If you made the final cut and sent me your photos on flickr you now need to email them to me here: promo(at)aphotoeditor.com
If you already emailed them to me to begin with you don’t need to do it again.
The slideshow is not working the way it should and I need to upload them into a set on my account. It has to work right before it goes out to art buyers and photo editors.
Here’s the pool of images that made the cut: http://www.flickr.com/groups/aphotoeditor/pool/
You have to be logged in to flickr to see all 550 images and that’s the problem at the moment.
88 Comments
[…] blog, A Photo Editor, has become one of my favorite magazine-related “skill” blogs, has put together a slide show (using the Flickr API*) that displays the work of 300+ photographers. Explains Rob, “This is a free promo that’s meant to supplement all the other ways you find […]
So if we never heard from you then we can assume we didn’t make the cut?
Michael
Oh, and my query gets up here on the blog. Great, I love looking like an absolute tool. Oh well, a little humility is always good.
Guess I should go back to photographing senior portraits at the local strip mall.
Michael “the tool” Seto
I am lost for words. I guess this is what Flikr is all about. Pulp fiction. This can only be presented to extremely bored PE’s and PB’s, inside the box.
Rob, this must be an extremely sinister experiment you are busy with.
Just want to confirm that there are (at present) about 554 images in your FINAL CUT, not 139, correct?
Had some confusion originally when i used a browser where i was NOT signed in to flickr, and it stated FINAL CUT of ONLY 139 images.
i assume difference is due to privacy settings (private images in final cut not being show unless logged in)
OK, I guess that the people who are in knew what are you talking about, because I didn’t.
I’ve uploaded and shared with the group my two photographs as soon as I load them into Flickr, but got my doubts about the submission now.
The last time I checked out the pool were 300 (maybe more) images on it. My pics weren’t there. Now, you’ve closed the pool and the submission and there’re like 250 more photos on it, but, how do I know if I’m in or out? I would notice if I were in?
I’m confused.
Michael@2, thanks for making me laugh…
have to admit to being a bit confused aswell…
my images are in the group pool at the moment but there are 554 images in the pool right now… is that the final edit? 554 images?
surely not, right?
Wow! just looked at those photos that made the cut, phew! am I glad mine didn’t. It may sound like sour grapes but I’d hate for my images to be associated with 50% of these. A high proportion have no photographic skill at all, either in composition, lighting, or anything for that matter.
My girlfriend has taken many similar pictures and she has no training at all and would be the first to admit she is hopeless with a camera.
Come on! if thats the best that you can choose from all the many great photographers here then I really fear for the future of photography.
I’m so disappointed, I’ve followed the posts here with great interest and anticipation, so much great advice! But now I can see why some jobs just pass me by, as I suspected most people in the decision making positions haven’t a clue!
Punk photography I think! ah well! each to his own.
#3 Sound like sour grapes. This was a contest for commercial photography and when I look through the 141 or so images up there they all look like very good commercial photography very contemporary. If this was a contest for fine art images I would expect to see much different more boundry pushing images but it wasn’t. These are images done by commercial photographers selected by a former commercial photo editor. I didn’t get in either, maybe Rob will do this every now and again to keep it fresh and we can try again. Sure I was crushed for an hour or two of crying on the floor of my studio, but I just keep reminding myself that I make a good living and don’t really in the world of 8am-6pm monday -friday wage slaves work very much.
#9 Tongue in cheek right? I hope so because these can’t be images by commercial photographers or be called commercial in any shape or form. Please tell me I’m right?
@ 8 Philip: You’re not looking at the entire selection. You have to log in to see that. You seem clueless yourself.
550 Images. If you’re not seeing all 550 you have to log in.
I didn’t get in. oh boohoo. just remember – a good photograph is really a bad photograph and a bad photograph is a good one.
#8 & 9: Are we looking at the same pool of images? I had a lot of fun looking through them because I thought the quality of work was very high, I have a lot of people’s websites bookmarked to look through later. Lots of diversity too – there were some I wasn’t really into but overall I thought the ones that made the cut were all great, contemporary, commercial images.
554 images seems like a lot but the group has 1300+ members, if everyone submitted 2 that’s 2600. 554 would be what, the top 20% or so according to Rob? Maybe some people here are mad that so many images made the cut, but none of their own.
