It is now three months or so that the flickr issue continues and for more than two months they have not even considered to post any more statement about it in the (ever growing) thread. So what I guess is that this issue is done for flickr and it will not change. So for me, flickr has abandoned their commuity and stepped back to be an ordinary Web1.0 business (as Jean-Christophe was putting it. So this was it whith that provider. What's next, then?
First of all: diversification! The incident has disrupted not my photography, but it's publishing considerably. I also have lost almost all my contacts whith whom I have exchanged comments on takes on a close-to-regular basis. Diversification will limit this risk hould another provider crack up. Additionally, the flickr web application is feature-rich and no single other provider can compete in each and every single feature. My aim for diversification lets this appear more as a feature than as a bug.
On the other hand, one has to search for an alternative regarding every single use one made of flickr before. The first step is to set up the requirements:
- From a community I expect a certain international flair. I love to see and comment on photos from overseas and als to get comments from all over the world. Because I am shooting over and over, an upload limit too narrow will not be acceptable. Those both are the reason why fotocommunity.de (with their strong German focus and 1 pic per week limit for the free account) does not even enter the race. In addition, an overdone artistic demand (deviantART) does not match my expectations because for me photography is primarily life, not art. As community does live from exchange, the web application should support sone neighbourhood concept, commenting and groups. Active notification on comments would be appreciated. There should also be something to order ones asstes (like sets) and an overly important role of the photostream in chronological order is not required. Because community is about sharing, I do not expect too much from private-flags etc. for this use.
- But there is another application to be supported: When I have been on a party or so, I enjoy sharing my takes with the others that have been there. Privacy is a point here, because not everyone likes his images spread around the world (and some pics which absolutely deserve internal publication do not really qualify for a global audience). This requirement was covered by setting up a flickr set with private pictures only and then sending out a guest pass to those who are supposed to see the images. A big disadvantage was that downloading the images was to be done on a one-by-one basis (and for time and effort reasons I did almost never upload a hires version). So the provider to choose for this has to support comfortably both bulk upload and download. As I had to learn, bulk download only comes with the need for an accout, but when it is convenient to set up, I have no problem.
- At least during this year, my main photographic project is to publish one picture at each and every day of the year. Not a photoblog - with few exceptions the takes are subject to the best creativie, artistic and technical standard I am able to deliver. Well, at least subject to... Anyway: Amongst my other takes, those should be easily identified because in their diversity, they are still forming a unity. Because I do this project mainly for me, comment option are not absolutely critical, but would be nice.
- For some takes I would really like to have some qualified feedback from both a technical and an artistical perspective. Here I need a critical yet respectful community and I am absolutely willing to return by giving detailled remarks on others takes also. Should I find it in a forum, which does not support photo-upload, I will need to find a provider who allows long-term storage of freely accessible hires pitures also.
- A remote backup of at least some of may takes would also be appreciated. Just in case something bad happens here.
- Finally, I wolud love to have a provider who let me order quality prints in Germany also... It turned out that this is very much of a problem, because many services apply some forced "enhancements" on the uploaded images. One will typically end up with overdone colors and contrast and with burnt out areas because brightness is also "adjusted". I guess those "enhancements" are tailored to optimize images straight from custom point and shoot cameras.
A lastl requirement is that I am not willing to use a service which is largely employed to distribute porn and copyright violations (e.g. bubbleshare) for any one of the above applications.
So what did I end up with?
- I will try to build a network on ipernity. No groups yet, but I hope this is about to come.
- Private sharing with bulk up- and download is almost perfectly supported by BubbleShare (no need to search for me there, all private, of course ;-).
- My Picture a Day project is at tumblr so far, but I do not know whether I will continue it there or here on vox (but how to get the 100+ missing takes up? one by one???).
- In-depth discussion I will not expect from the communities, but I will intensify my engagement in specialized forums, especially the TFTTF forum. The kick for ipernity came when they opened up 1024x1024 resolution to be seen by everybody.
After coming back from vacation, I had to understand that fickr had not only introduced localized versions, but in this course, they had also changed viewing policy for German users.
When uploading images to flickr one is obliged to flag whether this material is "safe", "moderate" or should be "restricted". The rules are rather vague and so are the results. Now there is a thing flickr calls SafeSearch filter based on this rating. As an account holder one can configure whether material which has been flagged as "restricted" (or even "moderate") will be filtered out. So when you are an ornithologist and serch for tits you might find more images of birds than of female body parts (hard to find something so family safe that I wanted to post it here) ... well ... you might (remember that rating is quite vaguely defined and done). Photographers who are looking for inspiration for their own artistic nude photography will presumably turn the filter off. The more thin-skinned who do not want to just skip material they do not like will turn it on. And wildlife animal photographers will usually not care about how the filter is configured, except they are after little birds... In fact I felt stong anough to skip what I do not want to see so I turned the filters off in my profile. Occasions were rare that I felt offended.
Now what I had to find out when coming back from vacation that there was big rumor here in forums about censorship in flickr. It took me some time to find out what happened: Together with (optional) localisation, the SafeSearch filter was turned on for German users and it could not be turned off. The official announcement was not pointing it out but after following the FAQ link one was able to find out that users with a German Yahoo!-ID will not longer be able to turn off the SafeSearch filter. When taking a closer look to German laws, together with the fact that you can sign in to flickr without really proving your age, this step was not completely unreasonable, but ...
- ... it hardly meets the objective because the criteria for the rating are vague and the rating is done by each user individually, mostly drawn from the default.
- ... and, while not being effective, it is overdrawn at the same time because a) it applies to adults also, which is not required by German law, b) it locks out absolutely safe material (cannot link to an example here of course, because I cannot find one by definition), mostly because some users have set their default to "moerate" or even to "restricted" in fear of unintentional terms-of-service violations and c) there is no obligation for hosting providers in Germany to filter in advance, they are only obliged to remove or block offensive material on notice.
