Hello there!
I am sharing my reflections below as the organiser of the Photographic Film Special Nomination in Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine this year -- this was the first time we did something like this, and we have just announced the results on Friday:
https://wlm.org.ua/film-results-2022/ (the blog is in Ukrainian, but you can see the pictures, and the years they were taken in are in the attribution).
== Context ==
So, 2022 was especially challenging for us as the organisers, as we had to limit accepting participants' submissions
only to pictures taken before February 24, 2022, when the russian army started a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as we feared for the participants safety (believe me, even in peaceful times a stranger coming to your remote village to take pictures of buildings can be weird; during the active full-scale invasion the level of suspicion is tripled at least), and we also worried about encouraging their accidentally filming some military actions or objects.
This does mean less quality (people might upload pictures from their archives they have not uploaded during previous years, as they know about the contest, but have no chance to upload newer pictures) and quantity (for obvious reasons of people who just learnt about the contest not being able to join, unless before February 24, 2022, they had a hobby of taking pictures of cultural monuments around them). And it is also challenging interest-wise -- unless you had something to upload -- you are out. We also realised that we have very limited resources to organise ourselves -- too many things and people to worry about, while taking care of lists or templates. So we needed a light version contest, but also to find something interesting to try to tap into new audiences we have not yet had time/resources to tap into.
So, we decided to implement an idea a Ukrainian Wikimedian, Nataliia Lastovets, had -- to have a special category for scanned photographic film -- the Photographic Film Special Nomination -- with pictures (of course) taken before February 24, 2022, accepting files of cultural monuments created from scanned photographic films or scanned/photographed prints, made by a film camera originally.
== Challenges and lessons learnt ==
First of all, if one aims at having a light version of the contest -- this nomination is not an easy one to organise :) We, of course, went lighter on the promotional part of this due to our own limited volunteer resources (and promotion is really important, and we should have done more there, of course), but we did have ads on social media (Facebook, Instagram), and did reach out to cool professional photographers on Instagram, telling them about the contest, and that if they are not interested in taking part, maybe they would agree to become jury members.
We also had to figure out
how to check the uploads -- our upload form was asking people to mark pictures as "photographic film" ones, and we had a separate category for them, but we still ended up with more than 600 pictures, and before giving them to the jury members, we had to check them. The
WLX Jury Tool we are using to rate pictures would not be useful for this, opening ~600 files to check the EXIFs and descriptions would be quite time consuming. So User:Ahonc had to create a script to get all the possibly useful data from the pictures in the category in one table:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ahonc/WLM-2022_UA/images/films
With this, we just needed to check the uploads done by non-film cameras. Of course, we could not just dismiss those files, as a film print from 1990 could have been photographed with a modern non-film camera (or even a mobile), so we also looked at the user pages, sometimes people mention that they are professional photographers, and chances of their pictures being on a photographic film are higher. We also reached out to those users we knew -- some of them indeed mistakenly marked pictures for the nomination... Long story short -- it took us quite some time to remove pictures we were certain didn't belong. And when we had ~400, we started the first jury round.
More information is needed at the upload stage. For the first round we asked them to select up to 50 entries out of
~400 that would go to the next round. They selected 95, and then they rated them with points (20 points was max, 1 point was minimum). We planned to award 10 best pictures, but we ended up with 23 entries to select from. If we had time and resources, we would have tried to organise an additional round, an online call or meetup, but this was just a bit too much to do, so, I just basically wrote to each author directly, listing pictures, and asking to provide for more details. And indeed, some of those pictures were not taken using a photographic film. That really helped to narrow the pool.
What's more, the authors using photographic films, were able to provide quite detailed stories about their pictures, when they were taken, and in most cases technical information including camera models, what kind of film they used, lenses etc. It was quite impressive, to tell you the truth :) We ended up selecting 10 best pictures. But it seems that the upload form for this kind of content should include not only a checkbox for this special nomination, but also fields for camera model, lenses, film, year it was taken, additional information -- first, it will help the participants themselves to make sure they are not making an automatic mistake, and secondly, it will help with checking the uploads. That way people do not upload hordes of pictures, they (in a way) treasure them, and remember (sometimes) each frame, the weather it was taken in, angle, context, etc.
The jury has to have professional photographers, who themselves use photographic film. It is sometimes more difficult to organise -- we expect them to be volunteers, and cost them working hours; it is not as if we provide them with a lot of professional fame or that the quality of our submissions is guaranteed. Finding these people is still possible, just... difficult.
== Outcomes ===
We still have ~400 pictures we cannot be certain have been taken using photographic film, unfortunately. On the bright side -- we are now smarter as organisers, and if we decide to do it again, we would take into account our lessons learnt. And we would probably be better positioned to make more new and interesting mistakes :)
Anyway, sorry for the long read, I just thought documenting our experience here, on the list, has some value for organisers to (maybe) come.
See you all around!
З повагою / Best regards,
antanana
Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine
Wikimania 2023
Program Subcommittee
Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2023 Programme Committee
Disclaimer:
This letter is sent in my Wikimedia volunteer capacity, not as a Board
member of Wikimedia Foundation
Thank you. Yes, we were thinking of creating a special nomination for that kind of pictures -- we were thinking of scanned films, but you are correct in pointing out that some can actually have only prints. Both copyright issues and how to understand if a picture was taken on a film, and not digitally, are a part of issues we are trying to figure out... Reaching out to professional societies is a good idea for a start, thanks! I am not sure how much (if anything) will come out of our efforts to have a contest this year, but we shall see
З повагою / Best regards,
antanana
Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine
Disclaimer:
This letter is sent in my Wikimedia volunteer capacity, not as a Board
member of Wikimedia Foundation
Hi Nat,
do you mean scanned films or scanned prints?
The process was first to process the film, and then go on to make prints. In the former Soviet Union, for b/w prints, everything was made at home with a simple equipment; for color, unless you are professional, you would have to go to a shop. Btw colored photographs were usually for producing slides, and people did not make prints but rather projected them on the screen. Now, scanning film is difficult and requires special equipment, but scanning prints only requires a standard scanner.
Most people stopped using film in around 2000. and thus they are not so old now (they would typically start taking pictures at 10-15, and, for example, I am 55 now and I still had 25 years of film experience). The problems are more that prints get lost or stayed behind as people are moving, and that after 30 years they are not exactly sure what they were filming. I would suggest a special nomination for scans of prints, if it still can be done this year (though you have to be extra careful to make sure people scan their own photographs).
For professional photographers, this is a never-ending story but I would start with professional societies.
Best
Yaroslav
hello there!
has anyone tried locally to organise something around outreach to photographers whose pictures were made on photographic films?
as this year (to make sure people are not roaming around taking
pictures for their own safety)
for the
Ukrainian part of the contest
we decided to accept only pictures taken before February 24, 2022, we thought of maybe looking for ways to reach this audience -- photographers whose pictures are on films, so most probably old enough... but maybe there are some tips/things to
be aware of when dealing with scanned films, and somebody on the list has travelled down this path already, and can share useful information?
(sorry for crossposting, i have also asked about this on the telegram channel)
З повагою / Best regards,
antanana
Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine
Disclaimer:
This letter is sent in my Wikimedia volunteer capacity, not as a Board
member of Wikimedia Foundation
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