Rob,
Just a question (and no I didn’t make the “cut”). Was there a particular genre to the images you were wanting? Obviously my main field is sport, and apart from a couple of feature shots, I saw no sport images up there at all. Were we supposed to follow some sort of conceptual theme, which is what I saw in a lot of the images?
This is not sour grapes on my part, I am trying to work out if I missed the point with the images I sent up. Or whether or not my images were just not good enough (if that is the case off to the drawing board I go)
Mike Brown
I got the slideshow to work great on my computer-what happened? I’m curious if the images were placed in a particular sequence or not? Thanks for your hard work Rob.
My images didn’t make the cut either. Still, I walk away from this experience truly inspired. There is some great work here. I spent an hour or so this morning going thru the pool and have to say that at least 80% of the cut is VERY worthy.
Thanks Rob. You have no idea how helpful this has been for me as a photographer. Working mostly in the very safe tourism oriented editorial and advertising market in Hawaii, I am so out of the loop as to what art buyers in the rest of the world seek. I don’t know if the select pool represents the buying trends or not… all I know is that I haven’t had a push like this to go out and capture & show more personal work alongside my bread & butter images in well over ten years.
Thanks for re-lighting that creative & competitive spark!
This is a dreadful, boring and totally similar group of photos. Rob, I didn’t know you were curating a show. Everyone is outsider/homeless/abused looking. Such a me-too group. What little bit of respect you had is lost.
@ Philip “Tool of the Year” James,
Your shots made it in the final select, bonehead. One of them is quite good. (The other is quite boring. Nice logo by the way.) But your public display of hubris and stupidity here was laughable and quite entertaining. Thanks for that.
Perhaps you should ask your girlfriend how the internet works, as you seem hopeless with your computer.
Let’s hope the art buyers and other art directors like me read these comments to pre-emptively avoid your ego.
Nice work Rob. Good decision-making on the edit.
Rob, thank you for the hard work, and thank you for the inclusion.
very nice work all together. your photo editing rubber stamp is clear through every single selection. did you collaborate with anyone else to get different points of view?
Im amazed at some of the bile here…
I didn’t make the cut, but I walk away determined and inspired. There is some wonderful photography there.
This is one persons’ review of two recent images. Keep it in proportion and go shoot some more!
very nice images there rob. great edit. just my opinion though….
what a bunch of wussies here. man wtf kids? grow up.
whoever said photographers were a bunch of sensitive dorks was right- at least from what i’ve seen here.
people go outside and put things in perspective would ya? you are not the center of the universe.
One of mine made it in. That’s decent I guess. :)
Anyway, thanks for all your work on this. It’s appreciated.
I really like the contemporary approach of this selection. There is a lot that can be learned from this edit- thanks much man!
[…] EDIT: Yup. Barbs are flyin’ over there. […]
Great idea Rob! I’m sorry you are getting so much crap about the edit. From a Photo Editor/ Producer’s perspective I think it’s a good survey of what’s out in the market.
I got an e-mail from Vogue Italia!
Thanks Rob!
can’t wait to see the new selection!
Oh, I really love the anon comments from people who didn’t enter but still claim the photography is weak. PUT YOUR PHOTOS IN IF YOU’RE SO EFFING HOT. I can only edit what’s entered retards.
For those who thought they were cut unfairly I’m gathering a panel of experts for the next one in a couple months so just enter it then. I should have the submission and display bugs worked out by then.
I selected all the images. The criteria for selection: I liked the picture and would hire the photographer to shoot something.
Nice work Rob!
Much appreciated.
Damn Philip. You make the cut then shoot yourself in the foot. Reminds me of the guy who shot himself in the face when he smashed the butt of his shotgun into his girlfriends windshield in an act of rage.
Rob- It was a privilege to have you review two of my recent images, and I am very excited to have one of my images selected. Thanks again for this great opportunity.
Oh and I didn’t make the cut but I’m not bitter and I’ll be submitting again on the next round.
I’ve also realized I need to put together a better website cause mine just sucks compared to those that were accepted.
See ya during the next round!
viva la whining!
Oh and I think if you set the photos to public anyone can look at the slideshow. May help avoid the email hassle.
I’m serious I like the images there, I was only making fun of the poo poo wo is me types who posted above me. Great selection, maybe next time around I’ll get in.
