On 12/7/06, Stan Shebs <stanshebs(a)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!
--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain(a)gmail.com