This week I finally submitted contributions to the WordPress Photo Directory. Since I already published a post detailing this more deeply earlier in the week, I won’t really go into too much detail about that.
But in that post I also outlined a challenge for myself to upload at least 366 photos to the Photo Directory during the 2024 calendar year.
Since publishing, a few other community members and good friends have joined in on the challenge! Here they are for accountability:
Jeff G. had a great idea to keep a running list of submissions this year using a page on his site. I’d like to do that eventually as well, but something less manual. I will probably look at creating a Photo Directory Profile block that pulls in photos automatically. There’s a feed available for each author’s archive page and the Photo Directory in general. I haven’t looked to see if there are REST API endpoints yet.
Weekly Summaries
That goal aside, I am going to try and write blog posts summarizing my interactions with the Photo Directory each week. Some things I hope to include:
- Photos that I used in blog posts.
- Photos that I submitted.
- Photos that I saw in the directory that I thought were awesome (you currently can’t favorite photos like you can plugins or themes. So for now I’ll use these posts to document my favorite photos).
- Tickets that I open, patch, etc. for anything related to the directory.
- User experience related feedback.
So, let’s kick this series off!
Photos used
The featured image for this post is “Wild ducks on snow” by vatoyiit/ CC0 1.0
Photos submitted
This week I submitted 16 photos:
- 10 accepted
- 5 pending
- 1 rejected
I don’t anticipate any of the pending photos being rejected.
Here are all of the photos that I submitted this week along with a little context for each!
Note: because I’m adding extra context, I’m including the ones in my original post again.
Photo #1 (approved)
This is a photo I took of my car’s trunk one morning. We had gotten some heavy rain during the night and the temperature dropped really quickly creating these ice patterns. It took a little extra muscle to open my car doors too. I really liked the randomness of the drop sizes.
Photo #2 (approved)
I took this one before my son’s soccer game. The white was much brighter in person, but I still like how it came out.
Photo #3 (approved)
This past June, a new Lego Discovery Center opened in Boston. We took the kids up for the day. When you walk in the lobby, there are huge bins of Lego body parts and you get to build your own person. This was the bin containing heads.
Photo #4: rejected
This shot of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge is the one photo that was rejected. There was one person who’s face was slightly visible. I just need to blur their face a bit before sending it in again. Let’s see if you can find the person hiding.
I took this one in December 2022 while walking around after enjoying a chaotic dinner and drinks at Night Shift Brewing’s Lovejoy Wharf location (if you have young kids, you know how that can be). I’m biased, but it’s one of my favorite bridges, especially heading southbound into the city.
Photo #5 (approved)
Early this past fall, I noticed this little guy walking around in my driveway. I used something to scoop him up and I put him on the rock wall in my front yard so he wouldn’t get run over. The praying mantis is not endangered like I thought for some reason, but it’s also not super common to see them in my neck of the woods. I probably run into only a few each calendar year. Maybe I’m not looking hard enough. This one’s green stripe was so bright.
Photo #6 (approved)
While in Bangkok, Thailand for WordCamp Asia 2023, I was able to do some sightseeing on my adjustment day. We visited the Grand Palace, a few markets in the surrounding area, and then took the boat taxi across the river to visit a few temples. One of them was Wat Arun.
Visitors are allowed to climb the stairs of the temple to a certain point. I remember it was super steep and not for anyone afraid of heights. I took this picture walking around the highest level you were allowed to be on. The whole time I couldn’t help but try and imagine the logistics of someone needing to get to the top for repairs.
Photo #7 (approved)
One of my family’s favorite places to escape to is Cape Cod. There’s lots to do in the summer and so much amazing food. Last summer while spending the week on the Cape we drove over to the town of Barnstable and checked out some local shops. One of them was Spinnaker Records.
I am a pretty casual jazz fan, but I remember taking this photo because there were so many musicians with WordPress releases named after them (and most of them from the early days) in this one view.
Photo #8 (approved)
This was taken on the same day in November as photo #1. The grass still had its late summer deep green color and the entire yard was coated in the first frost of the year.
Photo #9 (approved)
When I was in Athens, Greece this past June to attend WordCamp Europe 2023, Some coworkers and I were able to squeeze in some sightseeing. Our last spot of the day was the Panathenaic Stadium. The site has held a racecourse or stadium since the 6th century BC. The current structure was created sometime between 138-144 AD and eventually abandoned before being rediscovered in 1836 before being renovated and hosting the first international Olympic games in modern history in 1896.
