Thoughts & Feedback about the Photo Hunt.....

I first want to say I am really pleased with the turnout on the Photo Hunt... 27 participants (although there were several more who signed up and never finished).  It seems like people had a wonderful time with the challenge and would like to do more.  I am already planning Sweetsauer Photo Hunt #2 for the month of June, but wanted to get some feedback from all of you about the way things are currently set up.

One thing that was brought to my attention regarding the high number of people who entered and the number of photos each participant had, is the fact that there is an enormous amount of photos to look through! The way that the voting is set up now only allows to choose for one person overall.  Since anyone can vote it donned on me that it could become more of a popularity contest.....who can get the more of their friends to vote type-of-thing. I feel there is absolutely nothing wrong about self-promotion, but I think I would rather lean toward the photography aspect of this.

Since there are so many wonderful photos from all the participants, I think it would be awesome to have several additional votes.... one for each item on the list.  Wouldn't it be cool if we could somehow, someway get all of the reflection shots in one place?? Or all of the classic cars? That way we would be comparing Apples to Apples.  Additional participants may even want to enter if they have a good photo that fits a category but didn't complete all items on the list. 
I love this idea but don't know the best way of going about it.  Would it be best for me to name an item and have participants send me their entry or for me to go to each website and pull the photos for each item and put them all in separate posts in this site?  26 items, I could do one item a day for the next month until the next Photo Hunt in June. Or should I start another blog? (I set up a Photo Hunt Challenges blog just in case)

I'd love to hear from anyone and everyone on this!

Do you have any thoughts about the current voting process? Would you like to see all participants photos for each item listed together? Would we then have a vote or just leave a comment stating your favorite for that particular item? Any other suggestions regarding voting?

Did 26 items seem like a reasonable number for items for one month? Any other comments or suggestions about the Photo Hunt?

Comments

[Ang]

I'm really glad you posted this Kristi... after now doing 2 of them I do have some thoughts... obviously who ever hosts the PSH can do what they want and by no means do I want to tell you how to do anything... BUT
is there an option for voting of like a 1-10 type thing? Meaning, I want to vote for each person based on their pics, so if I think Joe blow has great shots, but Mary Smith has better ones I can vote Joe a 8 or 9 and give Mary a 9 or 10. That seems a bit more fair than a popularity contest... because I do believe that's all it is. Which is fine... because I'm not doing these to win anything... it's for my own photography skill and interest.

I think 26 items in a months time is perfect... part of me wonders if, being that you have a month, people should be able to 'enter' if they don't complete the list... doesn't seem fair to have someone win based on votes/popularity if they only got half the list.

I think it would be great to have all shots for one topic in one place, but it seems like a lot of work. On top of that it would restrict people to finding certain things at a certain time; for example, I have a list of 26 thing and I have never started at #1. In a way it makes it more challenging but I think it takes away from the scavenger hunt aspect of it.... I like having a month to find 26 things as I want. Does that make sense?

I'll put some more thought into it... it seems like it would be hard to do in one place.

Anyhow - this is just my 2 cents, for what it's worth. I really appreciate you asking for feedback on this, I think it's a great thing!

[Kristi S (sweetsauer)]

Ang's comment "On top of that it would restrict people to finding certain things at a certain time; for example, I have a list of 26 thing and I have never started at #1. In a way it makes it more challenging but I think it takes away from the scavenger hunt aspect of it.... I like having a month to find 26 things as I want. Does that make sense?"

My answer- My thought is the list would take two months.... the first month is collecting the photos, the second month is posting them, one a day. So the month of May we are posting the Photos we took in April on the first list.
A rating system is a good idea too, just not sure if there is a widget or site out there made for that? Ahh, and to find time to look into it?! I might be in over my head with all this......
Anyway, I do appreciate your feedback :)

[Denise]

I think how you had it set up worked really well although 26 photos was much to look through. I got a little bit bored and you may have a higher turn-out having a lesser number.

I like the overall vote how you have it but it would be cool to also have a contest where people voted on particular photos. Like Most Beautiful Picture, Most Artistic and so on... Perhaps you could choose the TOP 3 of each category yourself and then have people vote from there. Just an Idea.

[Nicole]

I would love to find a voting poll for the way Ang suggested the voting to go, but I was glad that I finally found PollDaddy for my hunt.

I just keep it simple.

And I think one doesn't have to do all the participants in one day.

But you sure have valid points there. Maybe doing a different thing every two weeks. Like one picture theme, people hunt for that pic and you could maybe open up a gallery. They have voting and comment options. I think, coppermine is pretty good with that.

Now my head's spinning from all the ideas :)

[Hope]

I am one of the lame people who didn't finish. I should have been able to, my life just got a little too busy towards the end of the month. But I would totally do this again!

I'll probably finish it out on my own just because I'm all OCD like that. ;)

[Lisa's Chaos]

To be honest the amount of photos to photo is pretty perfect. The amount of photos to look through does get overwhelming. I don't have any answer though. I know - I'm so helpful.

[Samara Link]

Kristi, this has been a decent amount of work for you, huh? I thought you did a great job of setting it up. It was very user friendly to add our permalink and to vote. One suggestion (more of an idea) I had was for an item on the scavenger hunt -- to find an emotion or expression -- like happiness, joy, concentration, etc. Anyway, the categories were really fun on the first one, and I look forward to seeing the list in June. I do agree that it would be really cool if there was a way to put all the classic cars together, all the cemeteries together, etc. How that would work, I'm not sure though. So, not much help there.