Solved! Now I see the whole selection. Dunno why I couldn’t hours ago (and I was singed in, I’m not that stupid). Whatevah, there’re a lot of great photographs in the pool. Some others that don’t get the point, that I can’t see them fantastic, but there’re a lot of magnificent works over there. Great selection, and a really good level of photographers/works. So, I guess the community should be happy beside any subjective opinion. Ha!
Cheers to ya’ll!
F.
Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, that’s the way life is.This should motivate all of us to keep our work fresh and to learn how to choose wisely, it’s like american idol(forgive my comparison) you can have a great voice and look but you have to pick the right song.
I think it was a great edit and this is a very good and inexpensive way to propose new work to all the ppl in the business.
I hope you do another one soon Rob.
#28 great response, cant some people see he is trying to help us photographers, photography etc? I entered, not sure if I made the cut, new to flicker and still playing with it. Either way I am happy I found this blog. Very interesting and I very much like seeing all the work.
Hi Rob,
as I haven’t about your blog I was late for submission, will it be open again…
not that I presume to be a part of the final cut but nothing wrong to try no?
thanks
d
I don’t get all the complaining and negativity. It’s a generous thing Rob is doing, and I discovered some work in his edit that really blew me away.
@Philip James: Maybe you should try encouraging your girlfriend, it sounds like she’s quite the budding photographer.
@Selection of Work: Great to see so much stuff I hadn’t seen before as well as familiar faces from around the net. I bookmarked a few sites myself, and I’m glad to see a couple other savannah locals in there. Another thing to talk about over the next PBR.
I thought it was, overall, a really diverse selection of imagery, with the vast majority being very technically and conceptually proficient. Not everything was my cup of tea, but I have no interest in commercial table-top for example. What I am interested in was represented, and represented well from several different angles.
Looking forward to seeing the new iteration of the slide show, and crossing my fingers hoping that there is a way to jump to the various pages of work from within the slide show.
@Rob in #28: Understandable anger, but I could see someone seeing photography is weak and not being an actual photographer. A gallery owner or curator for example. However,I do agree that the claims here are unfounded.
You need to *join* the aphotoeditor promo group in order to see all the photos. It’s not enough to just log on flickr.
For Rob and #30, Oh S**t! OK I’m a complete tool, I didn’t sign in to look at the pool and assumed the 140 or so were the cut and got a completely unbalanced opinion of it all, and of course didn’t see one of my images made the cut.
Rob you selected some great images and I’m proud to have mine sit alongside them, it all makes much more sense having seen the final total selection. I apologise to have doubted your integrity and I apologise to any of the other photographers I may have offended. Thanks for all the hardwork and I promise not to make comment until I’ve studied things properly in the future.
Now I just need to decide which corner to go in stand in.
Embarrassed or what!
#18 your quite right, Tool and Bonehead accepted, see post above. I f****d up and I’m extremely embarrased. I suppose it came across as an ego thing but thats far from the truth I just saw a complete mis-representation of the project and reacted hastily to something I didn’t understand.
Nuff said, I wanna die, arrrgh!
a couple of thoughts – if there are any non-photographers (e.g art directors or editors) out there reading this, perhaps they can respond:
1: 552 images. is that not just a ridiculous amount of photographs to look through? Maybe editors look at things differently, but i don’t think i would ever sit down and look through 552 images on a screen in one go. maybe not even in a book.
2: with that in mind, wouldn’t a tighter edit (say 150-200 photos) have been much more beneficial for a smaller number of photograhers? perhaps I’m an idiiot, but i just kind of feel like it’s an image overload and very few people will gain anything from being a part of this slideshow simply due to the saturation of images in it.
not sour grapes as both my images were accepted – i just kind of struggle to see the point of the exercise when the slideshow has 552 images in it….
First, lets make this straight that I didn’t enter so no bitchin’ from me.
All I wanted to say was how sad and pathetic this all looks. Not the photography, the photographers all clambering over each other to get themselves into some pissy Flickr slideshow.
Have you all no respect for your art?
PP
“the group has 1300+ members, if everyone submitted 2 that’s 2600.”
I noticed that from those 2600 pics APE edited them down to 360. The remaining 200 or so came from pics that must have been emailed in I am guessing. I wonder how many people emailed in ?
