FORUM CHANGES and UPDATES - NOW LIVE!

Wow, these changes were needed, especially for those images with minor EHK. Now if I only could upload images?

This new design makes a lot of sense. Looking forward to see they play out. Should be much more streamlined.

Some great ideas, especially the new Travel & Culture forum.

Al

i think the changes to the landscapes and the dc (now pda) forums are excellent...however i find the travel&culture forum to be an extension of the members' forum. perhaps that was it's intention but to me 2 issues:
1) not much - or any nature - in many images
2) one person's travel is another person's neighbor - we are a globe-spanning forum. perhaps i just miss the point of it...
it does not seem to belong in the same group with birds-wildlife-landscapes-f+m-pda.
just my opinion, and i do overall heartily endorse the forum changes!

Thanks for the perspective, 'fish. You're not wrong -- we deliberately have set up Travel & Culture to be pretty much what you say. The Member's Lounge, as well as repeated "challenges" over the years with the old EHK forum and human elements in photos placed in other forums, convinced us there was a strong interest for a travel and culture photography component to the site. We are still NatureScapes.Net, not EverythingScapes.Net, but we have deliberately removed the nature constraint for the new T&C forum, and tried to give it a focus of its own. One of the biggest challenges of the old EHK forum was that it was something of a dumping ground for images from all the other genres that contained human elements that weren't permitted in those other forums. There wasn't a strong sense of what was an EHK image, given that it still had to be mainly nature themed.

We still have some incongruities that we haven't attempted to nail down, because we feel the new changes need time to stretch and grow before we come storming out with a pile of new guidelines. But the key focus for T&C is that we are a globe-spanning forum as you say. Nature photographers do travel the world, whether driving to a local destination or flying halfway around the world. As they travel, nature photographers do photograph the human dimension -- people, architecture and human influences upon the world. It's not just exclusively about wilderness and wildness. The two blur together in a lot of cases, too... sometimes you need to show the human side of a story even if the main focus is something about nature. T&C is now set up to be an outlet for that body of photographic work from all our members...

Tend to agree with "fish" on this one.....
Although I don't disagree with the concept of a T&C forum, the true EHK images ( the old barn with a rainbow, the mountain lake with a boathouse, the small creek with a bridge, etc) now somehow get "lost" amongst a myriad of portrait and village market scenes....

My 2 cents....

gradient wrote:Tend to agree with "fish" on this one.....
Although I don't disagree with the concept of a T&C forum, the true EHK images ( the old barn with a rainbow, the mountain lake with a boathouse, the small creek with a bridge, etc) now somehow get "lost" amongst a myriad of portrait and village market scenes....

My 2 cents....

With the new guidelines all the images you just described can be posting in landscapes.

Hi All,

The Travel and Culture Forum needs time to settle. Yes, some images go well beyond the theme of NatureScapes, but then I sort of think that what I see is a need to provide members with an outlet for photos that do not fit the rigid requirements of other forums. It needs time to cook.

And, we must recognize that while most of us do nature stuff, there are times when we see stuff that we want to share. Some good, some very bad.

It needs time to bake.

Best regards,

Bill

@Greg...Ok, I'll give it a try...

@Bill..."It needs time to bake"....Agreed!

Bill Lockhart wrote:The Travel and Culture Forum needs time to settle. Yes, some images go well beyond the theme of NatureScapes, but then I sort of think that what I see is a need to provide members with an outlet for photos that do not fit the rigid requirements of other forums. It needs time to cook.
And, we must recognize that while most of us do nature stuff, there are times when we see stuff that we want to share. Some good, some very bad.
It needs time to bake.

i agree wholeheartedly about time settling and baking and i understand the origin, function, and role of the t+c forum and have no quarrel with any of it. it's very freedom to go so far from the rigid requirements of the other forums is what makes me feel it should be separated more somehow to empathize it's otherness.

Royce Howland wrote:nature photographers do photograph the human dimension -- people, architecture and human influences upon the world. It's not just exclusively about wilderness and wildness. The two blur together in a lot of cases, too... sometimes you need to show the human side of a story even if the main focus is something about nature.

again, i am with you on this, but the words "travel and culture" don't convey this to me at all. my suggestion for its next iteration then is "the human dimension" i'm serious
thanks for listening and responding to my thoughts on this and explaining your thinking further. i do enjoy the new look and structure tremendously and am very pleased you did it!