[alexa]

I don't think 26 items was too big. It was a good number.

As far as having all of the pictures together. A blog can have up to 100 authors. If you used the new blog you set up and everyone that signed up here to play, could post their pictures on the new blog. ie: 1st post: cool architecture and as people take their picture they can upload it to that post.

Then at the end of the month they would all be in one place. (at the end of the month remove everyone as author and then the next month you do it, add the people that sign up or wait for people to sign up and remove the ones that don't).

I don't know how you'd vote though. It would also let people do it and not make them complete everything unless we posted the pictures once we had completed the whole thing. I think I agree that you should have to finish it.

[Julie]

All of this sounds like a lot of work for you Kristi so I applaud you for hosting these. I'm gonna try to participate this round. :) Anyway, I think the posting everyone's #1 together, #2 together, etc is a great idea. That would make voting easier so you. I'd like to vote on one picture at a time, rather than an entire set of pictures.

I think Alexa has a great idea about everyone uploading their own pictures to a blog you have created for the photohunt. That would eliminate a lot of the work for you. :) If it is doable.

[Rhonda]

Hi there....I just recently found your blog so I missed out of the wonderful challenge but if you have one again please consider me as a participant.

[Dana Leigh]

Thanks for hosting this photo hunt, Kristi. It's been great and I do like the ideas that most people have about voting for 1 category at a time instead of a set of pics. I don't have any answers for you though. Alexa's answer sounds good if you can get the voting to work. You are awesome so I know you'll come up with something!

[Jientje]

I loved playing this, but indeed 26 pictures x29 players is an awful lot of pictures to view. And the way the poll is set up, it's more of a popularity test than rating a good photography. I have been amazed in some cases, some really really good photographers getting so little votes, that's just not fair? But I'm not good at making suggestions as to how to change this, so this comment is probably not of much use anyway?

[Jan]

Kristi, I thank you for all your hard work. 26 items was a challenge, but I think that was the idea. I think some didn't complete the hunt, so didn't enter, which I thought was the correct thing to do; not to do it half a**ed. There is one weekly meme, shadow shot sunday, hosted by Tracey at Hey Harriet, http://heyharriet.blogspot.com/search/label/Shadow%20Shot%20Sunday, she does a galley of the previous week, thats nice.

The voting did turn into a popularity contest, but I don't think that's the end of the world. For me, doing the challenge was the important thing. I really enjoyed it. I'll be without a computer, the first two weeks in June, traveling, but I'll check the new challenge out, when I get home.

[kaye]

i guess i missed the part where you said you were voting. I did it for fun--i was surprised when I posted and found there was a vote. I'm an amateur in every sense of the word, I am always amazed at what some of you can do with a camera, but i am also inspired to try to do new things to get better pictures. I think you need to decide if this is for fun or for competition. I participate in a weekly photo hunt hosted by tnchick. She posts a weekly theme and has hundreds of participants of varying degrees of photographic ability. I find it a very fun thing to view other peoples takes on the same theme. Personally, I would rather not compete. I did enjoy viewing as many of the hunts as I could over the course of the week. But I had a lot of trouble with the links, a number of the pages wouldn't load. Those who linked to picasa or some other web album were easier to view than those posted on a blog. Good luck with your decision :) I had fun and would like to participate again. Oh and I only voted once, and it was not for myself :)

[Kristi S (sweetsauer)]

Kaye,
I am sorry you misread the details of the Photo Hunt, but I did make it very
clear how it would work in the original post
http://www.sweetsauer.com/kristis_bliggitty_blog/2009/04/sweetsauer-photo-hunt-1.html

We were all doing this for FUN- I did not have a cool prize to give away or
anything, it was just a challenge that I opened up to anyone who wanted to
participate. I will be putting together many of my favorite photos by the
participants this weekend (by category) so hopefully that will be easier for
you to view them.

[Krisu]

Hi!

I think 26 was a good number for one month, but like some others, I took my shots in random order. I'm a working mom with three sons so to me it's not so easy to make time to take exactly one kind of photo on a certain day. For example I was waiting for rain to come the whole April and not a drop of water came out of the sky!
Alexa said:
"As far as having all of the pictures together. A blog can have up to 100 authors. If you used the new blog you set up and everyone that signed up here to play, could post their pictures on the new blog. ie: 1st post: cool architecture and as people take their picture they can upload it to that post."
Sounds very simple but then again it may be very difficult. I'm the example here again: where should this all-together-photos-blog be? In blogger? I don't know anything about how blogger works, I'm a wordpress user and not very good at computers anyway, I don't need computer at my work at all! What I can do I've learned by myself. (First time I saw a word "browser"I thought it was some kind of shortening of brown eyebrows, haha! )
Not much of a help, am I? ;)

[Laurie]

I think it was a great, fun challenge. I was also one of those people that didn't completely finish. I don't feel it was half a**ed as one had said earlier though.......different people's circumstances...... If it is just for fun, I think it is ok to post what you do have?? But maybe it was wrong for me to post??

I do think Alexa's idea is neat to just have authors of the one blog, and each person post there specific pic under the theme. Neat idea.

The voting thing is neat, I am certainly not a professional, but it is sure neat to see some beautiful pics!!

Thanks for the fun! Looking forward to hearing about the June Hunt......hopefully that month i will have more time! ~ after all I won't be moving AGAIN! :)