Photography is fun. To exchange views on this topic with others, you go to a photo club. And if there isn't one around, you found one. Peasant Rules for Photographing
The story of Fotofreunde Much:
On July 6th, 2009, photo enthusiasts met at the FIT Hotel in Much to set up a photo club. This was invited by Dr. Dieter Glave from Neunkirchen and the Mayor of Much, Alfred Haas. Both had previously met as winners of the Rhein-Sieg Rundschau photo competition. And both wished for a regional opportunity to exchange experiences and for further training in the field of photography. Their jointly developed idea of founding a photo club for this purpose met with a gratifyingly large response.
Photography is fun, that was our motto from the start. A serious discussion in technical discussions is not a contradiction. Having fun also includes the relaxed form of organization that we have maintained since the beginning. The Fotofreunde Much also work without a statute, a board of directors or a membership fee. A few simple rules are enough for us.
One of our focal points is a monthly picture review. This is a competition in which each photographer can submit a photo on a predetermined topic. These and other photos will be uploaded to our website www.fotofreunde-much.de. Due to the corona pandemic, our meetings took place virtually via video conferences. The ratings and comments on the photos were made with the JoomGallery.
Before the pandemic, our photo reviews were paper reviews. A few notes on this:
Image Rating Aids
Image Rating Form
Each member of "Fotofreunde" is personally known to the administrator of this website. For our website, the photo friend is assigned a username and a password. With it, every user can write articles, upload photos, rate other photos and make comments.
Our welcome page contains a list of upcoming dates and related topics. Our photo gallery is built with the classic categories. So under the main category <Picture reviews> all monthly topics are listed as subcategories. The main category <Fotofreunde Much> contains the individual named members as subcategories. Below the member category, each member can set up their further category structure as they wish. Changes in the member categories can only be made by the respective member. The subcategories with the picture discussion topics can be filled with photos by each member. However, each member may only edit their own photos here.
Our rating scale is up to 10 stars. Only registered users are permitted to submit comments and ratings. Once a category of photo review topics is set up, display of author and rating result will be turned off during photo upload times. Likewise, the ability to sort photos by rating will be turned off. This is to rule out any influence on the ratings. This measure is carried out by the administrator, whereby these regulations then also apply to all other categories. It would be nice if this could only be set up separately for one category.
The administrator then sets all parameters back to display for the image review. Photos are sorted in descending order of rating and displayed individually for presentation with each full-resolution original photo. At this point, it would be beneficial if the metadata about the original photo could be easily displayed and suppressed again. The same could also improve this workflow for entering a comment in the picture review. This is with version 3.6. unfortunately, not the case.
It would also be nice if the next photo could be displayed in the order in which it was sorted according to ratings.
