FED UP WITH RAILPICTURES.NET

Unfortunately the internet has become a free theft zone and anyone posting good photography on internet sites should anticipate that their work may eventually turn up elsewhere, including being sold on photo CD's, with the original photographer getting no credit at all or sometimes even with somebody else claiming credit for the photos. This is the reason that some of the new internet based historical societies have difficulty getting members to provide their photography for web albums. It is unfortunate, but that's the way it is with some of the folks we have in this hobby, and it is much too expensive for those who have their material stolen to take action against those who steal it. I have done a few articles for internet and I use one simple rule for pictures I supply with articles - 400 pixels width on the long dimension (1/3 to 1/2 screen width depending on your monitor) is all they get. Not a big enough image for your website? Sorry, find one from somebody else!

well i've been having problems on the site for a week. It first started when i submitted a pic and it was rejected, i never got the email. I then appealed it and it said it was going into the queue. I went to bed, never got an email whether it was rejected again or accepted. I checked the queue, and it said i had no pics waiting. I emailed the admin and they said it was the email server and it was back to normal. Well i still dont get emails, i appealed the photo again thinking maybe it got lost with the server problem's and again nothing. And just the other day i finally registered for the forums, everything was fine. Was waiting for the email to activate my account.........No email. I can't post nothing. I emailed the admins again and hopefully they'll be able to help me out or fix the problem.

Anyone who posted or is watching this thread. Is there any other way of getting in contact with someone from the railpictures.net? I have emailed the webmaster and admins several times about the log in not working and I have never gotten a response back in nearly 2 weeks.

I swear I have given them great and awsome photos. And they have shot them down with lame excuses like not bright enough and not what we are looking to publish . Thats why I have been so happy to contribute to rrpicturearchives.net. They are great people there.

Hey,
I post my photos to my own personnal Blog, they may not be the best but I like to get them out where people can see them.
Mike

Theres a new place for people fed up with railpictures.net to hang.


http://groups.myspace.com/fedupwithrailpicturesnet

Conrail1990 wrote:Theres a new place for people fed up with railpictures.net to hang.


http://groups.myspace.com/fedupwithrailpicturesnet

lol i'll have to check that out.

While on the subject of Railpictures.net, looks like LocoPhotos is slowly becoming RP's little brother. Ever since a few months ago when the new guy took over, it has slowly turned to hell. The guy running it has now put up a whole bunch of guidelines, such as not allowing pix of railroad employees riding locomotives on the outside, no shadows in frame, and only "roster shots" will be allowed. The previous guy who ran it was very liberal on this stuff. Now I don't have a problem with that, only roster shots allowed, that's what the site is all about, but the real killer is he's actually going back and deleting the old pics that don't meet his guidelines! And I had numerous pics that were taken off, that others had no problem with. As far as i'm concerned, i'm finished with Locophotos.com. Haven't uploaded a pic there since the end of last month.

Interesting. Didn't know about the change in power. Maybe thats why the forums are getting so overwhelmed with people complaining.

Having no if any guidelines is why I love rrpicturearchives.net even though some of the pictures have subpar quality.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/default.aspx

I sent a good photo to them the other day. Very good quality they said but there is a telephone pole in the way. BUT YOU SEE THE FREGGIN TRAIN DONT YA.

Here it is.

http://conrail1990.rrpicturearchives.ne ... ?id=632571

Conrail1990 wrote:I sent a good photo to them the other day. Very good quality they said but there is a telephone pole in the way. BUT YOU SEE THE FREGGIN TRAIN DONT YA.

Here it is.

http://conrail1990.rrpicturearchives.ne ... ?id=632571

Out of curiosity, what reason(s) did they give for rejecting it (were they technical or creative)?

In my view, while they shot is good from a technical perspective (good lighting, good focus, etc.) I think it has a few things wrong from a more creative angle: the power lines/pole, but in particular the pole behind the CSX unit, are distracting and busy; it could be cropped to the locomotives (there's a lot of empty space with the road at the bottom).

I made another post about Railpictures over in the Photo/Video forum here, and I think that most people who are annoyed/angry at RP should read it (I'd like to hear some responses).

