This is the second 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.
All of the photos noted as pending in my last post were approved. 🎉
That puts my running totals to start the week at:
- Submitted: 16
- Approved: 15
- Pending: 0
- Rejected: 1
- Resubmitted: 0
I don’t think I’ll keep up this pace, especially during the summer months. But I had to make up ground from starting this challenge 8-10 days into the new year. It as also new and exciting, so I wanted to take advantage of that energy while I had it to make up for slower weeks to come.
Weekly Summaries
As a reminder from last week, this is what I hope to cover in these posts:
- 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.
Here’s my update from week 2!
Photos used
I wasn’t able to publish any blog posts this week, so I did not use any images from the directory. The only exception is the featured image for this post. Here’s the attribution: CC0 licensed photo by Dennis Hipp from the WordPress Photo Directory.
Photos submitted
This week I submitted 8 photos:
- Accepted: 4
- Pending: 1
- Rejected: 3
Here are all of the photos that I submitted this week along with a little context for each!
Photo #17 (rejected)
I’ll admit that I had totally missed one of the rules for submitting photos to the directory:
The photo must not be predominantly another piece of art.
Submissions must not reproduce the 2D artwork of others. This includes images of paintings, drawings, and graffiti. Please respect the rights of other artists.
This image is 100% in violation of this rule. I would not have submitted it had I not glossed over it some how. This is the first rejected photo that I will not be resubmitting (unlike photo #4 from week 1).
I’ll admit, I was pretty disappointed when I realized graffiti when it’s the primary subject is against the rules. Graffiti is one of my favorite things to photograph. I am a HUGE fan of the art form (not the vandalism). Photographing graffiti in unique ways is how I like to share the artist’s work.
Often times, public graffiti murals are used to share a message. My personal thinking is that when an artist places graffiti in a very public space (especially through a publicly funded mural), they’re goal is to share it with everyone, much like submitting photos to the public domain. I wish there was a bit of nuance to the rule, but there’s no way to currently provide context when submitting a photo.
New Bedford has embraced and significantly supported it’s creative community over the last decade. This includes funding initiatives like the New Bedford Creative, and being supportive of organizations like SuperflatNB which “aims to foster pride and ownership of shared spaces through public art.”
Instead of using my photo, enjoy some of this art from my city! Here are a few public murals I’ve photographed throughout New Bedford the last few years. You can see the full list of projects from SuperflatNM on their website (running WordPress too)!
I’m not sure if the specific piece of art in my original photo was sponsored, but I’m not sure it matters from my perspective. It was in a cultural district where art is welcome and encouraged. To me this is photo was about celebrating unique art from members of my community. In the future, I’ll try to find ways to include some of the area surrounding the art so that it may be approved.
Photo #18 (approved)
I took this one outside of Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. A shopping area has been built around the stadium with lots of things to do. We went to the Patriots Hall of Fame, showed the kids the stadium from the outside, and had lunch. There’s an area of turn in the courtyard where people can play, and that’s where I took this.
Photo #19 (approved)
This was taken the same early November day as #18. One of the attractions at the Gillette Stadium is the lighthouse monument on the north end. It’s the tallest non-traditional lighthouse in the country, standing at 22 stories. There’s a 360° observation deck near the top. Because Foxborough is roughly 20 miles from both Providence, Rhode Island and Boston, Massachusetts, you can see both from the observation deck on clear days.
Photo #20: (approved)
I couldn’t submit photos without submitting some from my favorite place, Fenway Park. This was taken before the game on June 27, 2017 vs. the Minnesota Twins. The Red Sox ultimately won the game 9-2, but it was a wild with 2 rain delays that caught everyone off guard, including the players.
I had a handful of different shots from different points in the game. I had to carefully go through them to find one where no faces were visible. Luckily it was early enough where most fans hadn’t yet made their way to their seats and the faces were hidden in this one!
Photo #21 (approved)
I mentioned that we went to the Patriots Hall of Fame on our trip to Gillette Stadium above. This was one of the photos I took inside that surprised me. This was a game ball from less than 2 weeks earlier when the Patriots beat the Bills 29-25. To my surprise, the game was not a Scorigami, but it did give Patriots head coach Bill Belichick his 300th career victory. He’s currently sitting at 3rd all-time.
Photo #22 (rejected)
This was the first rejection that I disagree with.
“The photo had an issue regarding image quality. Submissions should be of high quality composition, lighting, focus, and color. The image should be free of blur (for the primary subject), noise, lens flare, glare, and spots due to water or dirt on the lens.”
I took this photo in Paris, France during my trip for the 2017 Community Summit and WordCamp Europe while eating outside at the Capitole Café. The photo has a pretty high depth of field, and was taken when I had my older iPhone 7 Plus. But if you view the photo at actual size, I wouldn’t say the bike is any more blurry than anything else in the photo.
I couldn’t find and details around filing an appeal. It seems that people usually just drop into #photos in Slack and state their case. I think it would be nice to document a process for this somewhere on the directory site. Maybe the FAQs or Guidelines pages.
I probably won’t fight this one. I don’t feel strongly enough and this was just a photo I thought could be interesting enough for someone to find it useful.
