Eight Tips for Submitting Pictures to Gurushots
(1) Was the subject the brick wall or the girl? The brick wall is in focus . . .
(2) Gurushot unable to resize small image due to file format.
(2) Gurushots upsized a small image to fit the interface area and blurring and artifacts have occurred.
(3) submitting pictures sideways or upside down is probably not a good idea.
(4) A cell phone (smartphone) screen scrape submission to Gurushots.
(6) Probably would have picked up more votes if posted in landscape orientation.
(7) Horizon is on a visually annoying lean to the right.
(7) Verticals are not vertical.
This feels a bit like deja vu to me. Like I have done a very similar post at some point in the past. But, after a quick check back, I did not find a similar post to this.
I am not associated in any way with the game-runners at Gurushots.
What follows are not tips about how to take photographs. These are just my tips about submitting photographs into Gurushot challenges.
These tips make the basic assumption that the reason people submit photographs to Gurushots is to win the challenge they joined by getting the most possible votes.
It is worth keeping in mind that a click from a Master is worth 8 votes verses a click from Rookie which only gets the photograph 2 votes. So it is good to get Masters, or players higher up the skill level ranking, to like and vote for your picture(s). These tips should help that happen.
Ensure the subject is in good focus.
Unless there is some artistic reason for it (and I honestly can’t think of why this would be), the subject of the photograph really does need to be in good focus, if not sharp focus.
Photographs where the obvious subject is not in focus will struggle to get votes.
I have had to pass on so many photographs that would otherwise have been worth clicking on because the subject was just not in focus.
As a minimum make your photo submissions at least 1,600 pixels on the long axis.
Why do this? A large percentage of people using Gurushots, myself included, use a ‘full sized’ computer monitor and preview pictures full screen. When the Gurushots interface enlarges a smaller sized picture to put them on the screen it does not result in a look good. Not at all.
Dependent on the format of the picture, the Gurushots interface will [a] either not enlarge the image to fit the screen (due to hard x,y settings included in the saved file), or [b] the enlargement will look very gritty/noisy and likely exhibit edge artifacts due to the over-enlargement.
Hence, such photos are unlikely to get clicks from those of us who use full sized desktop monitors and this becomes more true as the voting power of a click goes up (i.e., a Master is more likely to use a computer monitor than someone at Rookie level).
While I suggest 1,600 (i.e., 1,600 pixels on the long side) as the minimum, I post all my pictures at 1,800 pixels on the long axis (i.e., if it is a landscape orientation shot the the I make it 1,800 pixels wide, and if it is a portrait orientation I make it 1,800 tall).
Ensure you upload your photos ‘the right way up’.
I estimate in that in every four or five voting runs I do there will be at least one photograph that has been uploaded sideways or upside down.
Yeah . . . upside down and sideways uploaded pictures are not going to get many votes from anyone.
Screen scrapes from a smartphone??
Unless the Challenge was “Screen scrapes from your phone”—which I have never seen—then seriously, why would you submit a screen scrape from a smartphone (cell phone for American readers) to a serious photography challenge site like Gurushots?
Such submissions cannot expect to get many votes from other photographers in the challenge. Certainly not from anyone above about Challenger status.
Keep the file size to around 1.5MB
As people who are voting scroll through the images, the larger file sizes take longer to load. If a photograph file is too large, say greater than about 10MB, then—depending on line speeds and other variables—it can take too long for the interface to put the picture up for someone clicking through and voting.
When this occurs the person may scroll right on past it rather than wait for the image to be loaded and rendered (appear), which then results in no votes no matter how awesome the shot may have been.
It is my experience it is optimal to save an image that is about 1,600 pixels on the longest edge (refer point 2 above) to a JPG file size of around 1.5MB. Any smaller and you are risking colour rainbows (see next point) and/or artifacts occurring in the image.
Be careful when posting portrait orientation images
It’s a basic fact that square or landscape orientation images appeal more to the human brain/eye. We humans just like seeing things ‘wide’.
Unless your photograph obviously looks better in portrait mode, or was set up to be specifically viewed in portrait mode, or is an actual portrait, then the odds are that—when it comes to increasing your chances of getting votes—it is probably going to be better to post it in a landscape or square orientation.
Verticals and horizontals
Generally us humans like to see things that should be vertical as vertical, and things that should be horizontal as horizontal.
There are exceptions to every rule, but if your picture contains obvious verticals or horizontals that are not as they should be (i.e., being true vertical or horizontal), then—in the interests of improving the chance of getting more votes—give some consideration to remediating that before posting it up.
Beware of over-compression causing ‘rainbows’
If you apply too much compression when saving your photograph then you will get ‘rainbows’ occurring.
Such a rookie mistake is likely to cost you a lot of votes no matter how good the photograph might otherwise be.
Over-compression often results from a photograph being saved, opened, and saved again too many times. Each time a JPG format file is opened and saved then the compression is applied again—to an image that was already compressed.
Another common cause of compression rainbows is using a photograph that was sent via SMS because sending a photograph via SMS causes the picture to be severely compressed—based on the assumption by the AI in the phone that the picture is only for viewing on the small phone screen (so why not save space and time by applying hard compression).
Example of compression ‘rainbows’—most noticeable in the sky.
Some of the images used here were clipped from Gurushots and then the size reduced to 500 pixels on the x axis. If I have used a picture of yours and you are not happy then please let me know in the comments (no account is required to be created to leave a comment) and I will remove it.
[Last updated: 29/11/2020]