Why are there so few exhibit pictures nowadays?

[Hvedekorn]

I'm not 100 % sure if this is the correct forum for discussing the "culture" of Zoochat. If not, can any moderator please move the thread to the correct forum?

Anyways...

In the big cup of European zoos in the games/simulators/quizzes/competitions forum, I fell over this interesting line:

Exhibit-wise, I know the snakes at Cabarceno are mostly cramped in a single house, definitely sub-par to the other exhibits there. Took a quick look at the gallery, and Edinburgh's exhibits seem to be correct but nothing special but as exhibit pictures are becoming rarer and rarer that is only an assumption and I would love to be corrected.

I completely agree with this. Almost no-one seems to upload exhibit pictures in the gallery these days. When I joined Zoochat some nine years ago, everyone and their mother was uploading exhibit photos, and close-ups of animals were a rare treat. In recent years, it seems to have reversed completely; the gallery is jam-packed with close-ups (some are pretty good and professional, some are of more questionable quality), while exhibit photos only pop up once in a while.

What has caused this change? Have all exhibits in the major zoos been covered already (doesn't seem to be the case as - among other examples - the Vogelpark Niendorf gallery had a lot of close-up photos, but very few exhibit photos, and Rostock Zoo was completely underrepresented in the gallery)? Are most of the current uploaders animal photographers who want the share their works? Are most of the current uploaders animal enthusiasts more than they're zoo enthusiasts so that they don't really care about exhibit photos? Or something else entirely?

I'll admit that the abundance of exhibit photos is something I love(d) about Zoochat. You can find close-up photos of a lion everywhere on the internet, but not everywhere can you find photos of the same lion's exhibit in an obscure German zoo.

 

[Maguari]

I think the gallery as a whole still feels very different since the major forum update (as discussed on other threads). It's much easier to miss photos, much harder to follow discussions and as a result I think the usage of it has shifted more towards 'I've taken some (often very!) nice pictures' rather than a documentary record of zoos and discussion thereof. Even adding photos with a description is harder - if added as a description it disappears in tiny faint text at the top - the only way to make it normally visible is to go through each photo after posting to add it as a comment. It makes uploading a 30-40 photo series of exhibit shots much more of an exercise - all for them to get very little reaction because no-one knows they're there once they're off the front page of images. The gallery really is just a picture gallery on the current version, rather than a further area of discussion, and it feels like traffic through it is much lower. I know Sim has mentioned he hopes to improve this in future when he can.

 

[Moebelle]

I wonder the same thing every time I search through "New Media". I've been driven to pay more attention towards the news threads lately and have lost interest in the other half of things that make up this site, the photos. I'm trying my best to keep a balance going every time I upload photos of a zoo. Around half of exhibits photos, and half of quality animal portraits. For the United States galleries, every single major exhibit has already been covered in some way through pictures. So all that's left is the lesser habitats (referring to a majority of individual terrariums) - of which I try to cover anyway. I've also noticed that even when an abundance of exhibit photos are uploaded, rarely anyone comments on them anymore. I'm aware that no one HAS to comment on media but just a few years ago that's how things usually went. This has led me to lose interest in the practically non-existent "New comments" section, which is almost entirely always filled with people commenting on their own photos - telling information that can easily be stated in the description bar.

 

[Maguari]

telling information that can easily be stated in the description bar.

But as above, this is because the description isn't easily visible - it's not even in standard text, but greyed out - it's fine if all you're adding is the date or a scientific name but if there's any real explanation needed then I would certainly add a comment as I have no reason to think anyone will see it up there.

 

[Moebelle]

But as above, this is because the description isn't easily visible - it's not even in standard text, but greyed out - it's fine if all you're adding is the date or a scientific name but if there's any real explanation needed then I would certainly add a comment as I have no reason to think anyone will see it up there.

I can understand the faded text may be a bother to some as opposed to its former form
but even from the beginning I never thought once of it being a negative addition. To quote your text "date" and "scientific name" - that's all you ever see anymore when people comment on their own photos. It's a waste of space to take up the New Comments section that way. That information belongs either in the title or the description section. Unless of course, as you said, the comment offers valuable information that the uploader believes needs to be seen.

 

[Maguari]

I can understand the faded text may be a bother to some as opposed to its former form
but even from the beginning I never thought once of it being a negative addition. To quote your text "date" and "scientific name" - that's all you ever see anymore when people comment on their own photos. It's a waste of space to take up the New Comments section that way. That information belongs either in the title or the description section. Unless of course, as you said, the comment offers valuable information that the uploader believes needs to be seen.