It was a beautiful hot day. After losing in a foot race on the track against my better judgement (I knew that I was out of shape, but had to do it), I ventured up to the very top and took this photo using the wide angle mode on my iPhone.
Photo #10 (approved)
In August my family ventured up to New Hampshire for a week. We love getting away to the White Mountains. There’s so much to do and so many beautiful spots and hikes to check out. This was taken from Cathedral Ledge State Park. While you can hike up to this viewing area, the kids are still too young for a hike this steep. We drove the mile long road up to the top where the overlook is about a 3 minute walk from the parking lot. It looks high, but this ledge is only at about 1,100 feet altitude and 700 feet from the ground at the base.
Photo #11 (approved)
In 2017 I was fortunate enough to be invited to the WordPress Community Summit in Paris, France. I attended that event followed by my first WordCamp Europe. It was also my first time traveling to Europe. Looking back at this event, I’m still incredibly grateful that I was invited. I was contributing pretty heavily at that point in my career and this was my first time meeting many of the prolific contributors I was admiring, learning from, and had been working with remotely.
I remember leaving so inspired and motivated to keep contributing. Less than a year later, I was hired at Bluehost as a full-time contributor!
I took this photo on my last day in Paris before heading to the airport. I had my bags with me and I traveled towards this area to meet up with some other contributors who were also still in the city. We enjoyed a beer and lunch at Le Galaway Irish Pub (still there!) with a mostly obstructed view of the Notre-Dame de Paris. I still regret not taking a tour while I was visiting, especially after the fire in 2019. But there’s too much to do in Paris and it’s impossible to see everything with only a day or two free time.
I looked for a group photo, but couldn’t find one. I’m pretty sure it was my friends Felix, Johnny, Steven, someone else from the community, and myself. If any of you have the photo, drop it in the comments below!
Photo #12 (pending)
Before Bluehost I worked at Boston University for 2 years. I took this before our annual department lunch that was held in the dining room on the top floor of a university building.
It may not look that exciting, but Nickerson Field is located on the same land where Braves Field used to be. Braves Field played host to the Boston Red Sox 1915 and 1916 World Series home games, the now Washington Commanders, the 1936 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, the Boston (now Atlanta) Braves the AFL’s Boston Patriots, as well as the longest game in Major League Baseball history.
Many members of the Baseball Hall of Fame played on that field as well: Lou Gherig, Joe DiMaggio, Leo Durocher, Lefty Grove, Jimmie Foxx, and Babe Ruth during his final season in 1935.
Photo #13 (pending)
This replica of the Statue of Liberty was at the hotel in Paris where the Community Summit was held in 2017 on a patio. I love how the focus almost tricks your mind into thinking it’s the real thing for a second or two until you process the surrounding elements and realize it’s not the actual 305 feet 1 inch one on Ellis Island.
She even photo bombed the summit’s group photo.
Photo #14 (pending)
If you’ve ever met me, you know I love baseball. Until all of the chaos surrounding COVID, I played every year in 2 different local men’s leagues. Post COVID I haven’t laced up the cleats again since I have much less spare time with two little ones. I’ll get back to playing again someday.
In both leagues there were a few players still hanging in there in their 60s and 70s! They both had their son on their team. If my son or daughter enjoys the game like I do, I hope that I’m also able to share a field with them one day.
We were the first game on this morning and I arrived a little early. The field had already been lined and I loved the overcast sky.
Photo #15 (pending)
This was taken at a park in my home town of Dartmouth, MA. I can’t recall whether the weather had been super dry when I took this, but it was taken in April of 2017.
Photo #16 (pending)
This one was also taken at my son’s soccer game or practice. I do wish that the line was straight, but I think the fact that it’s slightly angled does add a little to it. Just don’t tell my friends Felix or Anne that I’m submitting soccer related photos to the Photo Directory. 🙈 Maybe the moderating team will reject it because baseball is better.
Observations
I’ve noticed that my photos are not accessible through the Openverse yet. I’m assuming that they only sync every so often, so they’ll probably appear after a bit of time. But it’s not clear what that the timeline for that is. I tried going back several pages on the directory and searching for photos submitted a while back, but had mixed results.
