Good focus and expression on the woman. I like the tones, but probably would have gone more on the sepia side. Just kind of ok for me. No big wow factors felt here from it. A 4 vote from me."
"Nice action, looks good in BW. Great dof, well composed. I would toss this another point or two but for the fact that part of his hand and the board are cropped out. Not sure if that's by intent or just the way the shot came out of the camera. Still, really nice photo. 5."
Ah! Bird flu!
4
5
It hurt my eyes! Lacked color and beauty (this for a photo that scored 12/151)
ok
ouch my eyes ...
DUCKY!!!!!!
No comments..
mom?
Okay.
yawn
? huh
water is not land..! (in a landscape challenge)
So So (for a blue ribbon winning photo)
Until just now, I've found exactly one comment out of 1494 that was really, truly unhelpful:
Horrible. Absolutely horrible. 1
But on further reflection, I'm going to check it helpful for reasons I'll explain below.
Almost every comment I've seen in this thread is helpful in some way, even if it's only minimally helpful. Yes, you have to disconnect from the fact it's your shot and you knew what you were going for, what was going on in the shot, etc. And yes, you have to ignore the nasty tone sometimes to get at the useful nugget. But consider that someone out there took time out of their lives to tell you they didn't like it. That's more telling than simply seeing in the vote chart that people voted your shot lower than you thought it deserved.
Which brings me to why I just ticked the "helpful" box on that comment I mentioned.
Granted, details are better than simply stating there's a problem.
Of course, every comment is just one person's opinion. But if you get 10 people commenting "not getting it" or some variation, then that tells you more.
So: do your best to ignore the tone and search for that hidden bit.
One last thing I have to add: negative comments on high-scoring shots are every bit as helpful as positive comments are on low-scoring shots. You're never going to connect with 100% of the voters, and frankly, I find it helpful to be reminded of that because it takes some of the sting away from shots whose scores disappoint me.
My favorite comment to date has been the first comment on this shot. It apparently bothered the poor chap so much he never returned to DPC again and is the only comment he ever made. lol
best i can figure sadfsa was just mashing keys with the left hand in the rest position. what is funny is that shot had this Avg (commenters): 3.7500
btu only 4 comments 2 of which used the word great and one used good and the other was sadfsa. tell if you can figure out how they voted.
edit to add: you look on the brgiht side far too much Jeff!:)
Hmmm... I think most of those could be helpful if you took the time to try to understand the commenter's viewpoint and divorce yourself emotionally from your image for a while.
There are two ways to say "You over-processed this." One is the adult way, and the other is the second in that list of heartless comments.
Yes, there's a syndrome of complaining about a lack of comments, then complaining about comment quality when they do come in. However, I don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out the childishness in some of the comments, or the complete lack of the most fundamental kind of respect for another person's feelings and intelligence. Will it stop bad behaviour? No. Do people learn anything from barbed comments, other than the fact that others are jerks? Maybe. Neither of those are reason enough not to remind such individuals to remain civil, and that an adult atmosphere is preferred over a school playground one.
Have you ever had a comment book at a gallery show? Some of those comments are far worse than anything on DPC. So what if some of the commenters have taken it upon themselves to be the Simon Cowell of DPC.
Regardless of the manner in which the comment is made, rather than bitching about the presentation, you might consider the message and appreciate the fact that the image evoked a response at all.
I mean, seriously, how can a comment like "Made me laugh and then the objects made me ill" really be construed as helpful, unless of course that person has an aversion to hubcaps!!!
That's your job to interpret.
So maybe not marking a comment as helpful really means "Photographer doesn't get it."
i'm pretty liberal with the "helpful" checkbox... 98% of mine are marked helpful, and of those not marked, a majority of those are comments i left on my own images...
that said, here are a couple good bad ones :
"It looks really cool, but fake."
and
"yah, another drop."
oddly enough, they were both on milk drop photos...
i'm pretty liberal with the "helpful" checkbox... 98% of mine are marked helpful, and of those not marked, a majority of those are comments i left on my own images...
that said, here are a couple good bad ones :
"It looks really cool, but fake."
and
"yah, another drop."
oddly enough, they were both on milk drop photos...
