1. Photo a day Project: I know that I have tired this before, but I am trying it again. Hopefully I will get through it this year. I want to really do a good job. Last year I stopped in February. Yes, the wedding planning did me in. This year I hope to get it done.
2. Add people to all my Flickr Photos: A while ago Flickr added a people feature, so you can add other Flickr users to your photos. I wanted to make sure I did this for all my photos. I added the tag needsflickrpeople too all the photos I posted before this feature was added. At this moment I have 9,245 photos with this tag. I want to make that number zero by the end of the year. I know that is a lot of photos to review in the next year, but I think I can do it.
3. Get a total of 3,542,374 flickr views: To get this many views I need to average 2000 views a day for the whole year. There was a good four month period that I got over 2000 views every day. I know I have little control over this. I need to go to Comic Con to get this done. More costume photos might also be a good idea. I know that more promotion using Facebook and Flickr is important. We will see if I can do this.
4. Best songs of 2009 mix: I have been making these mixes for years this is not the year to stop. I hope to have this done by the end of the month.
5. Best albums of the 2000s list: I have been working lists for each year. I also want to make an overall list. I want to have this done by the end of the month, but the end of February seems real realistic.
6. New Movie Review Blog with Kate: I set up the blog, Movie Reviews with My Spouse. We watch a lot of movies together. This will mostly be movies from Netflix. I think this will be fun. If you have a suggestion for a better name, let me know.
There are more then one thousand photos of me on flickr, but there are currently 1000 photos of me tagged on flickr. Of these 1000 photos 535 are in my photo stream. That means other people take a lot of pictures of me too.
I am going through all my photos to make sure they are tagged. You can get out the tags Needsflickrpeople to add people, if you think it is fun. This is the tag I added to every photo in my photostream to make sure I review them all. There are still 9800 photos for me to go through here. You can also check out Unknownperson if you want to help me identify people I don't know.
If you have a flickr account and I don't know it, I would label you as nonflickrperson. You can always add yourself.
I am hoping to have all my photos with people added to them by the end of the year.
I am obsessed with flickr lately. I am uploading archived photos, tagging photos, and posting costume to my costume blog. I am heart broken that flickr is not working right now. Ahhhhhhh
I am surprised that this photo has even 15 views. I took this photo to show how scary it was to see this face of Jack Black looking at me while I drove. The photo might be amusing, but it is not very good looking. It could have been a better photo, but I took it while at a red light.
This is another uninteresting photo. It is from the upper deck of AT&T Park. Yeah, I sit in the cheap seats. It is hard to get interesting photos from my seats.
Uploaded on May 27, 2007 Taken on May 4, 2007 Viewed 10 times
I think it is easy to see why this photo only has five views. I do not think it is very interesting. I could see this photo topping out at 25 views, but it will take a long time.
Uploaded on April 15, 2008 Taken on April 14, 2008 Viewed 5 times
It is easy to see why this photo only view in five months. The subject matter is not interesting and and not well expressed. It is not part of any groups. Just adding it to a few groups might increase the views.
Uploaded on March 31, 2009 Taken on March 25, 2009 Viewed once
This photo has no title, few tags and is part of no groups and no sets. There is also another photo right next to it of the same subject matter. That might be why it has no view. I know that adding this blog entry this will no longer be a zero
Uploaded on April 24, 2009 Taken on April 4, 2009 Viewed 0 times (Not including you)
More of the follow up for my April/May 08 Flickr view posts. This will finish this series. Next I will have the new version of this project. How have these views grown? just check it out.
Back in April of 08 I did an entry showing how many views on flickr some of my photos have. Recently I passed 2 million total photo views on flickr. that made me think about revisiting this idea. If I do this again, I should start by looking at how many views the photos from the April 08 post have now. I think it is going to take me more than one post.
Yesterday I posted this picture to Flickr. It is a photo I took in a parking lot because it made me laugh. In less than 24 hours this photo got more than 10,000 views. I would expect a photo like this to get 40 views in 24 hours on a good day. Thanks to stumbleupon.com it got a lot more than this. It is currently the photo with the my 7th most traffic on Flickr. It is the only photo in the top 10 that was not taken at Comic Con in San Diego.