RDP
Looks like I didn’t make the cut, but I’m not entirely sure.
46: Doesn’t seem that much different than people struggling to get into any other contest or promotional tool. Except this was hardly a struggle, taking literally 5 minutes to post a couple jpgs up, versus the kind of submission packets with prints, CD, forms, forms, forms, etc, normally required for some thing.
The only real difference is that there is a public forum for response here, with anonymous comments allowed. So the whining is visible. Usually it would only be to their friends, I suppose. You’d think, after being around a bit, every artist would be used to rejection. I just got my little slip from The Southern Review. After a while, they make you smile. It’s almost nice to know you’ve been rejected from some of the most prestigious world publications. haha
Having access to all the 550 images makes a helluva difference (there is some wicked work after the original 142 or whatever).
As for whether an AB or AD or PE etc would go through the whole batch? Maybe not in slideshow mode, but the thumbnails are pretty good for honing in on what you like. Having said that, I still find the Flickr interface takes something away from even the greatest images.
#44 what have we all learnt? Sometimes it’s better to cool off before posting such a comment (especially when such a large number of your peers are taking note). At least you had the balls to not do it anonymously. It’s like asking a fat girl if she’s pregnant : there’s no graceful way out of it.
Well poop. Didn’t make it. When’s the next one? :~)
Maybe it was my anamorphic 2.35:1 aspect ratio that killed mine… Worth a shot…
®yan P.
I just had an editorial killed yesterday but then found out I made the ape cut which lessened the sting.
@45 I think that this slideshow is no different than a huge source book, except that Lebook is huge and anybody can advertise while this slide show has already been edited by Rob. If an AD/AB already likes Robs eye there is that much more incentive to view the whole show as it already has a pre-edit.
Along those lines it might be nice to have guest editors for future promos from different areas of media. ie. portrait, fashion,sports.
@ 45. Ben: It’s not really too much. Not unlike looking through the hundreds of mailers and emails that come in every day.
I think this slideshow is a great idea and congratulate Rob on coming up with it. To leverage a brand (APE) for the greater good like this makes a ton of sense. I really like the notion of seeing one juror’s taste manifested through a Herculean editing task like this one.
That being said I find some of the work to be a little uneven. Some is great no doubt (and made from people who I have never heard of which I think was the point of the expercise) but a bunch of it I have a harder time with. In some cases I would rather look at some of the dozens of images Jonathan Saunders seems to be able to create by the 100s at will of friends or on airplanes and cars.
Maybe next time the work can be edited down further to 50 or 100. I think that would allow for greater sense of discovery and feel less like looking for a needle in a hay stack.
@45: I hear ya. It is so many images to look through. I can see it both ways: a really trained eye will identify what appeals to them and on the flip side, image over load is a concern.
Here is a suggestion I am reluctant to post, but here goes: Is it worth breaking it into smaller sections by the type of photography? Interiors, celebs, environmental, etc?
The reason why I am not completely sold on this idea is because there are so many great photographer that blur the line and can not be put into one category.
Some food for thought? It is a great edit Rob!
My images did not make the cut but I’m not the least bit offended. I have very little self esteem anyway. (laughter now) It has been educational to look through the images to see what kind of photography is looked upon as relevant today by someone who has editing experience. Looking forward to the next one.
Rob, You are doing a great job, both with this promotion and the blog in general. The insight, time and effort you put into this is much appreciated. Your sincerity about creating opportunity and change in the industry is clear and refreshing. Thanks!
Just wondering, how many images total were submitted?
@55: I think not having categories is good because it allows for student work or experimental (and successful) work to sit next to safe work of so and so celebrity. If they were sequestered, the person looking for a new look on their next celebrity shoot might not find what they’re looking for as easily. But there are arguments for having categories as well… If you’re specifically looking for a food shot, you might not want 8 pages of portraits first.
I may create a lite version after fixing the problem but you have to remember this isn’t a contest. It’s a promo opportunity not unlike what happens to art buyers and photo editors every single day when the mail comes in or you open your email. You go through the whole pile no matter what because you want make sure you don’t miss anything. I weeded out the photos I wasn’t interested in because I’m sending it out to art directors and photo editors with my endorsement. It’s not about my personal taste it’s about matching photographers with potential clients.
