Gregory Maxwell wrote:
Writing about Sphaerosepalaceae and Friends episodes both require real
work.. both are creating content. The imbalance we see is because
more people are interested in Friends. Photography isn't like
that.... I'd agree it would be the same if I was lamenting the lack
of illustrations on [[Sphaerosepalaceae]] verses [[Friends episode
X]].
The "more people" imbalance is what I meant. The great majority of
editors work on what interests them personally, rather than taking
guidance from somebody else, and that seems to extend to picture
taking as well. Most of the WP photographers I know of tend to have
an intense interest in one or a few areas, so for instance they'll
upload photos of many kinds of cars, but no photos of the towns
where they're finding the cars.
I've always regarded our lack of photographers as a product of the
greater startup time consumption (can't really take half a picture),
combined with our culture which isn't that friendly to photographers.
An unfriendly culture? Hadn't noticed that myself. My limiting factor
is that it takes less than a minute to compose and shoot, but several
minutes to crop and fix up, so I have a growing backlog... Another
limiting factor is that taking "encyclopedic" rather than "art"
pictures
is a body of technique unto itself; for some things it can take major
commitments of driving and/or walking around to get decent shot.
Perhaps more people can find a free hour between 9 and 10 pm to sort
stubs :-) than the same hour during daylight to take pictures of
downtown buildings.
Stan