+ 1,000,000 to this.......
I can understand a single long-running thread for a brand or a single camera. What I really find unnecessary are the endless new threads "Camera X goes to the beach" with 2 or 3 shots. First, those shots of the beach could have been taken with any camera, and secondly, if people enjoy beach shots, why not just put them in a thread full of other beach shots. I find it strange (and a bit disheartening) that when I visit a camera-specific image thread (and I'll just use Lecia as an example because I noticed it the other day when I popped my head in......but it is all of them) that the thanks beneath each photo are nearly all from others who own the camera. Think about that when you go to share your images in a camera-specific thread. You are sharing them because you want them to be seen......right? Sharing them in a camera-specific thread will likely get them seen by the handful of people who own the same camera that you do.
I don't know how to solve that problem. For me, I'd love to see every image posted and I can linger on the ones I like and fly past the rest of them. But all these little segregated groups of photos are kinda bonkers for those of us who are camera brand agnostic.
I think this is a potentially big discussion in it's own right, and maybe deserves it's own thread...
My personal policy (well, not really so formal as a policy, but you get my drift) regarding posting photos has changed quite a bit over my time here.
Early on, I was just getting back into photography and was pretty enamored of what I could do with all of this digital gear, and I tended to post damn near anything with any excuse, anywhere it looked like it might make sense. And if I didn't see a good place to do it, I'd just start my own thread. Over time, I've grown less enamored of my own stuff (although it's probably better than it was back when I loved it all - I've just grown more discriminating). Now I generally look for the appropriate place to put something if I want to post a few shots. Mostly I go by topic in the image forums, and usually try to append my shots to a long running thread if there's on that's even remotely on point. But sometimes I feel an obligation to a particular camera and also post shots in that camera's "sample images" thread. I tend to do this almost any time I shoot something worth sharing with the Nikon Coolpix A, because that camera gets relatively little love and keeping the sample image gallery going is a good way to keep bringing some small amount of attention to it. And, much more rarely these days, if I do some extensive bit of shooting on a holiday or occasion that I feel is out of the ordinary enough, I'll start my own thread about it. I've done a few of these for extended shooting trips that went on quite a while and seemed quite well received. When I spent a month in New York in 2012 and a month on the Amalfi Coast of Italy last summer, I kept long running threads with a few images almost every day. People seemed to like them both so I kept them going through the ends of each trip. But I do less and less of that, as I haven't done anything like it in a while. If I do another trip like those sometime in the future, I'll probably try a similar approach and see how it goes...
For example, I was at the shore for nearly all of July. I posted a lot of material, mostly in various "sunrise" or "sunset" or "clouds" or "beach scenes" threads - whatever already existed that I thought an appropriate place. A few of them I also put in a particular camera's sample gallery. And I think I may have started one dedicated thread on a bunch of shots I did over a couple of days in Atlantic City, although I don't actually remember if I did here or not... Just yesterday I had a few shots from a walk at my local agricultural perserve and I posted them under "color shots of nature" or some such long running thread. When I have a few new street shots, I'll put 'em in the very long "real street thread" or whatever it's called these days.
And what I've found is that when you just stick a few photos at the end of a long running thread, just a few people see them, usually those who have been contributing to that thread pretty regularly. There's usually very little if any direct response. On the rare occasion I start a new thread about a particular photo shoot I did, whether the images are good or mediocre, it tends to get a lot more looks and a lot more comments. I don't like to start these very often though because having done a lot of them early on, it started to feel like an attention hog move after a while. So I do it rarely these days and much of what I do post is somewhere here for posterity, but is basically lost and largely unseen. Which is all OK, but that experience runs sort of counter to the idea of limiting the new thread to just show a few new photos of "camera X does flowers" or something like that. Although I've tried to stop doing much of this myself, I do tend to open those threads more often than some of the longer running topic specific threads or some of the camera specific threads.
I don't know if there's a solution to this problem, or if it's even a problem. But it's something I've thought about and tried to change how I approach. And I'm ok with not getting much attention for my shots by doing it this way. But I have learned that on the off chance I have something I really want to get out there, I have to start a new thread for it to get it seen. I'm sure I'm not the only one who notices this...
-Ray