This topic contains 21 replies, has 12 voices, and was last updated by 
hack1of2 11 years ago.
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When we were first caching, I’d enjoy looking at photos people added to their logs, and sometimes seeing those photos encouraged us to be sure to visit that site.
I know some still are really good about including photos with many of their cache logs, but I’m guilty of skipping that step more than I used to be. Why?
Social media. It seems like more often now, people add their photos on the various geocaching facebook-type sites and then it stops there. Am I dreaming this, or have others noticed a decline of photos in logs?
As an aside…..the other reason I don’t get as many photos added is my inefficiency or maybe perfectionism. To get my photos out of my camera and ready to post…anywhere….I have to download them, then I do my file compressing through Photoshop Elements, then I can add them. I take so many photos and maybe .05% ever make it anywhere…logs or facebook. Are there more efficient approaches? I don’t want to just dump a whole SD card onto a site, either. By the time I do any of this stuff, it’s all old news, anyway.
We take the camera along on every caching outing. Some of the photos get deleted as soon as we get home. The others are filed on the computer. We keep separate folders for different subjects. I just looked and we have 834 photos in our geocaching gallery. Not a lot by John Sudar’s standards, but a nice representation of where we have been. I do look at photos on others logs often. There are certain cachers that post scenic photos and we have found many caches to visit from seeing them. Being grandparents we also enjoy seeing photos of all of the kids and how they have grown since we started caching 8 years ago. I will agree that FB and other social medias have probably become more popular. I spend time looking at photos on FB and the lady I live with says I spend too much time there.
What has kept me from adding photos is the fact that you can’t add them on the initial log page. you have to log the cache first, then add the photo on a separate page. If it were on the initial log page, I’d be much more likely to remember to add it then waiting to do it on an entirely different screen.
Since every camera now is idiot proof and comes with a free phone attached to it and, at least in part due to social media, I think people might be starting to reach a point of picture overload. To me, it feels like nobody can do or say anything any more without producing a picture and frankly I’ve been a bit fatigued by it for some time. I wouldn’t be surprised if others are starting to feel the same way. Even on Facebook, it seems like increasingly the pictures I see are not originals but simply things that have been reposted/shared….or it’s people sharing family pictures with distant relatives.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think there’s a time and place for a good picture and I’m sure there always will be. Hopefully the drop off in production is simply an indication that people are getting more selective.
I find that to be a deterrent, too. I have discovered that if I do all my photo stuff ahead of time, I’ll remember to add them. Short term memory for that kind of thing is pretty limited past the age of 55! 😉
Since I was getting not much accomplished, I went and added my photos to cache logs from the weekend. In my gallery, it says we have 2298 images. Sadly in recent years, most of those are probably screen shots to qualify for some goofy challenge or other.
I am going to try to be a bit better about this now.
@Trekkin and Birdin wrote:
Since I was getting not much accomplished, I went and added my photos to cache logs from the weekend. In my gallery, it says we have 2298 images. Sadly in recent years, most of those are probably screen shots to qualify for some goofy challenge or other.
I am going to try to be a bit better about this now.
And how many are bird pictures?
Not…a single one. They were making my life difficult. Tree cover and nothing but chip calls. Little stinkers!
To reply to Cykada’s point….that is so much the truth! I have this annoying love/hate relationship with social media, to the point I tried to get out of it completely last fall. Turns out you really can’t. Anyway….I do enjoy seeing people’s photos of various significant events, cool nature sightings and that kind of thing. I’m not sure why I need to see hundreds of basically the same thing, but I suspect that’s partly due to the way the phones handle this stuff. I still use an actual camera, so that helps me be a bit more critical about what I do post. I can’t just snap and send with it. Plus, it was all those early years of photography training at the hand of my discerning father that has me still being pretty critical of what I choose to share.
@Trekkin and Birdin wrote:
I have discovered that if I do all my photo stuff ahead of time, I’ll remember to add them.
That’s what I do. I usually take so long to write logs, so before I do any of those, I will get the photos ready to go. I dump everything from my camera into iPhoto on the computer, then make a file there of the ones I like, then get those all cropped and edited before exporting the whole file to a place that I can upload them from. (Photos are resized smaller during that process.)
I usually add lots of photos to my logs, but I don’t mention them in what I write, so I hope the COs know us enough by now to check on the cache pages when they have gotten logs from us. If not, they are there for others who visit the cache page logs to see. Sorry, folks… never any spoilers. 😉
I admit that when I do take pictures while caching, they all go on Facebook, not with my log. Maybe if Groundspeak allowed us to upload photos WITH the log instead of having to go back and edit the log, I might be inclined to put up ohotos.
You don’t have to edit the log to add photos. Submit your log, then choose “upload image”. Choose the photo file you want to upload, add a caption if you want, submit, and it’s done. The complications come from how you yourself have to upload a photo…. what you use for the electronics and software.
I know I personally choose many of the caches I go after by looking at the photos. A cache page with a photo is often the stating spot for further exploration towards deciding whether or not I go after the cache. If there isn’t a photo on the cache page I’ll often check to see if people have uploaded images to see if it’s a cache I want to pursue.
I follow a procedure similar to Mrs. Sandlanders using iPhoto to download the photos on my computer, picking ones that I like or that show the enjoyment of the journey. I tend to be compulsive and often do them the evening of the cache journey, numbering them with a number that corresponds to the cache I found. I put them all in to a folder on my desktop with the date I found them and create a document for each cache also numbered in the order I found them. As I said, compulsive…
When it comes time to load the finds on my account, it makes for a straight forward rapid process. By doing this all the night of the finds, the interesting features of the journey are much fresher in my mind.
I really like to include a photo(s) especially if I found the cache well done and enjoyable. The unfortunate thing is I often leave my cache bag in the vehicle with my camera although I’m getting better.
I love photos! I’ve uploaded 2121 in my 4.5 years caching. Not too shabby. In fact, I think that I’m going to go and upload a few more right now…
Not all who wander are lost. -J.R.R. Tolkien
Since I almost never use the website to log caches, the app helps encourage pics by doing it while you post. I just don’t take many pictures at all.
The best sig is no sig.
Facebook claims that they have 350 million pictures uploaded a day.
I wonder how many are uploaded to GC.com.
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