Just about now is when I wish I could make money from my Flickr feed.
I love that they took this picture for the movie. I think that this show how seriously Zack Snyder takes the source material of the graphic novel. I think that is a good thing. There is a small voice in my head that worries that this is just pandering. Either way he has my two movie ticket.
On flickr I made a set of the best photos I took in 2008. Above is the mosaic of the photos. I have not decided which one is the best yet. If you have any ideas please let me know. I am trying to pick the one that is the best for photographic reasons, not sentimental reasons. This year that might be really hard. That is why I need some outside input.
I am not sure what the best photo I took in 2008 is. I took a lot of photos and posted a lot to Flickr. I have started a Nomination Set. These are the photos that I think are the best or might be the best. You might disagree with me. If you think a photo is the best of 2008 make a comment on that photo. I will add it to the nominations group. Hopefully I can make a decision by close to the start of next year.
I was hoping to get to 2,000,000 over all views by the end of the year, but that is not going to happen unless I can get 250,000 by the end of the year. I do not see that happening, but it is worth a little promotion.
I have an idea of how to change the National Novel Writing challenge for next year. It took me about 70 hours to write 50000 words. I am thinking next year to try to take the first few days off from work. The idea would me to spend every waking hour working on my novel until it is finished. I think this would be a wild challenge. I am not sure it would make for a good novel. It would be something interesting to do.
Today I noticed that I have more that 1.5 million views on Flickr. I crossed this number about a week ago. This blows me away. I know that this does not mean that 1.5 million people have seen my photographs. I have no idea how many people have seen my photos and no good way to estimate. I still know that they have been viewed 1.5 million times.
This number blows my mind. I know that I have a lot of views because I post a lot of photos. Still, people keep on coming back to my photos. People keep on looking at them. I think this is cool. When flickr started if you told me how many people would view my photos I would not have believed it.
I just wish there was a way for me to make money with my flickr stream. I wish I could use a pro account and sign up for ad serving. I wish there was a way for me to cash in. For now I will have to settle for watching my views go up.
Julius Carry passed away on August 18. I think he was a good actor, even if he was in mostly be movies. I found that he passed away because the photo above got a big spike in views. I got more that 500 views in a day. It is the number one result for google image search for Julius Carry. This is just another case of the internet being strange.
My condolences go to Julius Carry's family and friends. You were the master.
I need your help tagging my Comic Con photos. I took over 700 photos at comic con. that is a lot of photos. I have not had time to tag all of them. There are lots of them which I have not idea what the tags should be. There are other photos which I know what the tag should be, but I have not found the time. I created a set of some comic con 2008 photos that need tags. You can also just look at the tag Needstags. Any help you can provide will be appreciated.
The comic con bump for my flickr photostream is coming to an end. I estimate that I received an extra 60,000 views from July 20 to August 10. I have to admit that this is one of the reasons I love comic con. I know the photos will get a lot of views. It would be nice if I could somehow make money from this.
The odd thing is that my older comic con photos also got a bump this year. The costume photos from other years got a lot of extra views. This has never happened before. I am not sure how it happened.
I also did not have any pictures that just took off. Many times a few photos would get 1000 views before I left San Diego. The photo below is my most view photo from Comic Con 2008 and it has less than 500 views. Many of the photos are in the 100 to 200 range.
Right now I am working on my checklist. I have over a thousand photos of people in costumes. I want to figure out who I have and who I still need to get.
I love the idea of people using flickr at a recipe site. This Tuna Noodle Casserole was made by a friend of ours Louise. She is a good cook so I think this is likely a good recipe. The photo makes me think it is a great meal.
I have been looking at flickr stats since it has been added to flickr. I was hoping it would tell me something about my photos that I did not already know. I was hoping I would get a good idea where my views come from. I now have a good idea where my views come from. Below are the numbers as long as Flickr shows them:
Every other site is less that 1%. It would take about 5000 views to get to 1%.
