Photo categories

DW_

Senior Member
I really like this site and have enjoyed myself in the limited time I've been here. But it occurs to me that there are relatively few categories to post our photos in compared to all the non-photo ones. Unless you're part of the 365, there are only 2 places to post photos in - Photo Critique and Blog (and I suppose Gallery counts, too). As it stands now, this site is more geared for the occasional google searcher who has problems with their particular camera/gear than repeat posters. I realize this is a Nikon camera site and certainly should contain all the current and past Nikon models but it would also be nice to have a few photo specific categories, too. For instance, a "Landscape" category as well as a "Portrait", "Night/Low Light", "Wild Life" and maybe an "Abstract" section would make a nice addition to the site and would give more functionality and interest to those of us who have lingered beyond a couple of questions.

Thanks!

Dave
 

bluenoser

Banned
Hi Dave.

Thanks very much for your feedback. I think you make some excellent points and would like to invite any other members with thoughts on the photo categories to chime in with their thoughts.

The admin and mod. team will be happy to consider all suggestions and after some discussion we will provide our feedback as well.

Thanks again Dave! :)
 

Marcel

Happily retired
Staff member
Super Mod
It would be nice to have those categories me thinks. Maybe it could be done in the Gallery where when we post we could have another level of category so the pics would be sorted by our user names and also category. Is that something doable?
 

jdeg

^ broke something
Staff member
One of the issues we've had in the past is organizing those categories into sections/forums that make sense and don't confuse the user as to where to post things.

Perhaps these would be better as blog categories that people could put their posts under? Right now there is just a general "Photos" category, but of course that can be expanded. This format would be better for explaining a process of how those photos were taken or just telling a story about them while groups all similar blogs together.

OR

We can add specific group albums in the gallery. This would be better for just displaying a lot of photos. The same can be accomplished when photos are tagged properly too, for example: Pics tagged with "cat"

Edit - just realized a bug with the gallery tagging system and fixed it - in this case it was returning anything that contained the word "cat", like vacation, alcatraz, and ducati. Now it will only return the whole word "cat".

Edit2 - that doesn't exactly work as expected either - crap, I'll figure it out eventually.
 

Rick M

Senior Member
I like the Idea of categories in threads, they will get more views. Critique is limited and we are not really supposed to start threads in general. Blogs, 365's and galleries do not work for what we are looking for. For example:

There are allot of great 365's going on, but I do not have time to follow them all. Gallaries are sectioned off and will not get much traffic/views. Blogs are also off the main area and again will get limited response.

A Section for B&W, landscapes, portraits, everything DW mentioned and of corse..., HDR! would be nice.

Actually, by not having these, I'm seeing the sections and threads becomming MORE disjointed.
 

Rick M

Senior Member
I really like this site and have enjoyed myself in the limited time I've been here. But it occurs to me that there are relatively few categories to post our photos in compared to all the non-photo ones. Unless you're part of the 365, there are only 2 places to post photos in - Photo Critique and Blog (and I suppose Gallery counts, too). As it stands now, this site is more geared for the occasional google searcher who has problems with their particular camera/gear than repeat posters. I realize this is a Nikon camera site and certainly should contain all the current and past Nikon models but it would also be nice to have a few photo specific categories, too. For instance, a "Landscape" category as well as a "Portrait", "Night/Low Light", "Wild Life" and maybe an "Abstract" section would make a nice addition to the site and would give more functionality and interest to those of us who have lingered beyond a couple of questions.

Thanks!

Dave

It does seem like more people are just "passing through".
 

sepia princess

New member
Great minds... folks! I was browsing the site today and was thinking :eagerness: after reading all the different lens conversations, that categories that are lens specific would be helpful so people could see examples by lens, in particular the thread about the 50mm has been very interesting the last few days but I would love to see lots of examples of the lenses in use. I'm just thinking that might help others when they are trying to make a lens purchase decision to see how other people have used a particular lens.

My 2 cents anyway.

Thanks!
Deb
 

DW_

Senior Member
It does seem like more people are just "passing through".

