How has your week been? I’m thinking we might not do Monochrome Madness the last week of the year.
Perhaps the next theme can be New, your interpretation. It will be the first week of January.
On the road to Cape Otway you go past areas that are full of dead trees. They are Eucalyptus trees, but they have all died because of the Koalas. There have been too many Koalas in a small area, so they have been starving, and there eating everything from the trees. They don’t give the trees enough time to recover and then this happens. It is what we have done to them.
Don’t forget all the instructions on how to enter your own images are at the bottom of the post. If you have entered an image then please remember to check your image in the gallery, scroll down and see if anyone has left you any comments.
- 1/ rainy day reflections
- 2/ Disperser Tracks
- 3/ P N C O
- 4/ MyBlog – solaner
- 5/ One Day | One Image
- 6/ The World Is a Book…
- 7/ Crow Canyon Journal
- 8/ MONOCHROME MONDAYS
- 9/ ARTKORPPI II
- 10/ macquie
- 11/ Lisa Chelkowski
- 12/ Stupidity Hole
- 13/ Crosbyman66
- 14/ jmeyersforeman photography
- 15/ LOTSASMILES PHOTOGRAPHY
- 16/ gottatakemorepix
- 17/ Leanne Cole
Monochrome Madness each week and if you wish to participate and submit an image here is how you do it:-
- You must email me the image you want to include and if you have a blog or website, or somewhere else, please include the link. My email address is leanne@leannecole.com.au
- The image size should be low res, so the largest side should be 1000 pixels or less.
- Please insert either your name or your blogs name in the file name.
- Remember I am on Australian time, so with GMT I am +11 hours at the moment, I publish my post on Thursday morning.
- If you need more help with sending images, and get confused about time zones, etc, well, there is a great website called The World Clock, if you go to that and look at Melbourne time, if it’s before 6pm on Tuesday evening, then you can still send me images. If it’s after that time, you can send me an image, but it will be set aside for the following week.
- Remember to include a link to your blog or website.
- Please remember to resize your images, it is fairly simply, you just need to go into any editing software and usually under Image you will find, resize, scale, or image size, something like that and you can resize your image there. Change the dimensions to pixels and make the longest side 1000 pixels or smaller, hit return, and for most types of software that should change the other side automatically as well. Just remember to save it with a different name so you know it is the smaller version. If you have any problems, please contact me, I don’t mind helping out.
Please note you don’t have to be a WordPress blogger to be in this challenge, you can have a link to a Facebook page, a Flickr page, anywhere really, or no link. We just want to encourage people to do monochrome images, just for the madness of it. Just to let you know also, that as soon as the challenge is published, all emails and images you have sent me are deleted from my computer.
Leanne, you mention the popularity is waning. Are you referring to MM? Because it could be due to the holidays. Not so much for submitters, but perhaps fewer people have the time to visit all the blogs.
Just wondering.
You could be right, I don’t know. It just seems to be going down and down. The reasons people give for not wanting to contribute are, I don’t know. I am just wondering if early next year we need to have a rethink about it all. I have some other ideas.
Thank you for all your help and contributions, Merry Christmas to you and yours.
I have a few thoughts (but, it would be nice hearing from others as well) . . .
1) it could be that weekly is too often. That said, going to longer time periods (for example, monthly) increases the chances that people will forget to contribute.
2) I notice other sites that have “challenges” that include B&W. WordPress itself has photo challenges/themes. While on the one hand it gives opportunities and incentives for people to produce works, I think it’s also a bit overwhelming. It’s no longer something special or interesting if you come across the same things a couple of times a week every week. It really could be a case of oversaturation.
3) comments: the way it’s set up right now, the only recognition anyone gets is if someone leaves a message about the individual photo. Here’s the thing with that: it appears to me that the large majority of comments are for your photos. You want to know what I think? Most people don’t bother reading the whole post and only look at the lead photo in the reader. You can notice it in the way the comments are often worded (as if there is only one photo in the post).
Possible changes (if you want to continue running it):
1) You have enough loyal readers that you could probably switch to only running the feature once a month. Make an announcement ahead of time (a week ahead) and always have a theme.
2) it’s a bit more work (but not greatly so) but you could have a poll for readers to vote for best photo. Poll are anonymous so there is no pressure as to how to cast one’s vote. Polls are, of course, highly subjective. For instance, you could have an amazing photo that has nothing to do with the theme or you can have a photo of poor quality that perfectly captures the theme. How people vote depends on their interpretation as to what they are voting for. Nonetheless, voting might provide an incentive for some people to reach a bit beyond themselves and produce better work. I would recommend giving out a badge to display for the blog of the monthly winner (obviously, a digital badge).
2a) the monthly winners could participate in a year-end winners only themed competition for Year’s Best (complete with a badge to honor the Year’s best — for example “2018 Monochrome Madness Photographer of the Year”).
3) The above would require you to abstain from contributing.
Possible alternatives (if you don’t want to continue running it):
A) replace the weekly feature with a monthly or quarterly lesson on shooting B&W.
B) ask for volunteers to host Monochrome Madness on a rotating basis (with the announcements still made on your site as to where to send the photos). If the idea is to give exposure to other websites, this will do that.
C) Just give notice and stop running it. Life will go on.
All good ideas Disperser, this is what I’m thinking, at this moment. That everyone just posts their own on their site and leaves a comment with their image is or does a pingback, so to speak. Less work for me.
I am doing the Facebook page, The Photographer’s Mentor and the group that we have with that, people have been posting their own images there, so that could become the place to post them. There are other photo challenges there and people can post any photos they want really. So I am thinking of trying to change it to there.
What do you think?
Well, I can’t give direction to someone else. Meaning, it’s your decision to make and what I wrote above is only in case you were looking for suggestions relating to keeping it going.
However, it sounds like you have already given it some thought, so I defer to you because 1) you know more about the options you have than I do, and, 2) you are the one that has to implement whatever you decide.
However, if you ask my personal opinion, I think you should concentrate on your own project and business. MM was started four years ago when — I assume — you were doing a lot less. Also, if I remember correctly, it was never meant to be a regular thing. It sort of just evolved into what it is today.
Transitioning to Facebook makes more sense than keeping it here.
I think you are right, that transitioning to Facebook could be the way to go, that way I don’t have to worry about people sending the wrong sizes, or not sending photos in time. The whole post could be directed from here though.
Life has got very busy, I have to admit, my mum is here now and I don’t know how I’m going to get everything done. Thanks Disperser.
Hey Leanne .. tried to leave a comment on no 14 without any luck! Sorry to hear about the koalas .. not good news. As always .. I’m a big fan of MM
That’s odd, I have no idea why you couldn’t Julie. It is great to hear, though it’s popularity seems to be dwindling.
The contrast between light and shadow is striking. Lovely image.
In which image Patti?
Yours. 🙂
Then thank you so much Patti.
Love the mood in this one
That is great to hear Marc.
Probably a good idea to take a break for the holidays, and New is an interesting theme.
Also, this week brings another batch of excellent photos. I won’t single out any of them so as to not encourage anyone to getting a big head, but lots of quality and interesting imagery to be had in perusing the gallery.
Thanks.
I like doing that, not thinking about it.
That is a good idea, I always think they are great.
Beautiful image Leanne, sad story, one that is happening to all our wildlife.
It is a sad story Karen, unfortunately all too familiar as well, thank you.