goldengod

Stages by Jeff Kubina

I’m prepping the next batch of Flickr testimonials for later on this week, but it’s not enough. I want more! Not just testimonials to write, but more photos to pore over and comment on.

I’ve spent some time on Explore, I’ve browsed through my contact photos, checked out other people’s favorites, and it’s fun! I’ve forgotten how much I enjoy commenting on and tagging other people’s photos.

So now that I’m revitalized and wired to check out what the internet has to show me, I’ve decided to start the flood of comments at home:

What’s the best photo you took last month?

I want you to comment on this entry with a link to your best photo from the month of September. You can explain why it’s the best or your favourite, I’m interested to hear it. I’ll keep accepting entries until next Tuesday, when I’ll post a bevy of beauteous links along with my own personal best September photo.

I’m hoping to see some photos of fall leaves, because I haven’t really taken any, but feel free to submit photos of anything you like. I’m looking forward to it!

Send me your photos!

I don’t!? by Niels Heidenreich

Flickr’s search page is one sexy feature of the photo-sharing site that’s designed to be comprehensive. Almost overwhelmingly so: You can search with the basic boolean “twiddly bits”, a SafeSearch toggle, by content type, date, license, camera, or any combination of the above. You can get intensely specific with your search results.

So tell me Flickr, why can’t I search through photos by orientation?

Is it so much to ask? All I want is to only display results taken in portrait or landscape mode, or even perfectly square photos! It’s not so hard, is it?

You’ll let me search for only screenshots tagged with ‘cats’ (but not ‘dogs’) that are CC-licensed for commercial work, taken between 09/04/2006 and 09/04/2007. Naturally, the only result is a LOLcat.

Why can’t I just tack a ‘taken in landscape format’ on the end of that? My knowledge of database processing for search engines is admittedly quite thin, but it seems like a simple thing to implement.

Flickr already tracks dimensions as part of the EXIF data, as well as for creating thumbnails of photos. It should only be a minor task to return search results where the width is greater than the height or vice versa.

What additional search functions would you like to see Flickr add?

Polling Station by hugovk

I’ve long known that Flickr is the photo storage site of choice for my readers, but now I’m getting curious about other stats. This means poll time; completely unrelated to the fact that it’s Sunday, I’m lazy, and the headache I’ve had for the last four hours.

I’d like to know how many views everyone has on their Flickr account, if they’re willing to share:

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This poll popped into my head because I passed 75,000 sometime in the last two weeks and it got me thinking about Flickr metrics. Of course,20,000 of those views are on two photos that have little in the way of artistic merit.

Other than those two, I don’t really know how visitors find me. Mostly through photo groups and my Livejournal, but I have had 18 photos in Flickr’s Explore at one time or another.

Where does the majority of your Flickr traffic come from? Do you know?

This week’s batch of Flickr testimonials highlight the next four photographers in my ever-increasing list. Writing about all of you is lots of fun, but it’s definitely keeping me busy.

Matt Simpson, come on down:

Matt’s work with his twin-lens Yashica is nothing short of astounding. He captures a sense of the West Coast in his photos that I’m only able to see in my mind’s eye. The man know his way around film cameras in a way that makes me strangely jealous.

We’ve been friends of friends for years, but have just recently met for the first time. I’m looking forward to seeing him on future Vancouver photowalks.

Ruckle Lane and Broken Down House, I choose you!

One of the newer faces in photography, Gary Tan:

Gary’s portraits and wilderness photos really jump out at me. His hyper-realistic fashion shoots show a tasteful control of light and are bursting with colour. His profile says he picked up his first SLR in March 2007 and in a few short months, he’s already rocketed well past his peers (including me).

I hadn’t seen any of Gary’s work prior to writing this, but now I definitely want to see more.

I was really impressed with his two portraits entitled Waiting by Broken Sconces and Mike.

tokyowars:

I don’t know this man’s name, but I don’t need to. He shows a strong love for black and white photography and astronomy. While the photos in his account are sparse, he’s already beginning to show improvement in a short period of time.

I’m a sucker for a good graffiti photo and you can’t argue with a sexy eclipse, so I’ve chosen Steps to I Know Not Where and Lunar Eclipse.

Brian Larter:

I know Brian’s work best for his dark portraits of Halifax’s vibrant fetish community and his boots-on-the-ground protest shots from the local activist scene. His versatility always impresses me; this is a man who doesn’t get stuck in a photographic rut.

