Question: Why hasn't my photo been featured on your site?
I submitted a photo to you several months ago, and I've never seen it on your site. Why haven't you used it?
Answer: I receive hundreds of photo submittals from my site every month, and many of them do not make the cut. Some are good photos but so specialized in nature that it may be several more months before they appear. A good example of this is a Christmas Cats picture submitted in February. Because of the volume of photos I receive, I need to keep moving forward, not backward. Here are the top reasons your photo has not yet made it online:
- You failed to follow the Photo Submittal Guidelines
I'd venture that 60-70% of the photos I receive are sent gratuituously, because someone didn't see or chose to ignore the Photo Submittal Guidelines links that are scattered all over the photo galleries. Many times there is no information whatsoever about the cat, just attached pictures. - You used online photo-sharing sites to send the pictures, rather than as attachments to the email
These sites, such as Kodak's, are great for sharing pictures, but sometimes the pictures expire after a given time. If I don't get to your photo for a month or more, I'll just get an error message. - Your photo was "Thumbelina-sized."
Some of them are so small that I can barely see the cat, and would be dwarfed alongside the full-sized pictures in my galleries. I sometimes respond when this happens, but sometimes don't see the photos again until months later. - You embedded the photo in a Word document
These images almost always are in bitmap format and when opened in a graphics program look absolutely terrible - pixilated, and transparent appearing in large patches. - The photo was generally of a poor quality.
I realize that not everyone has state-of-the-art digital cameras, but some pictures that I receive are so fuzzy and unfocused that they really do not do justice to the cats they depict. I will make exceptions occasionally, usually for cat pictures submitted for the Memorials section. It's hard enough to have recently lost a cat, without being sent off on a hunt for a better picture. - Your spam-filtering server bounced my auto-reply email
I use an auto-reply form to request submitters to use the Photo Guidelines . Sometimes I get a message from the server (Earthlink is a good example) requiring me to "jump through hoops" in order for my message to be delivered. I routinely delete these messages. I'd rather spend my time working with the photos that qualify that juggling email. - I just haven't gotten to your photo yet.
Photos are a huge part of my site and I work on creating new galleries and updating older ones several hours a week. But I do need to spend the bulk of my time creating other content too (such as this FAQ). If it's been a really long time, by all means, send me a note and I'll try to personally answer it. But I have over 50 email folders just for photos, so I may have to ask you to resend it. I do try to give these requests priority.
