Laura E.

There are so many things that I like about ViewBug. I am a senior with a strong passion for photography ever since I was a kid. ViewBug provides me the opportunity to keep learning from my peers, communicate with my peers and take full advantage of the enormous amount of data that the organizers of the site provide.

I especially like that hundreds of thousands of photographers at every level are volunteering their time to review and award photos they judge as good. It is especially impressive to see so many photographers with inspiration scores equal or higher than their own number of awards, given that the inspiration category is a good measure of how much effort they have put into awarding others. It is that effort that has a lot to do with the site's success.

The continually updated stats on our photos is extremely useful in helping us photographers figure out how we are doing. One additional piece of data I would like to see included is the percentage of peer awards relative to the total number of views for each photo. Having 35 peer awards for one photo and 20 peer awards for another for example does not mean that the one with the higher number is doing better. If the one with 35 awards has received hundreds of views while the one with 20 awards has only had 20 views the one with the 20 awards is really much better in terms of how it is being perceived.

It has been not quite two years since I joined ViewBug. When it comes to being awarded the ViewBug judges and volunteers have been very generous. It definitely has kept me highly motivated. It has been a bit of a struggle, but so far I have been able to stay in the top 10 percent category in terms of popularity week after week with very few exceptions. I have acquired over 11 k awards, won over 30 challenges or been a contest finalist, and accumulated over 500,000 points. The highlight was winning a Sony a3000 camera in a photo contest where the subject was Minimalism. It felt a bit like winning the lottery given that there were over 18,000 entries.

A big thank you to all the ViewBug staff and your very dedicated army of volunteers.

Paul J.