New year began for me with a big heartache !

[ErezS]

Hi everyone.

First at all I want to wish to everyone a good year 2012.
And I emphasize that I congratulate them all, with all due respect to everyone.

Second, as always I apologize because English is not my first language, and have some difficulties wording in English, but I hope that what I write will be clear for everyone.

Yes, I definitely know that some of the participants tired of seeing my name. It's very regrettable for me, but when my heart is so hurts I need to write it.

Even if I'm one of the most veteran participants in this site, I'm not asking for any special privileges.

On the other hand, can not be a situation that I would feel so hard that some members of staff just sneer at me and my dignity.

I'll tell the truth, that during the last period I even thought to ask administration to delete all of my photos and delete my ID from the database , but I always think a lot in advance, and I not want to do anything rash, that might later regret it. So I'm not asking for such hard things for now.

One of the things that I think make harm to all of us (yes, to all of us !!!) It's the huge number of the screeners.
Very likely to be participants and crew members that did not agree with me on that, but I'm not a kid, and I'm not stupid.
A long time I see clearly, and any sensible person can see it, during participating in the forums, that there are many differences of opinion in many cases between the team members on various issues.
And no one can deny it, that's a fact !!!

I'm personally not in a hurry anytime, and I do not understand people who just rush all the time and want everything quickly quickly...
I wrote about it lot of times in the forums discussions about the huge queue before the screening.
And if there are so many screeners, I prefer, for example, that on each photo will be five opinions, not just three.
True, it would take more time, but in my humble opinion it's would be fairer for all of us.

I can not be sure, but I feel, over time, that some of the screeners are not want to see my photos.
I can not set this as a "personal hatred" because of no one knows me personally, but I have that hard feeling, and against the feeling of a person you can not say "Do not feel" ... You can say "You're wrong in your feeling" ...
I wish that I have a mistake with these feelings !


It's very clear to everyone that not all people are equal in their opinions, their emotions, the way they relate to others, and it is very clear to me that this place was not different at all, that here I get on the one hand a very good and human relationship (including compliments) from several of the crew members, but on the other hand I feel a big hostile from others.

Maybe some of you remember that a few months ago I asked in the forum question about a photo, and Mr. Michael Wolf replied an answer with absolute certainty, I did exactly as he suggested, but the photo was rejected, and then when I wrote on the forum about it, some people were saying that maybe I'm wrong, and maybe have been mistake by Mr. Wolf.
I keep saying that Mr. Wolf was right, while others were Mistakes. This is one example of the problems and lack of logic because of disagreements among the staff.

Recently there was a discussion (of another person) about a photo taken in Amsterdam, and There was a disagreement between the various team members, each wrote a different opinion ...
It was a second example ...

Previously occurred several cases with photo was rejected with a comment (for example) like "should rotate clockwise, 0,3", but after I did so and reupload it, I got another rejection without any comment, and after I sent an appeal I received again rejection with comment like "should rotate counterclockwise 0,5" ...
So, tell me please, is it sad or funny???

Now here are the latest example, that made me a big hurt, so I write now this long message.

I want to avoid problems, and although I got in the past some answers that not helped me, I decided a few days ago to ask a new question on the forum, again on the subject of "horizon unlevel", and this time I received an answer from the senior screener Mr. James Rowson.

So, it was a big shock and a big disappointment for me, and also lack of understanding, when this photo was rejected.

Of course I sent an appeal, I wrote that it's according to the answer of Mr. James Rowson, I added links to issue in the forum, I asked "Did Mr.James Rowson he's wrong ?", and truth I added also a few words with a big frustration. but it was rejected again, without any word as comment.

Therefore, all of you can understand the biggest frustration I have over and over.

What can I say more, if the word of Mr. James Rowson does not count for other team members ? ...

I am a person who thinks a lot of "outside the box" and I can not understand the insistence of some of the screeners (not all, only some of them) with the issue about the "horizon unlevel" without any logical reason.
It's so clear that have a dispute between the screeners on this issue, and the photographers are the suffers.

I want to be understood and clear:
When a photo is really crooked and it's "roaring" I do not think we have to accept such photos.
But I do not think you should aggravate such cases as I mentioned above, and as I had been writing from time to time.

Maybe you may take a decision like until a deviation of 0.3 do not reject, because it's so awful, especially when there are several different factors in the photo by which you can determine the level, for example when you can not align by the verticals and also by the runways or taxiways, and we have so many of such cases!

BTW, Yesterday I got a few more rejections, I think that some of the rejections was not make sense, I sent another three appeals which were rejected out of hand, but my frustration is so big and I do not feel need to write with more details about it.