I think as artists, professionals, and creatives we are all forgetting one thing; and that is that all art is subjective.
This started out as an experiment for Rob to try and provide a service to others and he got a large response to his offer. Naturally, not everyone can make the cut, these 550 images were edited down by one man with only his own point of view to go by from over 2600. And that is my main point, Rob is one man, with his own ideas about what makes a photograph good or bad (though with years of professional experience he probably does have a better eye than most for editing). If you put Rob, Rodney Smith, Nick Knight, Terry Richardson, Richard Avedon, and Can Evgin in a room, and charged each one of them with editing down this exact same group of 2600 photos to 500, you would end up with 6 very different edits, and each would be as valid and worthwhile as the others, they would merely have been tempered by different viewpoints and factors of personal taste.
Another thing we are all forgetting is that this is ROB’s blog. he runs the show, and his name is attached to this slideshow just as much as the contributing photographers. And we can expect nothing less than for him to make these decisions based on his own taste and preferences so that this selection and slideshow represents him as an editor.
To address the unprofessional attitude I have seen here among many of my peers let me say that starting a dialogue and discussion is a positive thing, but when that dialogue devolves into petty insults and baiting it loses all of its validity.
Furthermore, to distance yourself from a contest or publication you have submitted to and were rejected by (even if only a single iteration of said contest) by claiming to be too good and talented to be lumped in with what you say is mediocre and boring work is a disservice to all the other photographers who submitted their work, but also a disservice to yourself. If you are so confident in your talent and your work than you should learn to either a) learn to handle rejection with some damn dignity, rather than insulting those that did make it. b) not have submitted to the pool in the first place if you had doubts about the level of work that you thought would be represented. c) not submitted to the pool if you had doubts about your own ability to handle rejection.
My image was not accepted to the pool, and that is fine, I will try again next time and I will try doubly as hard. I also send promos out constantly, sometimes with returned interest, sometimes without. But I don’t go writing letters to Rolling Stone and Vogue about how boring their images are and how I was glad to be rejected so that my work would not be presented alongside inferior images.
I did not personally like many of the images in the final edit, and some i thought were beautiful and absolutely cutting edge.
Some were great and some were not – but that is just my opinion, and this edit is Rob’s opinion.
Stop whining.
Hi,
I think the site and this contest have been very inspirational since I joined a few months back. It would be great to begin discussions on solid ways of self advertising / promotions. The quality of one’s eye seems like only half of the full package these days. If there is already a section on the site for that, please advise. Keep up the good work Rob.
Teddy
I have enjoyed the show so far. I look forward to a moment when I have the time to look through all of the images
The comments have also been entertaining.
I pretty sure I did not make the final cut, but rejection is a means of inspiration. So is failure. And so are the images.
Rob – earlier on, I posted that the editing would be ‘brutal’. I know you are used to sifting through many images, but I had in mind the entire process – from shear numbers to making hard decisions. And then listening to the angst and anger.
I don’t envy your job – which is why I appreciate the work you put into this.
Thanks
I do have experience doing this. I judged the PDN photography annual one year. When judging you are less critical of the work at the beginning and the end and it can make the edit a bit uneven. That’s why it’s helpful to have other jurors and then in PDN’s case they ultimately make the final selection so they can consider the big picture before approving an image.
Rob, Thanks so much for including me in the final cut. Cheers!
Renée Jacobs
OMFG there’s some butthurt photographers here.
My work was not selected. I’m still breathing, still shooting. Rob’s doing something pretty damn cool. If he’s not feeling what you submitted then so be it. Try again in the future.
Thicken your skin folks.
“If you put Rob, Rodney Smith, Nick Knight, Terry Richardson, Richard Avedon, and Can Evgin in a room,”
crikey – now a picture of that would surely make the edit somewhere…..
APE, Rodney Smith, Nick Knight, Evgin, the T-Bone and Avedon’s dried and rotten corpse, poring over our photos…….
RDP
I’m really happy happy to be in, but I never expected to be….but that said, I think most of the work is great and I’m very happy to be in such good company.
Thanks Rob! There is a really great mix of images in there. Thank you for all your hard work and services to the photographic community!