At the time is an image of my stats. You can see that big spike. After looking at those big spikes a few time I came to a realization. Those big spikes do not come from a single photo getting a lot of view. It does not come from a lot of photos getting a higher than average number of views. Those spikes from from many photos getting one extra view that day. That just amazes me.
I have 8,600 hundred photos on flickr. On an average day I get 1700 views over 700 photos. I will get a spike where I get 9000 views over 5000 photos. It is just like lots of photos go an extra view.
I am finding that my photography is defining the long tail.
This is my most viewed photo. I do not think this is my best photo ever. I do not think these women are the most attractive in my photosteam. When I took this photo, it wa just a spontaneous snap shot. I just had a few seconds to take it. They did not take to time to pose most most people in costume take. Maybe that is why it is so well liked.
This is also my most commented photo. But part of that has to do with Supergirl having a belly ring. People wonder how a person with skin the strength of steel gets a belly ring.
For a long time this was my most viewed photo. It is easy to see why this photo was the most viewed photo. This is where my obsession with Metal Slave Bikini Leia. This was the moment I found out that there are so many women who dress like this at comic book conventions. I guess this is where I found out I should try to take more photos of women in costumes.
This photo has been viewed so many times because it was blogged so many times. During comic con it turned up on six different blogs. People loved the idea of a Steampunk Ghostbuster. I have to admit that this is one of my favorite costumes of all time.
I am not sure how blog views are counted. I know that most of my flickr views come from inside of flickr. Site referrals only account for 2% of my views. 2% of 1.2 million is still 24000 views. Maybe a big chunk of that is part of this photo.
Views on Flickr: One Thousand Fourty Eight view photo
I average between 1900 and 1100 views a day. This is the range my views stay between. Some days I see a big bump, but it never falls below 1100 views. Everyday my photostream gets as many views as this photo has totally. That is a strange idea. At the high end of views, photos get 100 to 70 views. On the low end hundreds of photos get 1 to 2 views. I think this is very interesting.
Look at all the elements of this photo. It is easy to see why this photo has so many views. It is a great costume group. I think that is one of the reasons it has so many views.
My nephew noticed that I took lots of photos of signs. Yes it is something I do all the time. Some of my most viewed photos are of signs. If it was not for Comic Con they would dominate the top of my popular lists.
One of my photos is on Youtube. I know this is not that big of a deal. It is just aideo of a whole bunch of tattoo photos. I am happy that someone likes it enough to put it in their video.
I was surprised to find out that Wolverine is one of my biggest search terms for my photosteam. I am not sure why over 5000 people in the past year have searched for Wolverine. I know it is my Comic Con that keeps people coming back.
This is a great photo because it is an in joke. Not everyone knows this is Spider Man. Not everyone knows that this is actually from a comic book. Lots of people think it is combining the Unknown Comic and the Fantastic Four. I am happy this has so many views.
Views on Flickr: Six Hundred Eighty One View Photo
This is my 200 most view photo. Flickr users know the importance of this because 200 is the default last photo when users are looking at their most viewed photo. I hope that someone sees this as interesting. This photo has a lot of elements that make my photos interesting. I think I do a pretty good job with my best photos. I think my 200 best photos are pretty good. That might be because I take so many pictures that I am only getting lucky. I will still take that.
In 2005 at comic con I decided that whenever I saw someone with a comic book themed tattoo I was going to ask them if I could take a picture. I had not noticed that many comic book themed tattoos before. Taking photos of them really made me notice them at comic con. Now whenever I see a tattoo I have not seen before I want to take a picture of it.
Tattoos get a lot of views on Flickr and on my blog. In Sad Salvation's referral log I see lots of images searches for tattoos. I think it is easy to see why this photo would get so many views.
Lets go down the checklist here, Comic con - Check, Woman - Check, Corset - Check, Costume - Check, Goth - Check, Spider web - Check, Mowhawk - Check. I have no question why this photo has over 500 views.
Above 500 views there are very few Comic Con photos. I will keep on going to Comic Con because of this. If I leave the west coast, I will have to go to the New York Comic Con or Dragon Con in Atlanta.
