We all know we have some crap photos on here (IE: out of focus, range, blurry and motive wise, or just terrible) so what if Flightaware had like a minor screening to try and eliminate photos like this? They don’t have to be Jetphotos or Airliners type screening, but something like it would take a few mineuts and eliminate the ones that we know aren’t good.
I think the idea of iFlyGr8 would be really great and necessary.
Because many user are just uploading stolen pictures or pictures with a really shit quality. And other user are uploading pictures with an absolutly wrong or missing aircraft-airport information.
In my eyes it’s just spaming what many people are doing here
I hope the Flightaware-Team will hire some people for a minor screening or it would be also great if anyone could apply for such a position.
Or how about FlightAware concentrate more on flight tracking and getting the mobile apps working better and forget about being a picture site?
Besides, what one person may consider to be a bad picture because it’s 0.932% off level another may consider to be a great picture. if you want pictures go to airliners.net, jetphotos.net or any of the other dedicated picture sites. FlightAware, as I mentioned in my opening line, should really concentrate on its core business of flight tracking. It is really frustrating to be working next to an airport and under the flight path of another airport nearby and not having a decent FlightAware app to keep track of the aircraft.
I am completely and totally aware that FlightAware is first and foremost an aircraft tracking web site. The photo section is just a very small part of the whole company and that they obviously do not have the time and resources to look at and edit all the photos one by one. But they shouldn’t let others blatantly steal others photos and post them as their own either. Yes, judging photos can be very subjective, up to a point. Anyone with common sense will agree that out of focus, shot through a fence, photos with bad lighting or with distracting backgrounds are bad photos. The problem is that many people never edit any of their photos before posting, “I shot 30 photos and all of them must be good enough for the web” mentality that seems so prevalent today. Any real photographer, professional or not, will tell you that out of all the photos they shoot, only a minority are really good enough for publication.
My beef is with those who post tons of HS photos so they can be self-important and get that “gold star” after their name.
My earlier comment in this thread was entirely directed at specific people who self vote their own photos all the time, that to me is un-ethical.
Out-of-focus pictures is the only thing I agree with you here. Shooting through a fence, bad lighting, “distracting” backgrounds are not necessarily bad photos. I’d rather have a picture of a rare aircraft shot through a fence, with bad lighting, or a distracting background than no picture of the aircraft at all.
I wasn’t speaking of anything common. How about if you saw a DC-2 and the only shot available would be through the fence on a cloudy day with a dozen naked ladies by the aircraft (i.e. a distracting background)? Would you not take the picture?
I’m new here and really enjoying the site. A suggestion: There is no limit to the number of photos an user can post in a 24-hour period. I just went to look at the newest photos this morning and someone posted 168 photos in a row!! That’s a kind of spam. Either that or they are using this site as their personal internet photo site. Maybe limit the number to 5 or 10 in 24 hours, or some other reasonable number.
Screening photos is a tricky business. Beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder. Having said that, there ere tons of good photos on FA that just do not appeal to everyone. For example, some people are extremely fond of airline photos anywhere from 40,000 feet to the sitting on the ramp. Still others can be extremely happy if they never see another picture of an airliner. It would be an improvement if FA could simply categorize the photos - one section for commercial aircraft, one for GA aircraft, and one for military aircraft. I’d rather retain the freedom to view a photo and decide for myself as to quality. But I’d really prefer not to wade through tons of fuzzy high-altitude airline photos to find that brilliant photo of a bright yellow Cub next to a deep green corn field. I think everyone should be able to post any aviation-related photo they want (I don’t particularly care about the vote because I don’t really require anyone’s opinion of my work.) Most of us post photos because we saw something we thought was interesting at the time and FA provides and great opportunity to share it. We don’t really have to like any of the photos and remain quite free to skip them as we wish. But some sort of type categories could make it easier to find ones we do especially like, though.