I agree. There are many good reasons to come to the forum when you're having trouble with an item or considering a purchase. So it would make sense to give these passer-by's more reasons to stick around. And having specific photo genre sections would attract an additional demographic. I know it would be very instructive to those wishing to hone their skills at a specific type of photography. I would very much enjoy seeing members landscape photos as well as B&W (good suggestion, btw. Not sure how I missed that) and to have them all in one place would be awesome. Not only that but it could attract other photographers who don't have any questions but would really like to interact with those who share their specific interests.

And I also agree with your statement about blog and gallery entries. They're not easily seen and do not get the kind of traffic that general posts receive. It seems like it would be easy enough to just open up a new section and give subsections to the different photography styles. But then again, I know next to nothing about creating and maintaining a web site so perhaps it's not as easy as it seems.
 

jdeg

^ broke something
Staff member
I like the Idea of categories in threads, they will get more views. Critique is limited and we are not really supposed to start threads in general. Blogs, 365's and galleries do not work for what we are looking for. For example:

There are allot of great 365's going on, but I do not have time to follow them all. Gallaries are sectioned off and will not get much traffic/views. Blogs are also off the main area and again will get limited response.

A Section for B&W, landscapes, portraits, everything DW mentioned and of corse..., HDR! would be nice.

Actually, by not having these, I'm seeing the sections and threads becomming MORE disjointed.

And I also agree with your statement about blog and gallery entries. They're not easily seen and do not get the kind of traffic that general posts receive. It seems like it would be easy enough to just open up a new section and give subsections to the different photography styles. But then again, I know next to nothing about creating and maintaining a web site so perhaps it's not as easy as it seems.

Hrm, it comes down to the various ways people navigate and use the site. Perhaps if there were additional blog categories they could be linked to directly from the forums. They would actually look like forums from the forum homepage.

One thing that bugs me from a usability standpoint is that when you click on "What's New" you only get forum posts. You have to click again to get blogs and click even more to get the gallery, product, and article comments. I would like to combine all this eventually, but of course that is easier said than done. Combining all of this would lead to a better user experience and would bring more activity to the other parts of the site.

It does seem like more people are just "passing through".

In webmaster speak this is called bounce rate. It is higher than it used to be, but that is also because we're getting a lot more hits then we used to get :) That happens naturally. Depending on what people are looking for, they will sign up, or move on.

Great minds... folks! I was browsing the site today and was thinking :eagerness: after reading all the different lens conversations, that categories that are lens specific would be helpful so people could see examples by lens, in particular the thread about the 50mm has been very interesting the last few days but I would love to see lots of examples of the lenses in use. I'm just thinking that might help others when they are trying to make a lens purchase decision to see how other people have used a particular lens.

My 2 cents anyway.

Thanks!
Deb

I like that idea! I could see creating an album for each of the more popular lenses and then linking to the album from their product listing page.
 

jdeg

^ broke something
Staff member
I have an even better idea. How about we do both and create forums specifically for discussion of those photo topics AND link to the corresponding blog categories directly from the forums for photo postings?
 

jdeg

^ broke something
Staff member
I just finished adding the corresponding forums.

You'll see that the general forum name was also changed to Learning Photography, since that's what it really is.

Keep in mind that there is a distinction between learning your camera (the specific camera forums), learning technique & talking about it (the new forums), and asking for specific critique of a photo (the critique forum)

Photo posting threads like this are allowed in the new forums since they are learning from others photographs.

Posting your photos just to say 'look what I did' should go in their respective Blog Categories.

We will be working on improving how the blog displays posts. For one; making full size images thumbnails, similar to the homepage.
 

F & F2 Man

Senior Member
The way I see it,

A FORUM Section for "Sharing Your Photos" that is similar to the other Forum Sections, is the easiest and is part of the FORUM page..

Maybe categories like:

Architecture

Candid/Street

Fashion -Glamor
Landscape
Nature/Macro

Pets
Photojournalism
Sports

Wildlife

Family Fun
Other/photos that don't fit a catagory above




That way, a person starts a topic thread in a related catagory... And keeps things tightly also....

You should be able to list all the new posts and reply's in the "New Posts" area also, so they show up on the main page, and "New Posts" link... From my experience, that should give plenty of exposure for "Views" and reply's
 
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