A word about the contest galleries

I think your proposed change will work fine. When you are on Flickr you can view the pictures in a larger format if you want when you click on one. I think that's a great idea!

T - hitting the Bailey's early today?

After 2 hours of shoveling this AM, I'm ready to join you.

I didn't know you were building it manually! Yow. Big effort and a hearty thank you.

Good. I was never a fan of these Flash galleries. The UI stinks and the image sizes are way too small by which to judge a contest, in my opinion (Although, to Boston.com's credit, it's not like much could be done with such a small column width of a blog).

Hi, Chris -- so the "Full-screen" option of these galleries doesn't help?

Thank you Teresa for creating the gallery, especially over the weekend.

It is my first time and I used the exact three tag words. but mine photo is not among the 408 photos in your link.

I just want to know why - did i do something wrong? if you search for 'wildcrane', it showed the 3 tag words, and uploaded Feb, 28, 09. i am confused. thank you for your help.

th

Ah, wildcrane, it's because it's a new account -- you uploaded the minimum 5 photos, but it can take Flickr up to two weeks to find new accounts and add their photos to its Search, which is how we find the contest entries.

But you never know; maybe Flickr will find yours sooner. We're not judging until Friday, so keep your fingers crossed. If it doesn't make it, at least you're all set for future monthly contests.

@ Teresa: Good point on creating galleries only for the Final Fifty. One can get the "Full-screen" image on Flickr too, when clicking the "slideshow" button at the right. BTW you're doing a great job at RAW.

thx Teresa for your hard work.

Teresa,

Benefits of the Flash thing:
1) You can keep people on Boston.com
2) You can control what's posted. You're the gatekeeper. You can make sure people adhere to the rules by only sharing their pictures. I imagine it's then easier for the judging process.

Having images in a large format isn't a benefit because Flickr has this too. You can even just link directly to the slideshow: http://flickr.com/search/show/?q=boston.com+contest+february&m=tags

If you are going to just link directly into Flickr, then you might want to explore Flickr Groups and see if that can help your workflow. That said, I bet it's possible for someone to create something like you already have that's easier for you to use. Just a thought.

Flickr's slideshows work really well, I'm a big fan. Definitely not worth your weekend building huge galleries each month, Teresa! Only problem is that the viewer will always know who the photographer is, not that it was difficult to find out previously of course, but I do like the principle of anonymity in contests.

Another thanks, Teresa. And for your continued pleasant demeanor from under an avalanche of snow and photos!

Ha. I never noticed the Full Screen stuff.
Nevermind. I'm an idiot.

yeah, I always thought that building these things manually seemed really time consuming. I think the change is totally needed. :)

The galleries on boston.com were cool and all, but it must take hours! One gallery for the final 50/10 is a good idea.

Thank you Teresa.
But it is still not right. I had flickr account long time ago and i simply had not uploaded photos till Feb 28th. And a friend of mine, he uploaded all his 5 photos also first time on Feb 27th, and his showed up in the search.

Well, I will wait for a few days and see if it shows up.

Enjoy the snow day.

What is the theme for March? Waiting? How about "waiting"?

Also, it appears the border/frame for all the photos in the galleries have switched to black--normally probably just fine, but because February was B&W, a lot of photos have a black or dark background that merges with the border--that takes away the sense of proportion chosen by the photographers--some may have purposefully cropped to a size to hightlight a subject. Maybe switching back to the white border in the final 50 gallery?