From past experience, I know in advance what will be some of the answers, I also expect to "get on my head", but I also expect that some people start to think "outside the box", will try to understand the whole issue, and I wish for many answers , from team members and from the other participants.

I will finish as I began:
I wish to everyone a good year 2012.
And I emphasize that I congratulate them all, with all due respect to everyone.

Best regards,
Erez.

PS
This message took me about 4 hours to write, to read, to understand if I explained correctly, to consult with some fellows, to think of how not to offend any person, etc., etc., when my intention is not only my personal gain but specifically for the site and for other photographers from all over the world.
As I "spent" so much time for this morning, and I did nothing for this long time, so I hope everyone has the time to read and internalize it.
Thanking you in advance, best regards and respect..

[B7772ADL]

Erez,

If it's any consolation, even the screeners get rejections. If you want the truth, through my own stupidity I currently have 7 rejections on file due to missing a couple of dustspots I hadn't previously noted. No one is 100% perfect.

Secondly, there really is more to life than Jetphotos.net. Why are you letting a website make you so sad? I understand you don't want to remove your photos and this is good but all of this seems to be really making you worked up and sad...why not go take a break from uploading for a while and go and calm down. Photographers have done this before and have come back with a fresh outlook on their photos.

As for your comments regarding too many screeners. One minute we are being told by uploaders that we don't have enough screeners and the next minute we are being told that we have too many screeners. Now that the queue is lower a few things happen. We have a little bit more time too screen photos so maybe we will look for technical errors a little bit harder. And also because the queue is lower, uploaders suddeny rush to put their photos in the queue and because they rush they might not take as much time editing their photos and therefore upload them with errors. Not saying this is you, but uploaders in general.

So if we have too many screeners, and we get rid of some...what will happen? The answer is the queue will go up again and uploaders will complain again that we don't have enough. We can't win lol.

My advice might be to take some very deep breaths, put your camera down and walk away. Clear you head and come back refreshed, and have a happy 2012.

[ErezS]

Erez,

If it's any consolation, even the screeners get rejections. If you want the truth, through my own stupidity I currently have 7 rejections on file due to missing a couple of dustspots I hadn't previously noted. No one is 100% perfect.

Secondly, there really is more to life than Jetphotos.net. Why are you letting a website make you so sad? I understand you don't want to remove your photos and this is good but all of this seems to be really making you worked up and sad...why not go take a break from uploading for a while and go and calm down. Photographers have done this before and have come back with a fresh outlook on their photos.

As for your comments regarding too many screeners. One minute we are being told by uploaders that we don't have enough screeners and the next minute we are being told that we have too many screeners. Now that the queue is lower a few things happen. We have a little bit more time too screen photos so maybe we will look for technical errors a little bit harder. And also because the queue is lower, uploaders suddeny rush to put their photos in the queue and because they rush they might not take as much time editing their photos and therefore upload them with errors. Not saying this is you, but uploaders in general.

So if we have too many screeners, and we get rid of some...what will happen? The answer is the queue will go up again and uploaders will complain again that we don't have enough. We can't win lol.

My advice might be to take some very deep breaths, put your camera down and walk away. Clear you head and come back refreshed, and have a happy 2012.

Dear James,
Thank you very much for your quick and courteous response.
This time I will write briefly because I have no time now ...
What you have written at the beginning of the answer it's not consolation for me ...
I do not think we should reduce the number of the screeners, I offered another suggestion:
Five team members and not three will give reviews on each photo.
Meanwhile, maybe I take a break for a few days and not deal with the photos.
By the way, I rarely shoot in recent times, the photos that I upload now are from a half year ago.
Best regards,
Erez.

[B7772ADL]

Dear James,
Five team members and not three will give reviews on each photo.
Best regards,
Erez.

This is an interesting concept, but the problem I can see with this is that it will double the time it takes to screen a photo. It is very rare that 5 screeners would be screening at once. Most of the time it maybe 1 or 2 screeners, sometimes none for a few hours at any one time.

Under the current process, if you use the appeals function, most of the time the photos will have been looked at by 3 to 4 screeners anyway, I don't think we need up to potentially 6 people (if you include an appeals screener) to make the same decisions.

[seahawk]

A warning at the start: I will be blunt with what comes next.