I am not sure what I can say about this photo. It is really not like any the other photos in my collection. It is the typical "Stand here and pose with this person" photo. I love the expression of both Chris and the woman in the grapes.
I wonder what other people think when they see this photo.
Flickr has added a "Share This" Feature. I am testing the like it give me. I wonder how it decides the size for the photo. I wonder if I will start to use this feature. You can also use this feature to E-mail, Link, or Blog the photo.
Tattoos get a lot of views on my photostream. They also get lots of views on my blog. I love taking photos of Tattoos. I do not have any tattoos, but I respect people that do. I think there is a lot of art in tattoos. I also see lots of commitment in tattoos. I love when I see a tattoo that I have never seen before. I love when a tattoo has a good theme. I love when I have the feeling that I have seen something I would not see anywhere else. That is what makes photographing a tattoo special.
I am not sure what makes searching for a tattoo on flickr special.
I once had a conversation with another flickr user about views on flickr. I asked him about how many views his photos average. He said he did not take not of that. He said that he has about hundred contacts and all his photos get about 100 views. This idea blew me away. I knew that this did not happen to me. I know that most of my contacts do not see most of my photos.
When I got to know this flickr user better I found out how this might be true for him and not true for me. He posts about three times a month. He also only posts about two or three photos at a time. I post between 20-30 days a month. I also post between 100 - 300 photos a month. I think it is much harder for all my viewers to view all my photos.
There are other problems. I know that many of my contacts do not long on often. At least 50 of them have not uploaded a new photo in 2008 yet. I know that I am uploading several days worth of photos between when they log on. That gets me less views.
I would love if all my contacts saw all my photos. I know that is not going to happen anytime soon. I know that I am not even going to average that many views. I could reduce my number of contacts to see what happens, in the end I am not sure that would help.
Costume photos are very popular on my photo stream. A large percentage of the photos with more than 200 views are from Comic Book Conventions. Most of these photos are of people in costume. As I get close to the top of my most viewed list, it is almost all people in costume. There will be several more of these photos in this project.
When I look at my biggest search terms, they are all most all comic book terms. I think this really says something about the people who are using flickr. It will also have a lot to do with which of my photos are actually interesting.
One hundred fifteen photo is my average view. That means that average view is 71 views higher then my median view. That means that my photo views are very top heavy. This is not a surprise to me. This photo is ranked 1631 in overall views and my median photo is ranked 4112. That is a pretty big spread.
This photo is a good example of what I get rewarded for. It is something funny that is in everyday life. I have a good eye for these things. I can see what photos might people laugh a little. It is better to be one of a few people that can express something funny than to be one of a huge crowd who is technically good.
I have no idea why this photo of my trash has 100 views. It is not a good photo. it is not an interesting photo. It is a photo of trash. There is something that always happens all the time. I am often asking myself why are people are looking at this photograph. Now there is a stats feature on flickr, but it was not there when they were looking at this photo. I do not know why people looked at this photo. I just know that they did. Hopefully I will be able to figure this out in the future.
This photo starts to show what kind of photos I can take when I take when I do a good job. I think that this is a good portrait. The SB600 flash I use here really does a good job. It really improves what I do with lower light.
This photo is good enough that the subject asked if he could use the picture for his Facebook profile photo. I can see how better photos are getting more views.
At 50 views I start seeimng photos that I think are good. Before this my photos are ordinary at best. I will admit that I think they are a little under rated at 50 views. I think the photo above should have over 100 views. This photo is not special, but I think it is good. Around here I can see photos that I want other people to really see.
You might ask why 44 views. This happens to be the median view of my photostream. I have about 150 photos with 44 views. Over the last two years my median started at 30 view, crawled up to I have lots of photos of people in sitting around coffee shops at meetings. These photos look the same often. I think this is a little better that the average photo like this.
This photo could get more views if I spent time improving the tags and adding it to more groups.
This is what a twenty five view photo looks like. The subject of the photo has a limited appeal. This photo has my sister at the Giants game. The photo is pretty well tagged and it has been added to my standard number of groups. I think this is a pretty good example of a twenty five view photo.