Not making the cut was a lesson in my own relevance. It was eye opening to say the least. Either that, or I over-thought it and just picked the wrong two images. :-)
Just to say as a positive after my unwarranted and mistaken negativity yesterday, the hit rate at my site has soared at least a 1000% today after inclusion in Robs slideshow. If it produces the same response when it goes live to art directors then the members included will benefit enormously. Brilliant!! Compliments to Rob.
“Please only submit fresh work. I’ve looked at all of your websites (yes, all of them) and really only want to see new work.”
I’m sure there was some exaggeration in that statement, but I wonder how many, without hesitating, chose their newest images as opposed to their most popular or personal favorite? Timing was good for me, I happened to like my 2 latest images.
I also wonder if APE was SERIOUS about seeing “ALL” of our sites, that if he knew the submission was old (no matter the artist name and notoriety), he declined it?
buncha whiners on here. my pics weren’t selected. maybe i selected the wrong 2 images. maybe i suck. maybe 1 photo editor in the world of 10,000 photo editors doesnt dig my work.
am i gonna quit? fuck no.
Isn’t Heath Ledger dead?he looks pretty young in that pic,
i thought we were suppose to submit just “fresh” work.
Well! I can say that what I submitted doesn’t look ANYTHING LIKE anything else that made it in.
I suppose the job for us was to submit what we thought would get us work shooting for magazines? But what magazines?
It’s slightly clearer to me why magazine work has not been much a part of my career!
My knee-jerk was to submit something I could see being published from my available stock.
Fascinating experiment and fun to follow.
Thanks all – & Rob,
Chuck
Who wants to start a “rejected” pool?
There’s some mighty fine work up there.
61 amen,
Jim that’s a fine looking blog.
Cheese and rice, there is more moaning going on here than a fight between a palestinian and a jew over who started the conflict.
if you didn’t get in, move on and shut up and work out why.
ffsake people.
Great that you do this Rob, a lot of very good work. Congratulation to the selected.
Just had a chance to look thru aphotoeditor pool and there are so many really amazing images! Thank you Rob for making another valuable resource available to the photo community.
Having been a photographer for over 30 years, I realize that there’s not always a correlation between ability to shoot great images and ability to make a sustained living in this business.
I’ve been more fortunate at the latter than the former.
Having my two shots accepted into this pool is the most flattering piece of professional validation I’ve had since I originally got my first job as a newspaper staff photographer in 1976.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
The good thing for me , is that Rob’s promotion offer got me off the couch! He mentioned sending fresh work , not images that already exist… I went out and shot two personal projects for myself that I’d been planning.. the deadline created the fire or fear or whatever the hell you want to call it…. It was raining the morning (Sunday) the day before the deadline but I went ahead with the shoot anyway and the rain was a gift. I do not know if I made the cut since I can only view a small portion of the final cut .. But the best thing for me was just getting out with my camera and making pictures for myself!
Thanks Rob.. And to all of you who had the courage to participate. I look forward to seeing the “final final” so to speak. I’m sure Rob will let us know when it’s “fixed”.
Bruce Hershey
I love the refinement of the edit. Let’s talk about describing the whole edit as articulate critics, shall we, sans the egos, bruised or pride stricken. Couple of words for starters, : here’s mine:Constructed Opportunity. Not necessarily photo journalistic but certainly atmospherically consistent. Basically, put your self there and open your eyes. Awesome take rob. thanks for your generosity of organization, Rob’s domain du jour.
exigency
I’m a bit behind over here – I noticed the flickr pool is unavailable (even when I’m signed in on flickr), so I can’t check to see if my submission made it or not…
I’m trying to figure out what’s what. I’m a bit late to the discussion, sorry.
I checked out the pool and the first photo I viewed was by Sam Jones. It appeared in the January 2007 issue of Time Magazine. Jones also directed the film “I am trying to break your heart” about Wilco.
Not quite sure what you were looking for here. Selecting work by people whose image style everyone is already familiar with seems like a simple enough task.
Was this a contest for pro photographers who already have extensive portfolios? It’s a bit confusing. You said you’d hire the people whose photos are in the pool, and somewhere else you said you wouldn’t hire anyone who’s not already a pro because you have to be sure they’re reliable. So is the pool made up entirely of pros? Was Flickr just the distribution device?
Maybe all this has been asked and answered somewhere. If so I apologize. If someone could point me to a concise explanation of the submission guidelines I’d appreciate it.
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