The basic gist of it is that RP is not the be-all and end-all of railroad photography; there are lots of good photos that get rejected from there, just as there are bad (in my view, anyway) ones that make it. Sure, your photos aren't likely to get the same exposure if they aren't on Railpictures, but it really only matters if you're trying to make a name for yourself or go out taking photos for Railpictures and not for yourself (and really, only a small percentage of photographers on RP are well-known, and they generally have a lot of very high-quality shots to their credit).

For just about everybody here, taking photos of trains is a hobby. It's supposed to be fun, and I think that sites like RP (or their airplane equivalents, Airliners.com or JetPhotos) take a way from that a bit by being the "gold standard" for photos in the eyes of a lot of people. Certainly we all want to take good photos, but what makes a good photo is subjective; what I think is a good photo may not be what Railpictures thinks is a good photo. After a couple of rejections of what I felt were good photos, I started to realize that I was starting to shoot "for Railpictures", and not for myself, and I decided that wasn't what I wanted to do. I certainly don't expect to make any money from my photos, or to achieve any fame from them, and while it's nice to be part of the exclusive "club" of Railpictures, when they reject my photos it's their loss, not mine.

Objects on the way they said. But how did this one get in if there is a pole in the way too.(note taken in the same spot but not taken by me)

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=102561

Conrail1990 wrote:Objects on the way they said. But how did this one get in if there is a pole in the way too.(note taken in the same spot but not taken by me)

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=102561

Well, the smaller pole isn't really the worst thing; in your photo (which looks to be a different angle), you have a much thicker that looks like it's coming out of the top of the locomotive. I suspect that's the reason it was rejected, but I'm not (and have never been) a Railpictures screener, so I don't know what the actual criteria is.

emd_SD_60 wrote:While on the subject of Railpictures.net, looks like LocoPhotos is slowly becoming RP's little brother. Ever since a few months ago when the new guy took over, it has slowly turned to hell. The guy running it has now put up a whole bunch of guidelines, such as not allowing pix of railroad employees riding locomotives on the outside, no shadows in frame, and only "roster shots" will be allowed. The previous guy who ran it was very liberal on this stuff. Now I don't have a problem with that, only roster shots allowed, that's what the site is all about, but the real killer is he's actually going back and deleting the old pics that don't meet his guidelines! And I had numerous pics that were taken off, that others had no problem with. As far as i'm concerned, i'm finished with Locophotos.com. Haven't uploaded a pic there since the end of last month.

I'm the new guy who took over LocoPhotos. I have to disagree with several of your comments Chris. LocoPhotos was slowly turning to hell when I joined as a contributing member, before I even bought the site. Quite the opposite, LocoPhoto's trip into the underworld has now been halted. LocoPhotos was close to qualifying as a superfund site when I bought it. It was a toxic mix of just plain cruddy photos that must have been taken with cell phone cameras, and excellent shots that people obviously gave some consideration to before the hitting the shutter release.

I didn't put up a whole bunch of guidelines, those guidelines were in place before I bought LocoPhotos. I was against any guidelines being added, and I stated so publicly in the forum. I argued to let the moderators do their job. But certain people didn't understand the guidelines. I suspect they didn't even bother to read them, so I clarified them when I took over. I did add the no people rule, and the shadow rule. I had to do so, because more than 35 years ago when I started taking pictures, these were the rules. But that was in the old days, when people understand what was expected of them, and performed accordingly, without having to be told. People and shadows do not belong in roster shots. However, to satisfy modelers and historians, I do allow shadows provided they do not create a distraction to the subject

As for deleting content that was on LocoPhotos when I bought it, it is my website, I paid for it, I pay for the hosting, and I spend my time working on the site. I choose what I will present on my website. I am under no obligation to continue to host material that never belonged on LocoPhotos in the first place. LocoPhotos has lost a lot of good photographers over the past 3 to 4 years, because of the way it was run and moderated. I have been in contact with some of those people, their opinions do not surprise me, in fact they mirror my thoughts, and the thoughts of others, exactly.

I am not concerned with whether people did or did not have a problem with material previously contained on LocoPhotos. Anyone that may have had a problem with it, left LocoPhotos years ago. My concern is that material on the site conforms to the guidelines, that people know that the guidelines are being administered and enforced fairly and uniformly.

Stan Lytle
"The New Guy"