chicagophotography

I've reset "Featured" so that submissions are subject to a vote, which in this context means "subject to my approval", because currently, I don't have anybody volunteering to moderate, and I don't know any of you - yet. I'd like to change that. A good first step would be for the rest of you to start posting to this blog and get a discussion going. Give me some sense of who you are before I start passing out authority.

We have 14 people here, so maybe that sounds a little funny, but the companion group on Flickr has roughly 2000 people, and I've been encouraging the members of that group to join this one, as well.

I don't log in as often as I'd like, so if you post something to featured now, the request might expire before I see it. I'll try to not let that happen, but no promises. What I would recommend that you do, instead, is post to one of the galleries, which is a good thing for people to be doing, anyway. Instead of throwing everything into one pile, let's make use of the functionality DeviantArt gave us, and try to put some order into this.

"I meant to do that!" No, I didn't.

I noticed that you were all submitting all of your photos to "Featured", and none to the other galleries, and was wondering why that was. Oops. I thought I had those permissions turned on. Well, now I do.

The group is here for your use, so if you find that you're running into a roadblock, I hope you'll feel free to tell me. It almost certainly wasn't put there intentionally.

If you can't, please tell me. This blog will be serving the same role that the discussion section would on a group on Flickr, so please don't hesitate to post on topic material which you find interesting.

Please read this post, titled "Images acceptable on this group".

In general, what I'm saying is that the photographs must be taken in the Chicago metropolitan area (Cook, DuPage, Will, Kane, Lake and McHenry counties in Illinois, Lake County in Indiana), and be devoid of offensive material. In the post, I specify some of what I consider to be offensive, but remember - this is a group, not a court of law. If your common sense should have told you not to do something, you shouldn't do it, even if I haven't thought of posting a rule against it. I do reserve the right to eject members "for any reason or for no reason at all", not because I enjoy throwing people out, but to put an end to any attempt at lawyering.

This group is like a room in my virtual home. Be a good guest in it, and I'll be a good host, and how it is that I define being a good guest really isn't that surprising. Just think about the words "moderately traditional values", and remember that I'm a Conservative Jewish guy from the suburbs, and almost everything should become fairly obvious.

A few points:

1. Please DO NOT use this group to advertise your own group, forum or site without getting permission from the modstaff, first. Permission will not generally be given until after we've gotten to know you. A great way to do that is to actively post to the discussion section of the group, and put more images into the pool - we always appreciate that. Going to some of the local meetings, once we get those going, wouldn't be bad, either.

2. Stay as courteous as the other person lets you be, and know that I will use my common sense in enforcing this rule - I do know what the word "needling" means.

3. Know that this group is run by a Centrist, who ran out of patience with the abusive behavior of political extremists of all varieties, ages ago. If you want to fight for Political Correctness, please take it elsewhere. I don't want to hear about it.

4. Please DO use the discussion section to talk about your work and subject matter, in a responsible manner - don't do anything that you wouldn't want to see everybody doing.

For example, creating a new thread for each photo you make would be very wrong. We have thousands of photos in the pool - picture what the board would look like if we had a thread for each of them. Creating a vanity thread in which you just post your images (without further discussion) wouldn't be appropriate for this group, either. But let's say that you find an old, half forgotten church, spend an afternoon exploring it from all angles, and do a thread embedding those images, talking about the choices you made, and maybe telling us something about the history of the church and its congregation?

That would be great. Or maybe you were walking along the lakeshore, saw a rare bird fly up on shore, and were completely fascinated by this, because ornithology is your passion. Doing a thread with a lot of images of your find, along with some text in which you teach us something about the species would be fine. Documenting it with footnotes and links to relevant resources would be fantastic.

Tell us a story, or give us something for the mind as well as for the eye. Give us some real substance, sharing your interests or what you care about.

5. Avoid political discussions. I'm not waiting to pounce on you if you break this one, but I've run into more than a few people in such discussions who seemed to belong in psychiatric wards. We don't need people like that here. I hesitate to say that this group is about lighthearted fun, because that almost sounds like a promise that no unpleasant subject will ever arise, and I can't make that promise. I will say that drama is not what this group is intended to be about, and political discussions seem to almost never be about anything else on DeviantArt.

If you stumble into the subject, in the course of talking about something else, make a good faith effort to stumble back on out as soon as you gracefully can.

Very wide open. You can get creative and manipulate images to your heart's content with the software or hardware of your choosing, and as long as what you're showing us portrays something you saw in the Chicago metropolitan area, and it is not an adult image. I don't insist on everything being childsafe, but it does have to be adolescent safe - if you'd hesitate to post something on the bulletin board in a high school, please don't post it here.

Where we'd have to take your word on it, that the image was snapped in the Chicago area - say, if you were showing us something taken in your living room - I probably will take your word for it if you list yourself as living in the Chicago area, and probably won't otherwise. But please don't submit a lot of those.

Some of what is not cool on this group:

1. Nudity, even of the tastefully done, artistic variety.


2. Anything sexually suggestive. If you wouldn't think of posting something to a high school bulletin board or showing it on a PG rated movie, definitely don't post it here.


3. Violent images, even simulated violence - any image in which grievous bodily harm has been done. Please post any crime scene or motorcycle crash images somewhere else.

Common sense will be used in the application of this rule, so please, no lawyering on it. I don't want somebody writing in to me going "Joe, Joe, that woman posted a picture of her son, and he had ALS at the time, and surely it was doing him grievous boldily harm". Let's be real about this - you do know what I mean, so please don't pretend that you don't.


4. Images portraying or promoting the activities of some hate group, past or present. The John Birch society is not a hate group, no matter how much you may dislike them. The Nazis and KKK are.


5. Anything that's going to annoy DeviantArt or law enforcement.


6. Last, but certainly not least - no blasphemy on this group. If somebody wants to blow his nose on a Torah scroll or dip a crucifix in urine - and I know somebody will, somewhere - he can go do that somewhere else.

If you don't believe in G-d, that's fine and you're still absolutely welcome on this group, just show a little respect for the sensibilities of those of us who do. I'm very serious about this, and will not be in an "I'm OK, you're OK" kind of place if this rule is disregarded.

Please remember that this is not a democracy or an anarchy, but a benevolent dictatorship - think of it as the virtual equivalent of a room in my home. I'm not going to throw people out lightly, because I really would like to have guests, but if somebody starts smashing the family china, I'm not going to take a poll before showing him out. If somebody does misbehave, please be patient because I don't log in every day, but do know that when I show up, I will take action. Please don't yell back or otherwise feed the trolls. Just send me a message and let me take care of them - and anybody who supported them.

I hope that answers all policy related questions.