Beach Hillock

Beach Hillock, originally uploaded by Maciomhair.

Barbed Wire Cattle

Barbed Wire Cattle, originally uploaded by Maciomhair.

StumbleUpon and Photography

Photography is a verymuch abused category within Stumble. Any old image from a snapshot to a scribble done in MS Paint gets lumped into this category by lazy categorisers. Stumble is one of my favourite webtools, but I am going to have to abandon it due to how poorly it deals with my main interest - photography.

See below ten examples of why Stumble needs new, deeper photography categories so that the junk can be filtered apart and those who want to investigate photography in more depth could look up categories such as history of photography, artistic photography, photographic techniques etc. In the meantime, we have to put up with the below. All ten of these were picked one after the other stumbling through the Photo category.

1) Titleless Image



What this has to do with photography is anyone's guess. It may be a photograph, but it looks much more likely that it is a photocopy. I am sure you will agree, Henri Cartier Bresson would be very jealous of such an image.

2) Direct link to a photo - No page, no title, no photographer info.

This one is a rather good image, but how would we look further into this? Where to go to get more from the artist? What's the story behind it?

3) Direct link to a photo - Similar to number 2 in its problems, but with this one, you can fiddle the URL to find a bit further back - but you shouldn't really have to.

4) Direct link to a photo - Again, a direct link to a photo, but fiddling the URL does take you somewhere this time. Again, you shouldn't have to.



5) ZerFunny

Fair enough, a proper link at last. However, this is a website that is supposed to be about funny things and which uses images - as do most websites - to illustrate this. It has, however, been dumped in the Stumble photo category as the original stumbler couldn't think of anything better.

Plus, the page has direct links to NSFW material.

6) The Top The Best

An actual photoblog! Wonders will never cease. This would benefit from a photoblog category on Stumble.

7) Direct link to a photo - Yet again, no way to go any further. Not that you would want to, it's a photo of writing - a motivational message. Surely there's a better category for this? At least, however, this is a photo. There have been a lot of these cropping up lately which are just screenprints of text on a black background.

8) Total Mania

At least this seems to be some sort of photo collection. But I doubt whether serious photography was the intention of the website (not talking about the actual photographs).

9) Link to a Google Search!

Surely they could have gone to the trouble of clicking the little "x" for "Remove this frame"? And if only the first article is about photography, why not click that one further click to stumble the right page?

10) Direct Link to Photo

Shouldn't this be filed under cute animals rather than under photography?

It is clear that Stumble does not work for photography as there are many, many people who think that any picture is by its nature photography and not something else.

Frog Eye

Frog Eye, originally uploaded by Maciomhair.