PIJIN SUPPORTS PHOTOGRAPHYIt's a hard life being skilled at something. Often, a skill is something that makes you pots of
money. Music, writing, photography, all these careers are flooded with
useless individuals trying to break through, and spoiling it for those
who actually have talent. Often all the talented want is recognition,
somebody telling them that they've done a good job. And, finally,
something of that nature has evolved, in the form of a website.
Pijin is an online site dedicated to the preservation of photography as
a talent-based career, and to some extent hobby. To give an overview of
what it does, it basically acts a notice board. You place you picture
on the site, and people see it. What makes it so special? It has a
brilliantly designed layout, making for a stylish yet easy-to-use
interface, but it's also because of the way you get your photographs
onto the site.
You have to rate other photos. You create a portfolio on the site, for free, and as you rate,
comment, and even draw, on the other artists' photos, you gain points.
When you have enough points, you are allowed to upload, or view another
person's portfolio.
The wonderful part about this system is that it eliminates, as I said earlier, mediocrity. If your
photo gets rated to low, it appears less and less when you cycle
through photos (you choose a winner between two random photos each
time). If your photo isn't great, it ruins your portfolio, and it is
certainly very embarrassing when you receive some of the rather painful
comments that flit around the site.
One of the other intriguing parts of pijin, a unique aspect, is the way
the rating is subdivided into two sections: the brief and the freestyle
modes. In brief, one must work with a certain theme, and present a
photograph which ties in with it. This encourages rather bizarre
photography, in the best sense of the word. Themes vary from
fascinating faces to the photographer and his camera. The freestyle is
the place where you place your photos that don’t fall into the current
theme, which changes often. This is probably the more exciting, because
it shows a diverse range of skills, many of which are explained for the
benefit of less-experienced artists.
Lastly, I must just advise anybody who reads this to take note and try
it out. It is an exceptionally well run site, with monitoring so the
photos and comments don't offend, and the members are very welcoming. I
must just apologise for using the word photos so much.