On 12/7/06, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
Kat Walsh wrote:
-Kat who is, unfortunately, not a very good photographer
I can relate to that! But I'm much better than when I started taking pictures for WP three years ago. For instance, I find that thinking about someone on the other side of the world and in another culture viewing my photo is an aid to composition - how do I get the key information and context into the picture, while cutting out the irrelevant? I've also gotten brazen about studying the unfree pictures to see what it would take to get the same shots.
It's the same with people's text contributions. You'll start off submitting stuff that's ok, though nothing special, but over time and with practice you'll be turning out high-quality material, through experience and through learning from other people's work.
I agree with Kat's other point. Most of us are sensible enough to know that copying text is bad, but there's a culture that it's ok to do so with images. Cameras are increasingly ubiquitous, and there are plenty of people out there willing to take pictures for the projects, and I really think that culture needs to be changed.
We have [[Wikipedia:Requested pictures]], [[Wikipedia:Photo Matching Service]] and [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Photography]]. These are drastically underused, even though there are people there making excellent contributions. The more they are used, the more people with cameras will be interested in helping and the more pictures we will get. Please everyone, use these resources!