I wish that you could search for photos from a specific contributor by querying their name. That is not even supported on the Openverse website, even though they have several facets available for filtering.
I like how the person’s name links to their website through the attribution that’s automatically included when adding an image through the block inserter. I wish that the link included some kind of query parameter, though. That would make it much easier for me to know who visits my site by clicking one of those attribution links and track the traffic sources for those links in Google Analytics.
I wish that there were two or three fields you could enter text into when submitting photos. Currently there’s only one labeled “alt text”. From an accessibility standpoint, “ALT text” has a very specific purpose.
“The alt attribute provides alternative information for an image if a user for some reason cannot view it (because of slow connection, an error in the src attribute, or if the user uses a screen reader).”
W3Schools
It’s only really used as true alt text on the Photo Directory page where it’s included in the alt attribute for the image. When the photo is inserted into the editor in WordPress, the alt text is used to create the image’s attribution line in the images caption. This probably accomplishes a similar goal, but captions have a different purpose. I found this TLDR that I really liked:
Alternative text explains information in images for screen reader users. Captions describe images to help users relate them to surrounding text. Titles identify images and number them in long-form content.
Australian Government Style Manual
When I am filling in the alt text field, I am describing what is in the image in case someone is unable to see it. The text I enter is often less than ideal for generally referencing the photo. For example, take this one that I entered:
“Looking up at the top of a prang at Wat Arun Ratchawararam Ratchawaramahawihan in Bangkok, Thailand from close up halfway up the monument at the highest climbable view point.”
Alt text entered for one of my photo submissions
Because I assumed this text was for screen readers, I included a description of the framing and reference point for the shot. If I were entering a title of the image, I likely would have written something completely different.
I’m not sure what fields I’d like to have. Naming things is hard, so I don’t think I want a name field. But I think alt text, and maybe description could be good enough. The description in my example would probably be “Wat Arun Ratchawararam Ratchawaramahawihan in Bangkok, Thailand” and I’d probably also change the alt text slightly.
When the image is inserted into a WordPress site, the alt text and description should map to the corresponding fields for an image. I think using the caption for the attribution is perfect and wouldn’t change that.
I mentioned this in my previous post, but I wish you could restrict your search to only show results for a specific source (WordPress Photo Directory, Flickr, etc.). I recognize that the block inserter UI is a great place to include a bunch of search filters. But even a small section for each image listing its source, the contributor’s name, etc. could be helpful.
For my two challenges this year, the order of how I will choose photos is as follows:
- WordPress Photo Directory
- Rest of the Openverse
- Other sources (sites like Unsplash)
The main goal of this exercise is to celebrate the act of contributing to the public domain through the Photo Directory by recognizing the submissions from other members of the WordPress community. My secondary goal is to document my own contributions with the hope of inspiring others.
For now, I’ll probably just search directly on the WP.org directory page or in Openverse with results restricted to the directory and then search for the image I want within the block inserter. But that brings be back to my first observation. 🙃
I noticed that there’s an account submitting photos that appears to be representing WordCamp Nepal. I don’t know if this is against the rules or not, and I’m not looking to get them in trouble if it is. But it made me realize that just like contributions to the software, we should be encouraging submissions to come from individuals and not companies/organizations/events. They have some really beautiful submissions! Here are a few that I liked.
The WordPress Photo Directory submission guidelines currently prohibit someone’s face from being visible in a photo. But that’s not true for all Openverse sources.
I wonder if there is a way the project could support some type of event photo feed where all photos taken at an event can be automatically donated to the public domain through this separate source. That would likely get tricky when someone does not wish to have their identity used this way and it would require Central to manage release forms that would need to be signed before attending an event. Probably more of a headache than it’s worth.
I think I may make a page on my site that is an extension of the Photo Directory block I mentioned above that I use to curate a photo stream of submissions from contributors that I really like.
Favorite Photos
This ended up being a much longer post than I anticipated. I’m going to skip the favorites section this week.
Summary
While I did not plan for this post to be this long, it was actually really fun going back down memory lane and documenting the circumstances of each photo! I think this will be a really nice way to document some of my travels, memories, and favorite spots. It was also a nice way to clean out some digital junk in my camera roll that I noticed while scrolling through to find submissions.
I hope to continue doing this each week. But I may tweak the format a bit. If each week takes this amount of time, I’ll probably switch to every other.