Photo #23 (rejected)
I took this photo while at the Newport Car Museum in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. The museum is owned and operated by a baseball teammate of mine and his father. After a game one week, a handful of us went by to check it out. It’s a really cool museum with a wide variety of cars. I recommend swinging by if you’re in the area!
Here’s the reason I received for this rejection:
The photo prominently displayed branding in such a way that the branding and/or branded product was the focus of the image. We do not accept branded subject matter to avoid the directory being used for promotional purposes or to imply endorsement by the WordPress project.
This car is (I believe) a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda with a Hemi engine. The car was manufactured from 1964-1974, and the 1971 Hemi ‘Cuda convertible is widely considered to be one of the most valuable collectible muscle cars with only 13 total units having been produced. Four 1970 Hemi ‘Cudas were successfully raced by Chrysler France. One of which won four French Group 1 class championships.
I am a bit more indifferent about this rejection. It does clearly show the Hemi ‘Cuda logo. But to me this is more about the iconic shape of a hood scoop on a classic American Muscle Car with starkly contrasting colors.
The car has not been produced in 50 years, and the Plymouth brand was discontinued after the 2001 model year. To me, this is a unique view of a historical artifact. If there was a clear appeal process, I may have submitted one. But I’ll likely just not pursue this and upload a different photo of the car with a less unique view at some point.
Photo #24 (pending)
This is a photo I took in July of 2017 at Cuffy’s of Cape Cod in West Dennis, Massachusetts. Cuffy’s is a well known Cape Cod-themed store that started in 1980, selling Cape Cod themed clothing and accessories. They usually have sand sculptures inside and out. This one was inside the store.
Thoughts & Observations
Here are some of the thoughts & observations I had throughout the week while interacting with the Photo Directory.
HTTP links
I noticed that the website URL linking in one contributor’s attribution was HTTP and not HTTPS. Personally, I wish that HTTPS was a requirement for any URL being entered into the WP.org profile Website URL field. But it would be nice to tell the editor to remove attribution links that are not using HTTPS.
Attribution formats
If you were paying close attention to these posts, you’ll notice I have a different format this week for the image captions. This format is the one available when copying directly below an image on the Photo Directory.
Here they are in text form for comparison:
CC0 licensed photo by Jonathan Desrosiers from the WordPress Photo Directory.
Attribution available directly on the Photo Directory
“The Fontaine Saint-Michel in Paris, France with the sun in the upper right corner.” by Jonathan Desrosiers / CC0 1.0
The attribution used when adding an image through the block inserter.
I like bits and pieces of both formats. I prefer the first format without the description, but I wish my name linked to my website instead of my archive page on the Photo Directory. In the second format, my name does link to my website, but I don’t really like that the ALT text is included. I want the alt text used in the second format to go into the alt text field for the image when auto-inserting. I went into this in more detail last week.
I think this may just be something that needs adjusting in the block editor itself. If I had to guess, the inserter is probably just using the data returned to it to construct the caption. Now that I know there is a suggested attribution on each photos’ page, I’d expect that to be the default format used everywhere.
Finally, I realized that not everyone sets their profile URL to a personal one. I’d rather not have business related URLs in the attributions on my website. For now, I’ll probably look on a case by case basis and switch the link when it’s the person’s own website.
Selecting locations
I want the ability to enter or select a general location for a photo. For example, a landmark or public place. That could be shown on the photo’s page in the directory, and there could also be landmark or location specific page displaying photos, etc. This could be useful if someone is looking for a specific la
More specific location data
It looks like all the EXIF data is being preserved when downloading them from the directory except location data. This is probably intentional for privacy reasons because the latitude and longitude stored for each photo is really precise.
I wish that there was a way to opt-in to preserving location data. When taking photos in a public place while traveling (a landmark, a park, etc.), it would be nice to keep that location in the EXIF data. Some ideas:
- Someone could create a map of all the photos in the directory, allowing someone to zoom into a specific area of the world to look for interesting photos.
- There could be an auto-matching feature that connects the EXIF data to the previous item I mentioned.
Also, because the coordinates are so precise, it can even show photographers the viewpoint a specific photo was taken. As an example, let’s look at the coordinates for a photo I submitted last week: 13° 44' 37.572" N 100° 29' 19.572" E. If you enter these into Google Maps, you can see exactly where I was on the landmark when I took the photo.
Date taken
It would be nice to preserve the date taken EXIF data, or have the ability to specify the date a photo was taken. Places change over time, so knowing when a photo was taken could be valuable. Sometimes it makes sense to include this in the ALT text or description, but it really should be a separate meta field.
Delay showing up
While approved photos show up in the Photo Directory almost immediately, I noticed that my photos are still not available on the Openverse website or through the block inserter. This includes ones I submitted over a week ago.
I inquired in the #photos channel in Slack, and it seems that there’s no specific interval, but it can take more than a week for them to be available everywhere.
Favorite Photos
Here are some of my favorite photos from the directory this week.
Summary
That’s all for this week. I hope to publish a few blog posts next week. So hopefully my “Photos used” section actually has images!
With the above included, this closes out the week with my running totals at:
- Submitted: 24
- Approved: 19
- Pending: 1
- Rejected: 4
Previous posts in this series: Week 1.
Likes