I am tired of the complaining about the screeners. Some users (and yes I do include you, Erez) are never happy. You complain when the queue is big, you complain when the queue is small, in fact you always complain when you get a photo rejected. Fact is that many of your up-loads are of a very medicore and borderline quality and it is obvious that you aim to have many photos in the database. Many screeners have told you that you could improve your acceptance ratio, by picking your best shots of a day and just up-loading those. But you do not listen.
I have screened a lot of your shots taken on the 17th July in Zurich. It was a dark and rainy day, with really bad weather for photography. Yet we have accepted 99 (!!) shots from that day alone. (and rejected countless others)

Now some would say that, you have been on spotting trip, so you had to take the opportunity and up-load those shots, as it was your only chance. Well fact is ,that you also have 209 shots from the 15th July taken in Zurich and 250 taken on the 16th July accepted in our database. Considering the average rejection ratio of all users, this means you have up-loaded around 700-800 photos from 3 days.

And yet you complain about 1 single photo you think should not have been rejected? And even better you suggest to increase the workload of the screeners by 66% as a solution. Seriously think about your own expectations before you come here with another whine thread next time.

[oe-vap]

To continue what Stefan wrote.
You try to squeeze in every single shot . For example some bizjets shot from the parking garage across runway 28 in Zurich. You have been told that this position is to far away to get decent shots, because the photo looked heavily cropped from the original. Yet you try it again with another bizjet shot from the same position. Why?

[LX-A343]

I do not think we should reduce the number of the screeners, I offered another suggestion:
Five team members and not three will give reviews on each photo.

Interesting concept, but James pointed out the consequences regarding queue time. And judging by the comments throughout the year, I sincerely doubt, that this would be appreciated by the majority of photographers.

In addition, I wonder, what you would suggest, if the result is still the same, i.e. your photo would still be rejected. Would you suggest to raise the number of votes to 7? Or would you finally follow our suggestion and do a bit more self-screening? You don't need to answer, it's just something I am wondering about.

[oe-vap]

Let me add uploading obviously blurry shots to my list from above

[PMN]

Hi Erez,

I really don't want you to take any of this personally, but naturally starting such threads you open yourself up to the opinions of others, so I shall give mine.

There's a very simple answer to why you get slightly different replies from different people and the reason is right there in the question; they're different. I spent enough time at this site to know how it works like the back of my hand and believe me, people do try to be as consistent as possible but there'll always be differences in how different individuals see things. It's entirely unreasonable to expect every single person on the screening team to think 100% the same; it just doesn't work like that. Slight inconsistencies are a fact of life and they exist on every single site like this on the internet, and once that fact is accepted it can make the whole process of using a site like this much less stressful.

As far as rejections are concerned, they're a fact of life and are a part of what we do if we choose to upload to sites like this. As you probably know I spent a year and a half on the team here at JP, I now co-own and run another site and you know what? I still get rejections there! I own and run it but the other screeners still reject my uploads if there's something wrong I've missed, and rightfully so! That's exactly the way it should be, because the I as a photographer and the site both get better images as a result. Rejections should never be viewed negatively because only good can come from them.

I think you need to seriously ask yourself why you upload photos to this site. You never seem happy, and regardless of what the screening team do or say you still find something to complain about. I hate to be so blunt here, but are you sure uploading to photo sites is something you really want to do? All it seems to do is cause you upset. I have to also say I'm not entirely sure why you use the word 'heartache" so much. Moving away from a place you love causes heartache, losing a loved one causes heartache… Having photos rejected? Come on, is that really in the same league? If you think it is then, with the greatest respect, perhaps you need to re-evaluate a few things? Really, there are infinitely more important things in life than taking photos of planes. As James suggests, maybe take a break from uploading for a while, maybe you'll re-discover a few of them?

Again, nothing here is intended personally. I'm not JP crew anymore so this isn't a representative view from JP's perspective, it's simply how I see things.

All the best for 2012, whatever you choose to do.

Paul

[harry1]

Dear Erez,

think about this:
I make pictures for my self only, and not for JP.
That means, if the pictures are accepted , I am happy. If not the life is going on.
I am sure that the screener team do a verry good job.
Some years ago I´ve got a rejection from a other agency with the screener comment: " Your picture is a spam" .
I pressed the button: delete my account without any comments. That´s it.

Also we talking about human factors from the screener, but nobody is talking about the human factors from the photographer´s including my self. Nobody is perfect!!

Our life is not only a picture.
Take it easy Erez

Best regards
Harry

[hdgrubb]

I make pictures for my self only, and not for JP.
That means, if the pictures are accepted , I am happy. If not the life is going on.

I think this is an appropriate comment for the situation.

All I had to do with this thread was read the title and username Here we go again....

Erez, I'm sure you are a great person and we all share a passion for aviation, but these melodramatic rants are boring and they get longer each time. I don't know why I even bothered chiming in.

