Some statistics for the photo competitions

[Isabelle Prondzynski]

Looking back over several years of the photo competitions, it may be interesting to compile a few relevant statistics.

I have just done this for 2018 and 2019 (attached).

[pete cain]

Isabelle , do you know if it is the same voters  & contributers  most times,? (don't go deep to confirm ) just wondering.

[Isabelle Prondzynski]

This is just the information that is available in the forum. We cannot see who has voted, but at the end of the month, we can see each time how many voters have participated in the poll. In the gallery, we can see who the contributors of the photos are. I could go through those for the past two years also and provide statistics on the photographers. Seen over a longer period, we have more contributors than you might think.

As regards the voters, my own suspicion would be that they are probably the same every month, but I very much hope that I am wrong and that we can draw on a much larger pool of voters.

[cunardqueen]

Gosh, interesting to see. It was higher than l imagined.  but the voting seems consistant..

[June Ingram]

It is fairly consistent.  Just too bad it is not higher. 

[Isabelle Prondzynski]

I have now worked out photo entries by individual Forum member, for the years 2018 and 2019, as well as updating the table I had already posted (we had one final extra voter this month!).

The names in the tables for 2018 and 2019 are initially the names of Forum members who entered photos in 2018. You will notice quite a few blanks in 2019, but also, at the bottom of the list, three members who entered photos in 2019 but not in 2018.

It was quite an interesting exercise!

[Isabelle Prondzynski]

Let me try and draw some statistics out of this table.

We have 19 months there, i.e. a maximum of 19 x 3 = 57 photos would be possible per Forum member.

The highest numbers of photos have been entered by :

• 57 Isabelle Prondzynski
• 54 Thomas Hypher
• 49 Cunarder Man
• 43 Cunardqueen
• 41 Hamburger
• 38 Lynda Bradford
• 36 Stowaway 2k
• 22 Pete Hamill
• 21 Barumfox
• 17 Pete Cain

Another statistic is the number of participants.

In 2018, we had a total of 38 Forum members who submitted one or more photos during the course of the year. In 2019 (7 months so far), these have been 20. We seem to have lost some members who entered their photos on an occasional basis (and then often won the competitions!).

[Isabelle Prondzynski]

We seem to have lost some members who entered their photos on an occasional basis (and then often won the competitions!).

Looking at the entries for the current photo competition (August 2019), I see that we have 7 participants so far, all of whom are listed above under the ten most frequent participants.

Looking forward to entries by those members who do not contribute so often, or have never contributed before, so that we include more photographers and their work here!

[pete cain]

That's really interesting Isabelle, thank you so much for the ferreting around, I hope it wasn't too much work
 (if it was you wouldn't say )

[Lynda Bradford]

I had produced some statistics on the people who had entered the photo competition the most times, so as to award top contributors a prize of the Photo Book of the ten years of photos. 

I have attached the spreadsheet for you to see the numbers.  Note - this is a count by person and not the number of photos entered by person

You can see that three members entered photos for the competition more than 100 times, 4 members entered 50 to 99 times and 8 members 20 to 49 times. 

There are also a high number of people who have only entered photos one or twice, but what is important is that our forum members enter their QE2 photos for all to see. 

[Peter Mugridge]

I've entered relatively few because in my case the photos are pre-digital which means scanning them, but as they're on matt paper, it's not easy to get a high degree of sharpness for a scan, even on 300dpi or higher.

It's rather ironic that matt paper, which is better quality for looking at actual photos, yields lower quality scans than gloss paper does.

[Lynda Bradford]

That's interesting about the matt format not giving such a good result when scanned.  People who sailed on QE2 prior to when we had digital cameras, may have lot's of interesting photos in albums but have never got around to scanning them.  So there could be a treasure trove of QE2 photos waiting to be found. I had used a negative scanner for lot's of my non digital photos and this produced good results.

Whether you support the competition by entering photos or voting for your three favourite pictures, we appreciate the effort of forum members in keeping the memory alive. 

[cunardqueen]

That's interesting about the matt format not giving such a good result when scanned.  People who sailed on QE2 prior to when we had digital cameras, may have lot's of interesting photos in albums but have never got around to scanning them.  So there could be a treasure trove of QE2 photos waiting to be found. I had used a negative scanner for lot's of my non digital photos and this produced good results.   

I remember in the days of Ocean Pictures being told at the photographer's kiosk that the photos we buy won't fade for at least 25 years.

[Pete Hamill]

I would say the majority of my photos are prints mounted in albums and on the one or two occasions that I decided to try and scan the pictures to enter them the albums and mounts suffered damage so I just don't attempt it any more.
All of my submissions are from the (my) digital era - 2003 onwards. This means unfortunately anything I have between 1996 and mid 2003 are locked away in fragile albums unlikely to be entered into the competitions. 

[Isabelle Prondzynski]

Pete, with my iPhone, I can scan pictures or text (using "Notes") without removing them from where they are, and I can even scan things that are bigger than A4, which my normal scanner would not be able to do. You might not get the absolutely perfect quality, but that does not matter so much. Even for the calendar, if the photos are not in perfect resolution, I just use them in a small size, and they come out very well. It would be lovely if you could give it a try!