Brian runs a photography business, rental studio, and tons of other projects. All that and he still manages to show care in every click of the shutter. Brian inspires me to push myself further with my photography and accomplish more than I think I’m capable of.

Brian doesn’t use titles, only numbers; I’ve chosen 9 and 1.

Previous Posts about Flickr Testimonials:

• Flickr Testimonials - The First Batch
• Flickr Testimonials Free to Good Homes

Low Tide by Andrew Ferguson

Last month, I received an email from a travel guide company called Schmap. They wanted to use a couple of my photos, including the one at the right, for an online Vancouver travel guide. I was pretty happy about this, until I examined their ‘agreement’ further.

They wanted to use my photos without paying me. I’m not immediately opposed to this; I’ve been published in not-for-profit publications previously. However contrary to the BS they attempt to sell you, Schmap is very much a for-profit company.

When quizzed about their business status, Schmap claims that not everyone would consider making money from advertising a ‘commercial venture’. This is such a blatant self-serving lie it makes my head hurt.

Another example of a sketchy company trying to fleece amateur photographers who are looking for exposure. It’s one thing to ask for free content, it’s another lie to people about the nature of your business when asking for freebies.

Other Photographers’ Opinions

I saw a lot of reactions in the blog-o-drome from photographers who were happy to get their work shown. I also saw some bad reactions and after thinking about it all week, I have to side with the negative folks.

One of the first sites I stumbled across on Schmap’s shady business practices talks about how not only do they attempt to get permission to use your images for free, their terms violate the terms of your Creative Commons license (should you use one):

…Schmap’s proposed use doesn’t qualify as a legit use under the Creative Commons license I’ve chosen. Despite Schmap’s saying that the question of commerciality is undefined, this strikes me as a wholly commercial use. And, Schmap is not going to distribute its guides under a Creative Commons license, thereby not following the terms of the ShareAlike license.

NowPublic

I also had a similar encounter with citizen journalism site NowPublic. They’re not making ad money off my content directly, but they have been accepting millions in venture capital. Millions that I’m sure would not have appeared had the business plan said anything about paying photographers for their hard work. Instead, there was probably some bullshit along the lines of ‘leveraging the power of crowd-sourced media.’

NowPublic has attempted to justify it in a couple of ways. They use a ’secure’ flash housing to prevent photo theft and a few photos have allegedly been purchased by the Associated Press. So I should give them my work for free and hope someone else pays me in the future? I don’t think so, we already covered what a poor idea that is with my satirical article on photography career tips.

While I don’t agree with their reasoning and chose not to let them use my photos, I thoroughly enjoyed the frank and open discussion I had with Kaitlin from NowPublic. I appreciated the time she took to address my concerns and provide a counterpoint to my arguments.

One Simple Rule - If you’re making money by using my photos, it’s only fair that I make money from my photos as well.

I admit to being a bit of a statistics whore, so I love Flickr’s Camera Finder. It meets all the conditions of statistics that I enjoy: The information is almost entirely useless but satisfies a deep and irrelevant curiousity within me.

The last time I went to the camera finder, I noticed an odd, unexplained trend in the graph. See for yourself:

Why is there such a sharp drop, about 2/3 of the way across, in all models of camera? Was a highly successful new model released? Did Flickr change the way they collected stats on the popular cameras?

I haven’t quite been able to figure it out. I did note that the only model not to have that sharp drop, followed by a small peak and then gradual decline is the Canon 20D, though. This may mean something…

What do you guys think? Statisticians, reveal thyselves!

Obsession by Doug Wilson

Love it or hate it, Flickr has revolutionized the landscape of amateur photography and photo sharing. Everyone wants to let their creative side go nuts and post the results for everyone to see. But what do you do when your creative side runs a little too wild?

Starting a second Flickr account is an excellent way to separate out photos that you don’t want associated with your regular work. This is assuming, of course, that you still want to share your more ‘edgy’ work with the anonymous masses.

Why Open a Second Account?

Maybe your coworkers and family watch your main Flickr account, maybe it’s the first Google result for your name. Sometimes you want to keep certain photos separate from your main collection, but using the option to show to friends only is limited. What if you want to show these to someone without a Flickr account?

I know multiple people who have a second Flickr account to store alternative photos. These accounts seem to all be used for maintaining photos that you’re interested in having open to the general public, but not immediately associated with you. It’s available online if you choose to tell someone that the content is there without your employer finding it.

Do I have one?

