Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Concert photoshoot project (ID: 22840082)

Endorsement from Powerek38 (talk)

Wojciech has established himself as Poland's leading Wikiphotographer specializing in live music performances. His trip to Eurovision 2024 in Sweden demonstrated his potential to produce valuable work on an international level. He is frequently granted access to events on equal terms with photojournalists from major media outlets, providing him with opportunities that are typically difficult for most Wikimedia volunteers to obtain. He diligently uploads all his work to Commons, significantly enriching the platform with high-quality content. His photos are also reused in various projects, such as the official Wikimedia Polska calendar for 2025. Furthermore, the detailed cost estimate he provided appears both realistic and reasonable.

--Powerek38 (talk) 14:57, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Endorsement from Natalia Ćwik (talk)

The proposal is in line with the mission of Wikimedia. Implementation of the project will enrich the Wikimedia Commons platform in particular. The user is known for the quality of his edits. This is a valuable proposal that will raise the profile of Wikimedia.

--Natalia Ćwik (talk) 09:56, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello Wojciech Pędzich, and thanks for your proposal focused on capturing high quality images across a number of music events in Europe. Please see my questions and comments below:

• Thanks for providing context on your history of contributions to Wikimedia Commons, and I appreciate reading the support from some of your peers with respect to this work, and your reputation for high quality photographs for biographical content is clear.
• Can you confirm what, if any, movement roles you have with any current movement committees or affiliates?
• In terms of improving content on Wikimedia Commons, have you completed any assessment in terms of whether expected attendees are in need of new, high quality images?
• It is not typical for us to fund proposals that consist of a single person's activities and contributions, even when those contributions are high quality ones. Movement funds are prioritized for work that support broader volunteer engagement.
• Additionally, we usually do not fund proposals that only focus on uploads to Wikimedia Commons in terms of its content outcomes. While I acknowledge that the work of photographing major events, planning for those activities, and uploading those images to Commons with relevant descriptions is nontrivial, these projects tend to have low impact compared to projects that make efforts to meaningfully integrate those images onto relevant Wikimedia projects.
• Is it possible to revise this proposal such that 1) I can get a better idea of how these activities address known gaps in coverage of its attendees, 2) there is broader community engagement around some project activities, and 3) that there is a component of the project that supports the integration of your work into other Wikimedia projects? It may be necessary to remove some events you planned to attend to support these changes, or to extend the schedule for the project.

Please let me know if you have any questions or needs for clarity around my feedback. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 23:05, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Dear Chris,

thank you for your explanations and questions. I will address them one by one below, rather than cutting in between your paragraphs.

I appreciate the sentiments raised in answer to voices of support – apart from internal Wikimedia use, my photos are also routinely used by one of Poland’s major “golden oldies” radio station's web portal, Radio Złote Przeboje, always with attribution and a proper CC footer, up to 50 uses a month. This speaks volumes about their care of use of free-licensed material and their diligence in searching through Commons.

Regarding your question about my Movement positions, currently, I hold the position of the CEE Hub’s Steering Committee member. After my resignation from AffCom, I have not held any roles in the Foundation’s committees. As stated on my Meta userpage, I am contracted by the Foundation to do translation and interpretation work, to provide a complete transparency disclaimer.

Assessments are not easy to perform within the timeframe of the grant proposal. Many festivals, such as the Mystic Festival (local to the city I call home, Gdańsk, but very reputable with top-tier heavy metal stars such as Danzig, Bruce Dickinson or Megadeth attending recently) have only recently begun to publish the names of subsequent headliners. Summer Dying Loud has not published any names yet for their early September event, nor has 3-Majówka, although out of the 40 or so performers I expect a few names to be repeated from any of my earlier shoots there. Please note that when raising my skills of taking photos, investing in equipment, and being better at at least basic editing, I consider the last 18 months to be the time when I attained potential that I really liked in terms of output quality. Eurovision will definitely bring a wide range of new material, as I see it promoting artists that might be known in their countries but are not widely covered in Wikipedia biographies in other languages – such bios inevitably appear after new participants are announced from each country (of which there will be 38 in 2025). My experience dictates, though, that even in festivals that I shot repeatedly such as the televised Sopot Top of the Top and Sopot Hit Festival, again, local to my area of residence and thus not covered in this grant proposal, still bring a sizeable share of material within their invited guests that allow decent refreshing of their Wikipedia bios.