If I didn't think it was valuable information I wouldn't want to be posting it in the first place! The fact that the New Comments section is so small now isn't going to stop people wanting to properly label their photos with words that the viewer will actually see. I'd much rather people did that than worry about blocking five spaces for comments.

Incidentally - if you want to see all comments, they do appear here (with all the other site activity): Recent Activity | ZooChat

 

[Simon Hampel]

I'm not 100 % sure if this is the correct forum for discussing the "culture" of Zoochat.

Nope - this is good. It's as much a technical question as it is cultural (indeed, it is both).

What has caused this change? Have all exhibits in the major zoos been covered already (doesn't seem to be the case as - among other examples - the Vogelpark Niendorf gallery had a lot of close-up photos, but very few exhibit photos, and Rostock Zoo was completely underrepresented in the gallery)? Are most of the current uploaders animal photographers who want the share their works? Are most of the current uploaders animal enthusiasts more than they're zoo enthusiasts so that they don't really care about exhibit photos? Or something else entirely?

I suspect there is multiple things happening here:

First up, I think @Maguari has described some of the issues with the current gallery software quite well - and FWIW, I agree with pretty much all of the assessment. The lack of "new comments" search, the poor placement and presentation of the description and the lack of functionality in comments all contribute to a much poorer experience than what we had in the previous version.

I can confirm that there is a "new comments" search in the new version coming soon (the software is now available - I just need some time to prepare the site for upgrade), and when I do the upgrade I will also ensure that the photo description is more functional and visible.

The usability of the comments themselves is still somewhat problematic in the new version and I am waiting to hear from the developers about their plans for this - I have spent a lot of time giving detailed feedback to them to try and improve this side of the software.

We seem to be amongst the most "active" users of the gallery software on ZooChat - most other sites have a gallery as nothing more than an interesting curiosity and it certainly does not represent a critical part of their sites like is does on ZooChat. Even those sites who have large galleries don't tend to discuss their gallery content anywhere near as much as we do.

If I don't get an indication that the comment ability in the upcoming versions will get us closer to what we need - I will look at building my own solution, similar to what I had in the old version of the software. It's going to be a lot of work to implement - but I can definitely see how much the gallery has suffered without it.

Back to the original question - the other factor is more of a hypothesis on my part - I'm wondering whether it is a camera thing that is leading to a change in the types of photos we're seeing?

Quality digital cameras with long zoom lenses and high pixel counts are available quite cheaply now - certainly a lot cheaper than they were 10 years ago! Similarly, even a mobile phone can take some amazing photos now, some of them at high enough resolution that you can crop them and still get a very detailed closeup without actually having a zoom.

As we have the ability to get closer to our subject - the natural tendency for many people is to focus more on the subject (because they can!) and so we get many more closeups and fewer broad enclosure photos.

Ironically, the same ability to take better closeup photos (longer zoom lenses) also makes it more difficult to take enclosure photos - you often need a wide angle lens to get enough of the enclosure in the photo to take a reasonable shot.

Indeed, when I was visiting zoos regularly and taking photos for ZooChat - I used to travel with two cameras, my DSLR had my long zoom on it while my point-and-shoot camera was used for enclosure photos. These days I'd probably just use my phone to take enclosure photos - although that struggles in low light conditions, so I'm considering getting a good quality compact camera with good low light ability and a fairly wide lens.

Either way - it is something which I think we need to address.

You can find close-up photos of a lion everywhere on the internet, but not everywhere can you find photos of the same lion's exhibit in an obscure German zoo.

I agree entirely.

I need to spend some time to design a new approach to how we organise the photo galleries - as much as I appreciate a great animal closeup, the main value for the galleries is very much in documenting enclosures from zoos around the world so we can contrast and compare and critique and discuss them.

I think perhaps splitting out "animal" photos from "enclosure" photos would be useful - we just need to come up with some guidelines on how to approach those photos which fall somewhere inbetween being exclusively one or the other.

 

[FunkyGibbon]

There is also some truth to the point that a lot of enclosures have been photographed and uploaded several times. It's not a lack of interest, as can be seen by the requests for new photos whenever an exhibit opens.

 

[Simon Hampel]

There is also some truth to the point that a lot of enclosures have been photographed and uploaded several times. It's not a lack of interest, as can be seen by the requests for new photos whenever an exhibit opens.

Yeah, good point.

I would love to have a facility where we could more easily group photos by enclosure so you can see all photos of a specific enclosure in one location - but I'm not sure how that would work in practice (and would also be a lot of work to implement).