I want to throw my wishes for a Happy New 2012 to everyone, by the way!

[ErezS]

Hello again to everyone,

Thanks to everyone who responded so far, on any kind of answer.

I prefer at this point not to respond to each personally, but in general, and briefly as far as I can ...

Many of the answers were very expected for me, because I know the style of the majority of the participants here. (not personally, but from the site).

On the other hand, I also have some "surprises" with some of the answers, some for good, others not so good...
I'm not sure that all who are reading the post above, are read the whole post, it is clear that not everyone has the patience ...

Some of the responders wrote really relevant things, others wrote really not relevant to the issue, for example: the answer with the numbers, it's really no relevant to the issue, and this is just one example.

I'm just very surprised (and this is a "bad point" in my opinion), that I have not seen any reference to the crucial issue that I raised in my message: The issue of the "Horizon unlevel".
I think that this issue is very problematic, I see many times (in the forum) that I'm not lonly with this issue, I know that this issue is a "whim" of some of the screeners, (and again: not all of them, I knowing it for sure), and I allow myself to thinking that my message, as I wrote above, is not intended to help only me, but to all of the other photographers here.

That's it for now.

With respect, and all the best to all,
Erez.

[seahawk]

Well,

you open this thread and in the first post, you make it obvious that you feel, that you are being treated unfairly and worse than other users by the screening crew, because one pic was rejected (correctly or not correctly does not matter for the point), yet you claim that the hundreds of pics we have been accepting do not matter?

And even in your reply you keep bashing the screening team, or at least everyone who disagrees with you.

So one final answer: If you do not like the screening team, do not like the service the site provides and think we are not appreciating your contribution enough, you might should take your photos to another service provider.

[Felipe Garcia]

Erez,

Let me ask you one thing. What is the general purpose of your big heartache / big disappointment / big sadness threads? I understand the individual points that you're making on this thread, but I fail to see where you're going in general. And no, this isn't a language issue, I just fail to see entirely where you're going with the post as a whole.

Second, whenever I reupload a photo that was previously rejected, I usually try to include in the comments that it was previously rejected for XXXXXXX, sometimes even the date of the rejection. I don't think I've gotten that many reuploads rejected, unless I messed up even more or missed something (there's been cases where the first screener missed a dust spot or some other minor thing).

I would have suggested that you appeal the rejections considered unfair, but, word has it that you appeal almost every rejection, so I feel like my advice wouldn't even work in the first place.

We all have different opinions. I sometimes come across photos that I think should not have made it to the database, and sometimes think that rejected photos were good. And the screeners feel otherwise sometimes. We're all humans and see things differently.

I don't see where you're going about not being in a hurry. In one of your previous dissapointment threads you mentioned having to wait another 18 days for the re-upload to get screened, but now if you get something rejected, you can fix it, upload it and have it screened again faster than it would take you to drink a case of beer, yet you're now complaining about this being too fast? So first the queue is too big and takes too long to have a reupload screened again (and I agree, with the average time of 17 days it would take over a month to get a photo accepted if it was originally rejected), but now that the screeners have brought down the queue to ~3500 and ~4 days then it's too fast?



Oh, and I apologize to the screeners for the bad images from PHX I submitted the past couple of weeks, I was shooting in conditions that were new for me and mostly messed up the exposure while processing.

[ErezS]

Well,

you open this thread and in the first post, you make it obvious that you feel, that you are being treated unfairly and worse than other users by the screening crew, because one pic was rejected (correctly or not correctly does not matter for the point), yet you claim that the hundreds of pics we have been accepting do not matter?

And even in your reply you keep bashing the screening team, or at least everyone who disagrees with you.

So one final answer: If you do not like the screening team, do not like the service the site provides and think we are not appreciating your contribution enough, you might should take your photos to another service provider.

Well Stefan,
What you write above is simply not true, to say the least. I think it's also disrespectful.
I have no any bad word about the site and/or about the team members, It's not true at all !
I'm not bashing anyone, even not everyone who disagree with me, NOT AT ALL !

It is very clear to all when we have any place with about 30 diferent people (the crew in this case) we also have about 30 different opinions ... It's very clearly even to me...

I wrote about an issue, about the problem, and in my opinion this is a big problem for many photographers in this site, and what I'm just trying, is to try to solve the big specific problem for the best to all.

You do not need to get upset, just please try to understand the person on the other side.
That's it.

By the way, in my mind, when we read anything from other people with different language and a different mentality, should we try with patience to understand what the other trying to explain.

Best regards & respect to all,
Erez.