Regarding wider activities apart from publishing the material with Commons: further to the uploads, which I should have made absolutely clear in the grant proposal, I always go through the artists’ Wikidata entry and the Wikimedia articles and pages linked from there, updating as many instances of cover photographs as possible. Some are embedded from Wikidata directly, most need pure muscle work to change, project after project after project. The count of language versions of Wikipedia reaches 30+ for Eurovision artists and can go as high as about 100 for artists like Lordi, who played the 3-Majówka 2023 and are former Eurovision winners. Sometimes the artists themselves notice their pictures in Wikipedia, such as happened with Playboi Carti, main headliner of the Clout Festival 2024 in Warsaw (2025 edition not covered in the grant proposal) which gained the festival, Wikipedia, and myself some momentum in the social media. Polish media – as I wrote in an earlier paragraph – also use Commons photos.

Regarding the possible rewrite and updates to the grant - I have a few possible remarks, some of which were hinted at above. Let me address them one by one. Let me knwo if you wish the grant itself to be supplemented with any of the information below.

As per a comment I received in the endorsement for my previous grant that I had to withdraw (Wacken Open Air participation), having updated visual representations not only of the artists but also their costumes, instruments, stage setup, in Wikipedia articles is a major plus for Wikipedia readers. I believe this addresses point 1).

As for point 2), among Polish Wikimedians, I can safely say I am the most engaged and prolific concert photographer although not the only one. I know a user that has requested a photo pass to Pol’and Rock Festival, happening concurrently with Wacken Open Air and having higher attendance, 750 thousand as opposed to 85 at Wacken. Event organisers have a limited number of press passes to hand out, though, so multiple photographers from a single "outlet" are a rarity.

I was approached by WMPL to provide a photo training / workshop during a meetup in late March 2025, typically attended by up to 100 Polish Wikimedians, in terms of photography principles, this will be delivered as a combination of exposure triangle and framing ideas training.

I did meet a Swedish Wikimedian (user:Arkland) at the ESC final in Malmo, but I am not aware that other Wikimedians exhibited interest in attending this year’s event in Basel. The setup of most of the events outside ESC also allows for one person to be able to photograph all the concerts, as starting times of individual performances between multiple stages vary. The only exception would be Wacken or Hellfest which are massive-scale events. As for Wacken, I count on the participation of someone within the German community's Festivalsommer initiative, as German Wikimedians organise to attend music festivals in their country, beng very successful at obtaining photo passes, which I envy. More than one Wikimedia photographer at Wacken is an option (an exception to the rule I wrote about above) and there we would coordinate to shoot as many bands as we can without too much overlap. Even with the above, the work of photographing concerts, processing the photos, uploading them and including them in Wikimedia entries is a one-person job. I will reach out to the emerging Eurovision User Group for guidance on how to best leverage the largest media-covered event, the ESC, in this respect.

The pictures will be used to update the Wikidata / Wikipedia articles about the artists and about the events. Many of the events are notable by themselves, at least in one language version of Wikipedia. This addresses your point 3. If you want an additional custom metric, for instance how many pictures from the grant are actually used on Wikimedia pages, this can be done, although with the Wikidata transcluding photos on the wikis that make use of the Wikidata entries this will be somewhat complicated but doable.

Thank you for staying with my answers and reasoning to this part, which is the end. Let me know if something requires any further clarification and what the next steps might be.

Kind regards, Wojciech Pędzich Talk 20:43, 23 December 2024 (UTC)