 

[CGSwans]

I have no idea if this function is even possible but what would be great is the ability to add hashtags to photos. That way I could take a photo of the elephant enclosure at Melbourne Zoo, tag it #elephant and #melbournezoo and then it would come up in a search for either of those two things. I could use that search to easily look at elephant enclosures around the world, or to see everything from Melbourne just as easily.

 

[Simon Hampel]

I have no idea if this function is even possible but what would be great is the ability to add hashtags to photos. That way I could take a photo of the elephant enclosure at Melbourne Zoo, tag it #elephant and #melbournezoo and then it would come up in a search for either of those two things. I could use that search to easily look at elephant enclosures around the world, or to see everything from Melbourne just as easily.

You mean like this? Add tags to a photo:



... tags:



... tags show up on a post:



... and then if you click on them, it shows you other content with the same tag.




The problem with tagging is that it is a free-form thing, so if someone uses "silvery gibbon" and someone else just uses "gibbon", these are not the same tag. It does require a degree of content management to make it truly useful.

It also requires everyone to make the effort to actually add tags to their content as well - otherwise there's no real point.

 

[CGSwans]

... yes. I mean exactly like that.

Can that be opened up so that users, as well as photo contributors, can add tags?

PS, I see what you did there by highlighting a post where I used said tags. I haven't contributed photos in a very long time and evidently forgot about it.

 

[Welsh Zootographer]

... yes. I mean exactly like that.

Can that be opened up so that users, as well as photo contributors, can add tags?

I believe that option is available, when I look at peoples photos I see an option to add tags.

 

[Simon Hampel]

I believe that option is available, when I look at peoples photos I see an option to add tags.

That would be because you are a Premium member and that is one of the perks - the ability to add tags to other people's threads and media (not just your own)

 

[Welsh Zootographer]

That would be because you are a Premium member and that is one of the perks - the ability to add tags to other people's threads and media (not just your own)

Ooh! (My 100th post!)

 

[Hvedekorn]

Thanks for the inputs, everyone.

The thought of the gallery's new design being one of the causes actually didn't manage to cross my mind. I can remember that the gallery used to look different in the ol' days before the major software update, but I honestly can't remember exactly how it looked.

Sim, I'll look forward to see what you'll do about the whole "splitting" thing (between animal photos and enclosure photos), because while it can be annoying to me to go through 10 pages of close-ups to find an exhibit photo, I like to imagine that it would be equally annoying to go through 10 pages of exhibit photos to find a close-up photo.

 

[antonmuster]

I agree with many things already mentioned. The way I see it, the following features (feature requests) would greatly - and probably sufficiently - help generate more discussion and activity in the galleries:

1. New/recent comments search function
2. Gallery items sorteable by most recent comment
3. Default gallery item sorting is by most recent comment
4. 'Search everything' search function includes gallery items and gallery item comments

I believe these four changes, particularly 1. and 2., should suffice to facilitate lively debate also in the gallery forums.

As for...

I would love to have a facility where we could more easily group photos by enclosure so you can see all photos of a specific enclosure in one location

...wouldn't geo-tagging in combination with the maps functionality (Zoo Satellite Maps | ZooChat) be the appropriate answer to this problem?

 

[Simon Hampel]

...wouldn't geo-tagging in combination with the maps functionality (Zoo Satellite Maps | ZooChat) be the appropriate answer to this problem?

Perhaps, if you could assume that all photos were sufficiently geotagged - but many people edit their photos before uploading and some software will strip any geotagging.

It also assumes your camera is capable of geotagging your photos - my DSLR isn't.

It also doesn't help with indoor photos, nor with facilities with a large number of smaller enclosures which are close together - for example, aquariums.

If all photos were being uploaded by me or my company - it would be fairly easy to automate the process - but for the general public uploading photos, you cannot assume that they will have the data required to make it an automatic thing. It would certainly help though

 

[TeaLovingDave]

First up, I think @Maguari has described some of the issues with the current gallery software quite well - and FWIW, I agree with pretty much all of the assessment. The lack of "new comments" search, the poor placement and presentation of the description and the lack of functionality in comments all contribute to a much poorer experience than what we had in the previous version.

Yep, that about sums it up.

all for them to get very little reaction because no-one knows they're there once they're off the front page of images

Certainly why I have found myself uploading fewer and fewer images.

 

[littleRedPanda]

Can we not upload videos anymore? Seems there are no "allowed extensions"