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By William Bodine
All rights reserved
Uploaded Aug 18, 2021. Captured Jul 21, 2021 11:15 in 917 N Barkley, Mesa, AZ 85203, USA.
comments (8)
There are some very skilled, expert macro photographers on this site which is why I was drawn to it.
I am not quite sure whether this site is more for general species identification or for photographic creativity. I would love to see these experts offer more photographic critique about focus, composition, rule of third, line of sight, color, perspective and technique. This will make me a better photographer. Why is the photo great or likable? What makes the photo standout? What could I have done better? These are the comments I would like to see. Posted 4 years ago
Hi William,
in reply to one of your comments I already said hello and welcome to JD and next had a quick browse through your photos, stumbling on this question. Probably Ferdy (site founder) or some of the more active members could answer your questions better, but basically I think JD can pretty much be what you want it to be.
Personally, I came here because the site is regularly in the top results on google when you search for a species name and I noticed that the IDs were not always on par with the photo quality, so I decided to give some feedback here and there. The high ratings in Google make sense given the (on average) fairly high quality of the photos and availability of images of many rare species, both terrestrial and aquatic.
In my perception, I'm more of a "species documenter" than a photographer and I have been fairly active on various forums trying to help others to ID their images and learning a lot in the process for my own fun and satisfaction, at some point resulting in being asked to "validate" observations of various groups of arthropods on our Dutch biodiversity platform (waarneming.nl). IDs on JD are a completely different ballgame, with a world-wide source and information on many groups of species from different areas being scarce or hard to get by. I've given it a go at a few occasions (very time consuming ;o) and learned a lot by doing so and had fun doing that.
While lingering here I decided to also upload some of my images to supplement the species documented here. I had a short spin on Flickr long before I found JD and left because my preferred license (CC0, Public Domain dedication) was not supported at the time and because they started pulling stunts like requiring a Yahoo mail account shortly after I had signed up. JD didn't have that sort of restraints. The only one that still annoys me a tad is that I couldn't sign up with my preferred username (Arp) so I resorted to an old nickname ;o)
As time passed, I more or less started using JD somewhat as a place to "showcase" a few of my "better" images in higher resolution than would be allowed on most other nature platforms or forums. Please keep in mind that I'm certainly still not a photographer striving for good/beautiful images, but sometimes even a blind chicken finds some corn while picking around in the dark. I use _very_ low end gear (no budget: 15€ 2nd hand 8Mpx bridge camera and a selection of "expensive" (<80€) macro "filter adapters", mostly Raynox DCR250 and MSN202).
So, to me, JD has been a place to enjoy seeing beautiful and interesting images of other members, while having fun pulling my hairs out on the occasional ID and at the same time using it as a place to dump/store some of my own work online so it can be found and used by others (no point in hoarding it on my local HDD).
While being here, I've always felt right in place in a very small and "cozy" community, with few but very valuable active members on all levels (knowledge of nature, photography as well as personal). A very pleasant place to come and visit on a daily basis, to be delighted by beautiful images from all over the globe and "meet" good people. Posted 4 years ago, modified 4 years ago
Meantime, life circumstances have changed, resulting in first giving up on the (time consuming) participation on various forums (as well as tuning down participation on JD) and more recently I've more or less given up on the photography part altogether too.
The time it all takes seems to be more and more of a problem for my direct environment, taking away the relaxation and rest that I used to find in it. I may still be uploading old stuff as I have some projects that I want to finish and will be browsing through my backlogs of images for that, but no more new stuff and reference searching orgies for ID. Sh*t happens, life changes ...
This goes to illustrate how _I_ (used to) perceive JD, just as an example - others will certainly have their own, quite different take on matters.
As for photography advise: Not my forte. My personal *cough*experience*cough* would lead me to state something like: Always first look at what you can do to improve the light, next look at improving the light. Once that is done, go back and see if you can find better ways to get light on the subject and on the scene as a whole. Forget about megapixels, optics and camera settings until you've covered that. I'm still working on the lighting bit of that scheme and still not happy with most of the results, but that's probably just me being either too ignorant or too lazy to yet again build a new/different yoghurt cup flash diffuser.
Maybe, this rant will prompt some others to offer their views on what JD is to them and/or help with photography advise. Don't attach any value to my answer - I'm just trying to get things rolling for you ;o)
Cheers, Arp
P.S. Forgot to mention that: Me thinks your images already _are_ at a high quality level - very crisp and sharp! Posted 4 years ago, modified 4 years ago
Arp (Pudding4brains) pointed me to your question and as a founder, perhaps I can answer some of your questions. Although I must say Arp already did the heavy lifting.
JungleDragon is basically both for wildlife photography and species identification. We expect photographers to try and know what it is that they're photographing, hence the species identification system. The idea is that we take your beautiful photograph, and then enrich it with contextual information, allowing people to learn about species.
One does not go without the other. Great photography combined with species identifications is basically the ideal situation. As for the photography itself, we do not really enforce a minimum standard, unless the species is very poorly visible in the photo. Furthermore, you can get creative in your photography, but the photo has to be real. Meaning, no "making up" of pixels or drastically altering reality in a photo, as such photos are not useful for species information.
As for critiquing photos, it's uncommon to do so in this community. I think if you're eager for such critique, it's best to mention that in the description of each photo, so that it's clear for people that you're open to it.
Hope this helps? Posted 4 years ago
Niel Posted 4 years ago