No. But if I did, I wouldn’t tell you either; that would defeat the purpose. I understand the principle behind creating a second account; it’s an immensely useful tool for maintaining your privacy. It’s not an ideal solution for all situations, but it definitely meets the needs of some photographers out there.

Wow! The response on this one has been a little overwhelming, but I think I’m up to the challenge. I intended to get started tomorrow, but found a bit of free time and decided to get a jump on it today.

Little did I know that Flickr had other plans for me. Despite the fact that you can block any testimonial written about you, Flickr has seen fit to only allow your contacts to write about you.

If you wanted a testimonial, you need to add my Flickr account to your contacts before I’m able to write about you.

I am really sorry about the inconvenience. If you’d like, you can remove me from your contacts right afterwards. This was not intended as an exercise in farming new Flickr contacts, but apparently the system still has some weird design quirks to sort out. Next time I’ll be sure to do a little more research before I leap.

Anyone who hasn’t added me in a few days and has requested a testimonial on the original post will get a Flickrmail. I’m still determined to get this done, especially now that I’ve started digging through some of your photos!

I was also a bit confused when I discovered that Brian Auer wasn’t already one of my contacts. I am apparently waythehell behind.

Love is Being Stupid Together by Nattu

One of the commonly neglected features of Flickr is the ability to write testimonials about other photographers. Some of the more popular users have dozens of testimonials, but most have few, if any.

I only have three in my account; two silly and one serious. And you know what? All three were great ego boosts when I received them. Seeing what people had to say about my work rekindled my desire to grow as a photographer.

I’ve got some spare time coming up and I want to spread a little joy to my readers, so I’d like to write Flickr testimonials for all of you. Put a link to your Flickr account here in the comments.I’ll browse through your photos, write a testimonial for you, and next week, I’ll link to everyone who participated.

Testimonials posted so far:

• Flickr Testimonials - Batch One

What’s in Your Camera Bag?
by Jon MacKinnon

Flickr’s Interestingness search is becoming worse each day. More and more, attempting to use keywords to find photos results in a frustrating amount of false positives. Keyword pollution is becoming a serious problem.

What is “Keyword Pollution”?

Dan Heller defines keyword pollution as “…a term I use to describe an image whose keywords are such that the number of false positives causes the searcher to get exasperated and quit.” He writes an extensive dissertation on keywording and how it related to the future of stock photography. I think Dan’s definition is pretty accurate and I really like some of his in-depth observations.

You can think of it like the videos you see on YouTube tagged “south park” or “stephen colbert” that have nothing to do with either. People do that to make their videos to show up in the search results for popular topics. It was a common tactic among internet spam sites back in the day.

I find it especially frustrating when I’m trying to find photos of camera equipment for this blog. People tend to tag their photos with the camera they used, despite the fact that it’s already listed in the EXIF data. This means it’s hard to find pictures of a Canon digital camera instead of ones taken with a Canon digital camera.

Popular blogger Darren Barefoot touched on Flickr keyword pollution recently as well, directing his wrath at the photos people take of what’s in their bags. It makes it hard for him to find pictures of individual objects instead of big piles of them. Another example is when I was searching for CC-licensed photos of weddings. Out of 24 total photos on the first page for “wedding”, 8 photos are of wedding cakes all from the same account. On the second page, the numbers go up; 14 out of the 24 photos are cakes. I find it frustrating to have to waste my time sifting through unrelated photos in order to find what you do want.

Why Does Keyword Pollution Happen on Flickr?

The short version is that Flickr’s “interestingness” algorithm is easy to cheat. The formula is based on activity. How many people view, comment on, add tags to, and favourite your photos is often what pushes it up in the search. People will often artificially inflate this by submitting their photos to communities like Delete Me and Score Me that result in a lot of activity, even if the photo is terrible.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing that can be done to prevent this. The downside to anyone being able to edit and/or tag stuff means that there’s no governing organizational system. The practice of inputting incorrect keywords isn’t evil or anything, it just makes life frustrating for those of us trying to find legitimate content.

I’m predicting that one of the next big things across the board in Web 2.0 will be content moderators to help streamline the user experience by weeding out these false positives. Netscape has already implemented this by taking user-submitted news and having Netscape Anchors, like Muhammad Saleem, help moderate the content.

Is all of this a big deal? No. It’s a minor annoyance that I don’t enjoy dealing with, like flyers in the mail or bureaucratic red tape. Without a cohesive system to govern tagging, it gradually becomes more and more frustrating to find what you’re looking for.

Now if only Google had bought Flickr…