Jessica Kuligowski's dashboard

Just seconding what Laura said. It's definitely come to our attention that people have started doing things like creating personal posts where they just show the photos they currently have up for vote to draw attention to them, or edit their bio with links to their currently-votable photos, and it was a kind of "Oh, DUH, there should be functionality for this, of course!" moment for us.

#2 is definitely a great idea. I posted in another forum about the general idea we have there. Implementing this would solve the problems of photos getting buried and also give folks a better way to self promote:

"Vote-for-me self-promotion: We've certainly noticed this too, and we think this is a problem that can be solved through design of the website. We have plans to put people's submitted photos automatically on the first page of their profile and make other changes to help them self-promote in more useful ways."

I agree with you completely Paul!

I try not to look at the votes. I did so once in a theme and I just set myself up for disappointment. I kind of knew it beforehand. In the end, it comes down to the best images for the theme - and making a concise, coherent set of those images. The ones that on their own fit the theme best might not make sense together - say, too many images that are spectacular but too similar. (Which I felt was almost the case for the "gravity powered" theme and the snowboarders)

I TOTALLY would love to see #2 implemented. That's such a great idea and would fix woes I've had for a while! I've been at JPG for almost a year and a half (YIKES.) and as such I have something like 40 pages of photos (OMG. haha). I have a few photos that keep popping up with new comments and favourites, but I think most of them are in themes (and are firmly planted there, because I think they fit the theme perfectly). I'd love a way to flag a priority on things. But I can't think of a way to do all of this without it getting too cluttered. Fortunately that's not my job. ;)

i don't think i agree with #1. firstly, JPG uses the "average" number of votes since otherwise photos entered at the begining would have a huge advantage over photos entered near the end of the theme. secondly, many of the photos that are published have few favorites and few votes. the JPG staff does an AMAZING job of finding THE best photos for publication. don't worry so much about where your photo stands vote-wise compared to the others. if you post a great photo that fits the theme, it will get published.

i do think that your suggestion #2 is a great idea. i do feel that photos that are on the latter pages of a photographer's profile do not get the same views as photos that are at the top. it would be a nice feature if JPG would show the 3 images that are entered into the current issue's voting themes to somehow be displayed on page 1.

Paul Lavallee
jpgmag.com/people/mylatehope