This is the third weekly installment where I summarize my interactions with the WordPress Photo Directory throughout the week while attempting to fulfill my 366 photos in 2024 challenge.
The one remaining pending photo in my last post was approved. 🎉
That puts my running totals to start the week at:
- Submitted: 24
- Approved: 20
- Pending: 0
- Rejected: 4
- Resubmitted: 0
Here’s my update from week 3!
Photos used
Featured image credit: CC0 licensed photo by Mark Westguard from the WordPress Photo Directory.
Photos submitted
This week I submitted 9 photos:
- Accepted: 8
- Pending: 1
- Rejected: 0
Here are all of the photos I submitted this week along with a little context for each!
Photo #25 (approved)
This is a photo I took at a family birthday party. If you’re confused, you’re looking at bakery or party pizza, something very regionally specific to Rhode Island. While looking for a page with more details to link to, I discovered that it’s also found in Montreal, parts of Ontario, and Philadelphia. The more general name is apparently “Italian tomato pie“. As a pizza lover, it’s definitely not my favorite. But it hits the spot in group settings.
Photo #26 (approved)
I took this one while out trick-or-treating with my kids this year. This house had a few animated mannequins with different colored lights on them. My kids are still pretty young, so it was before sunset. I’m sure the shot would have looked better in the dark.
Photo #27: (approved)
I took this photo while going for a hike in a public park where Fort Barton used to be. Fort Barton was an American Revolutionary War fort in Tiverton, Rhode Island, playing a role in the Battle of Rhode Island. Because it’s located on elevated land overlooking the ocean inlet between Aquidneck Island (where Newport, Rhode Island is) and mainland Rhode island, it was used as an observation point.
This brook is called Sin and Flesh Brook. Apparently its name sake comes from the body of Zoeth Howland being discovered after being slain by natives to the area during the King Philip’s War.
One thing I love about where I live is that even though the United States is relatively young in the grand scheme of human existance, I’m still surrounded by a ton of history and historically significant places to visit. I also find the American Revolution to be super fascinating. So much in my neck of the woods relates back to the surrounding time period.
Photo #28 (approved)
Earlier this week we had a small snow storm come through. It switched over to rain briefly and the 1-2 inches of snow iced over. One of my favorite winter scenes is when trees get coated with icy snow like this.
This was a close up of a bush in my front yard. I wanted to show the texture of the snow close up, but still communicate that it was a small part of a larger, snow filled landscape.
Photo #29 (approved)
If you have a yard, you likely know how annoying and destructive squirrels can be. I’ve been fighting with a gang of them at my house recently. They like to sit on my deck and jump at my screen door. I checked to make sure there wasn’t a nest anywhere last weekend and discovered they chewed through the hose to the propane tank on my grill.
My kids love them, and it is pretty funny when they make the 10 ft leap of faith to the bushes in the background. My daughter thought it was funny to throw a piece of a donut out for them, and I took this while he enjoyed his little snack.
Photo #30 (approved)
This tree really stood out to me on a walk with the family a few weeks ago. It was close to the walking path and a bit of a gap to the other trees. I used the wide angle view on my iPhone to make it stand out more and feature the clouds in the sky.
Photo #31 (approved)
In 2017, my wife and I went on a cruise to Alaska. One of the ports of call was Victoria, British Columbia in Canada. We really enjoyed getting of the ship and checking out some of the museums and landmarks. The city reminded me a lot of Providence, Rhode Island back near home.
This was a shot of the boats docked in Victoria Harbour I took while walking around.
Photo #32 (pending)
This is was taken inside the Urban Art store in the Bay Centre on that same trip to Victoria. I’m honestly not sure if this one will be approved. There is a lot of art from someone else, but it’s not as tightly framed as photo #17 from last week. I’m definitely submitting some photos that could be considered borderline as a way to feel out where the limitations are. We’ll see on this one🤞
Photo #33 (approved)
This is my dog Charlie. He’s a Blenheim Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. He likes distracting us so he can execute his plans to steal food from the table or my kids. But he’s still the goodest boy.
Thoughts & Observations
Here are some of the thoughts & observations I had throughout the week while interacting with the Photo Directory.
Overall queue
When looking at the submission page, it tells you how many photos you have awaiting moderation, but not how many total photos are in the queue. Last week I had 4 of 5 photos approved, and the 5th one remained in the queue for X days. It’s not clear why. Was there a long backlog? Did that one get missed somehow? I kind of like how the plugin directory tells you the overall number of submissions awaiting moderation.
Archive page order
The pending photo from last week remained that way through the weekend and was finally approved early this week. But it did not go to the top of my archive page. It seems that the photos on each author’s page are displayed by submission/creation date, not publish date.
This is probably not a huge deal because you can only ever have 5 photos pending at any given time. But it’s not clear if resubmitting a photo would cause the photo to appear at the front of the list, or where it was originally created. I have one rejected photo that I plan to resubmit. I’ll keep this in mind and see where in my photo stream it ends up. If it were to appear where it was originally submitted, that could result in some new photos being buried in the archives instead of featured at the top of lists.
Delay showing up: update
I wrote last week that I noticed my photos were not yet available through the block inserter or openverse.org. That’s still true today.
It turns out that the cadence for syncing photos was actually set to a monthly interval, the and syncing itself can take a significant amount of time (currently days). So depending on when you submitted your photo in relation to that schedule, you could wait 30-40 days for your submission to be widely available.
After answering my question, the Openverse team opened and merged a PR to change that cadence to a weekly schedule. While tackling that, another bug was discovered and fixed. Hopefully this results in more consistent and frequent syncing withe Openverse! 🎉
Discovering submissions from friends
One of my favorite things about using the photo directory so far is finding a photo that I like and discovering it was actually submitted by someone I know!
Photo Directory Randomizer
I wish that there was a way to view a random photo from the directory. To find photos, I have just been navigating to random pages changing the /page/### part of the URL. Being able to click a link and be presented with a random photo would be a great way to discover new images.
WP Photo Directory Stats
I found a really neat website that Marcus Burnette created called WP Photo Directory Stats. The site shows some interesting charts documenting the growth of the directory over time, and neatly presents some data about the photo counts for the various taxonomies in the directory (category, color, orientation, etc.). Marcus also created The WP World. If you’re a WordPress contributor, I recommend checking it out and registering to add yourself!
Favorite Photos
Here are some of my favorite photos I discovered in the directory this week.
Summary
With the above included, this closes out the week with my running totals at:
- Submitted: 33
- Approved: 28
- Pending: 1
- Rejected: 4
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