Those are both helpful :P
Seriously. Just like I appreciated it when someone told me they were a bit tired of smoke photos.
I usually mark all comments as helpful - in some cases, it's just an acknowledgement or a way of flagging that I had already read it. In the Best of 2006 challenge, I got this: "Flott" - and did not mark it helpful because I wanted to find out from the commenter the challenge what it means. But I just decided to interpret it to mean "Best damn photo I have ever seen in my life! 10! I can die in peace now" and marked it as helpful.
Here's a few more that I will probably go back through and mark anyway:
"dnmc. These are woodies." - in Battle of the Sexes - as if Woodies don't have sex.
"a sillouhette is not a shadow"
"Sorry, I don't understand... are faceless dummies being phased out?"
"hmmmm, I don't quite know what to say about this image, so I won't say anything!" - LOL! This one is from UNCLEBRO (O.P.) - I didn't mark it as helpful cuz it's more of a non-comment. :)
"adobe photoshop, nice, same as me, and prolly many others."
"good image but wasnt the duty to capture an accidental letter in nature?" - obviously I was derelict in my duty. ;-)
This one is just funny, given the extent to which this person explains the DNMC:
"Given the spirit of the challenge was to capture a shot of wildlife in its natural environment, I find it most difficult to believe that this was done with your entry. Needless to say my vote on this was very low given those circumstances. When a photo does not do its best in composition to depict actual challenge guidelines, my stadegy for voting immediately stops and it becomes a DNMC to me. When huge known to attack man animals are hunted down, I don't believe they will be for the purposes of a graphic ribbon."
Bonus points if you can guess who left that comment. Hint: look at the length of the comment!
This one is just funny, given the extent to which this person explains the DNMC:
"Given the spirit of the challenge was to capture a shot of wildlife in its natural environment, I find it most difficult to believe that this was done with your entry. Needless to say my vote on this was very low given those circumstances. When a photo does not do its best in composition to depict actual challenge guidelines, my stadegy for voting immediately stops and it becomes a DNMC to me. When huge known to attack man animals are hunted down, I don't believe they will be for the purposes of a graphic ribbon."
Bonus points if you can guess who left that comment. Hint: look at the length of the comment!
Chilling! I would say who but I know it's the name never to be spoken. LOL
I usually mark all comments as helpful - in some cases, it's just an acknowledgement or a way of flagging that I had already read it. In the Best of 2006 challenge, I got this: "Flott" - and did not mark it helpful because I wanted to find out from the commenter the challenge what it means. But I just decided to interpret it to mean "Best damn photo I have ever seen in my life! 10! I can die in peace now" and marked it as helpful.
Pretty cool that you did that Ken, 'cause "flott" means great (or cool or any similar adjective). And it was a great shot.
"Given the spirit of the challenge was to capture a shot of wildlife in its natural environment, I find it most difficult to believe that this was done with your entry. Needless to say my vote on this was very low given those circumstances. When a photo does not do its best in composition to depict actual challenge guidelines, my stadegy for voting immediately stops and it becomes a DNMC to me. When huge known to attack man animals are hunted down, I don't believe they will be for the purposes of a graphic ribbon."[/b]
I got the same comment (well not exactly, some of the words are slightly different) by a user that doesn't exist anymore ...
I welcome all comments, and perhaps inappropriately try to mark them all as helpful. My near brown elicited a nice variety, and succeeded in helping me cross some mysterious line into the land of white rookian bliss. (Hopefully not addictive, or as seductive as it has been to someone whose username begins with p).
And what really got me amused/annoyed was, when I clicked on the page of that user who left it to PM them - I saw they were getting tons of comments on their entry in two back-to-back challenges that were of almost exactly the same object & composition saying "haven't I seen this shot before?" and "can I predict that I'll see this again?".
Do as I say, not as I do :)
George Lucas the director actually said once to his actors when filming a movie: "ok, ok, um.. that was good, but um... yeah... just act... better."
I'm an actor and I think that's really funny, so when I read the above comment, I giggled - he's saying to me "ok, ok, um... that was good, but um... yeah... just be more... creative."
They are no bad comments, it's how "creative" you can be with interpreting them :)