The big thing is that many users are really pissed because of the communication of all this by flickr staff. It does not come to a complete surprise that the community reacted with some of the biggest forum threads flickr undoubtedly will ever see. As usual big conspiracies were worked out: Yahoo is the driving force and flickr staff is only puppets on their string. All sorts of unreasonable and nasty attacks were ridden against the flickr staff members who did engage in the discussion for aome time. But some other kept uo the point that a community platform is supposed to keep their community happy because it is not the software which makes flickr such a great site, but the community of several of action:
- Several thousand members joined the many flickr motto groups as a sign of their disagreement with flickrs approach to the Jugendschutz issue and the way they feel treated by the provider. Even a Wiki was created by someone.
- Over 7,500 answers in the threads in the official flickr forum and many in the discussion areas of those groups and in the comments of protest images.
- When in earlier cases, members threatened flickr to leave, this time they did: Many members moved their photos off flickr and were happily accepted in various other photo sharing communities. When browsing the threads linked above and also in the other community pages, you will find many. Rumors are that ipernity.com, a French flickr clone, had at times 700 new users per day and 23hq grew by 2000 percent by this exodus.
Up to a certain point in time, flickr staff was participating in the discussion (albeit not too helpful what they wrote). After some rime, automatic "moderate" filtering was turned off, but "restricted" There have been some people writing in defense of fickrs approach and attitude also. But discussional behaviour of the defenders was often to open up a secondary theatre of war as a diversionary tactic and to pull away the theread from the real issue (inacceptable behaviour of the platform provider). A great example for that can be found here,
Abd why do I sit here late night and write such a big blog entry after such long time? Well to some extend to keep all the links and stuff, but also because the incident maes me think about Web 2.0 in general and my attitude towards it. Stay tuned what those thoughts will end up with ;-) In the mean time you might want to check out this article from the German web magazine telepolis...
[ .. to be continued soon ... ]
There are those occasions where the morning is misty and some strange kind of sad atmosphere opresses the day from the very beginning.
This one was inspired by a famous prototype, but as one can easily see from the direct comparison: the Kraichgau is not Venice Beach ;-)
Everyday I pass these sheeps when I drive to work. It's a little herd of eight, say, and they live on a small feedlot in the midst of the Rot industrial area. They are surroundes by waste and streets. Most of the time they don't care but this morning I witnessed when one sheep asked the leader why the pile grows from day to day.
The standard processing ended up a bit plain... Do you like the tilt? Especially that it's left to right that time?
No explanation neccessary. You can read it all from their faces...
I was visiting an old friend of mine and was welcomed enthusaistically by two little ones which immediately had nothing to do but posing for photographs. This take conserves one of the few moments where it was possible to trap at least ome of them for a short while.
The 50/1.8 came in handy for the low light situation. At ISO 800 it was not even neccessary to open up completely and so I had enough DOF to get both ladies in focus simultaneously.
... and What Mainzelmann Found There.
Over time I have developed the habit of quite radical haircuts. From Fidel Castro mode to Alan Ager mode. When Kelly called for the 72h challenge on before&after, I was developing the idea for this shot. With my November haircut, however, it did not work out and the challenge was gone by then. So I am coming back to the subject with the next haircut.
To get this picture, I was setting up the camera on a tripod behind me and adjusted it properly. Then I memorized exactly how I was standing and where I was looking to when I took the first image (before shearing). Did some variations with shirt and without, with dry and wet hair etc. Eva was pressing the shutter button for me (mainly because the autofocus of the 400D does not set focus before releasing by autotimer but when activating the autotimer).
Then the shearing happened.
WHen it was all done, I was taking exactly the same position as before and did the second shot. Funny enough, I was looking at exactly the same spot both times, but the mirror immage doess semm to look into the camera while the one looking into the mirror does not. I will try to compensate for this in another try some time.
Postprocessing included montage of two fitting takes and then cloning out Eva (and wiping the mirror in GIMP...)
In case you find time, please follow the link to flickr and read the comment of the Captain!
It was a sudden laugh when I saw this billy goat hanging out near the fence of his enclosure. No serious post processing except for desaturating the cyan tint of the fence a bit...
Pfuh, another weekend with plenty of time to shoot. Funny enough none of the intentional shots did the trick, but this one of very view takes I did of the goats merely by chance while I was intensely after chicken, sheep and guinea hens that day.
No words neccessary. This was found attached to the computer screen of a collegue of mine who is off for maternity leave as of now.
We were having some sweets and talked about 24 for quite some time. Then we did another meeting. When discussion started to be straining, I took the opportunity to take a picture for the day. After some tries with the leftovers from the sweets, I found this lovely remaining of another sort at the screen of my colleague. It was probably made by one of her children and I love that she left it at her screen to remind us on her.
In a project like this, one cannot await to fully identify with each and every sigle shot. Maybe at least you will like it ;-)
No details on the abouts of this shot you will get out of me.
This is the bike(!) bridge in Walldorf, Baden, Germany. It crosses the B39 country road and links the Walldorf industrial area to "Walldorf for living" as it's called. This being the bike bridge, consider what they had build for a car bridge...
Been in Walldorf at the end of the day and the meeting was not over before darknes fell. Luckily I had a tripod with me. So I was able to do some long exposures like this. Note that I had to clone out a birke backlight, which I found to be a very attractive idea when reviewed on the cameras mini-screen, but which did not work out on my computer screen. Had I known this before, I had not needed to put the f-stop to high values to get the long exposure times needed to catch the bikes passing the bridge...