This is what a photo with ten views looks like. It is a good idea, but it is not there. It is a photo that you can find all over the place on flickr. There is nothing special about it.
This is a pretty typical five view photo. I have about 100 photos with 5 views. All of them are poorly tagged. Most of them have poor composition. all of them have been uploaded in 2008. They have been added to few groups.
I cannot say the above photo deserves very many views. I like the idea, but it is not executed well. It is missing that thing that makes it a good photo. That thing is a real idea of that the shot is telling us. Once again, a poor photo does not get rewarded on flickr.
I want to start a new series of blog posts looking at views on flickr. Above is a photo titled 2008 Spring Vacation: The Motel Room. This is a good example of a photo that only has two views. I did not have any photos on flickr that have been posted for more that a month that has only one view. In practical terms, this is on of my worst photos on flickr. I have not be rewarded for posting it on flickr.
One of the things that I notice is that it is poorly tagged and not in many groups. Right after I post this photo I will update the tags and add the photo to more groups. Even as I do that, it will not get this photo that many extra views. There are few good elements in this photo. I expect in a few weeks this photo will top out at about ten views.
I understand the idea that the customer is always right, but I am shocked at how entitled some users are. They feel offended that flickr would stoop so low as to offer video. Of course everyone knows that video is the least common denominator on the internet.
If they do not like a feature, don't use it. I think that Elkit in Wonderland said it very well.
I get that you may have no use for this feature, but I don't get the part where you want to forbid it to everybody just because it's not *your* thing.
I know people have very strong feelings about flickr, but you need to give it a chance to grow. I get it that at this time just about every internet user has a favorite site that has been ruined by change. Everyone has a story of a site that used to be great but changed and never recovered.
My problem is that people have not given video a chance. Instantly they said all the idiots from youtube would flood over here and destroy Flickr. They have not even used the feature. Months ago when I first heard rumors of video I did not like the idea, but I think flickr has done a good job with it. The 90 second limit seems to be a great idea. They are long photos and not short video blogs.
Now lets see if there is any change. I trust the flickr staff not to screw this up. I just wished more users had that kind of faith.
Wonder con is this weekend. It starts on Friday. Of course I will be there. It is not as big of an event as Comic Con. I only go to WonderCon for one day. I think I would get really bored if I went there for all three days. Maybe if I did I would go to more panels.
Above is my most viewed Wonder Con photo. I will be there with camera in hand. I will be trying to get as many photos as possible. Photos of people in costume fuel views on flickr for me. Now that I have flickr stats to look at I will be interested to see what wonder con does to my views. Let me know if you will be there also.
I think it is important to have goals. Without goals it is hard to measure how things are getting done. I am not always the best at
Here are my first batch of goals for 2008
1. For at least 40 weeks this year blog three days a week. 2. Total Flickr photos posted to 10,000 3. Total Flickr views, 2 million 4. Walk a more than 3,650,000 steps 5. *** **** ** ***** ** (This has to do with a secret) 6. Take a photo every day.
Let me know if you think I should have any more goals.
I would like to list this photo under deserves more views. I know the truth is that I should file it under: not as good at it could be.
I am thinking about starting a Photo Blog up. I am not sure if it is worth my time or not. I already have a flickr account. What would it mean to also have a photo blog? I am not sure it would be worth the time.
My Average view per photo on flickr is 110. My median views per photo is 47. This tells me that the photos with the most views have a lot of views. The median photo is number 3677. My average view photo is number 1559. I get have my views from 21% of my posted photos. I wonder how it is for other people. I know I can figure something out something by looking at these photos. I am just not sure what I can learn.
Total Photos Posted by 12/31/07: 7275 Photos Posted in 2007: 3947 Photos from 2007 posted: 2772 Month with the most posts: 686 Month with the most photo: 1005
Views: Photos 806,720 Photostream 190,243 Sets 63,936 Total 1,060,901
Take a photography everyday (Failed) Post at least 200 pre-2005 to Flickr (Failed) 200,000 Views of my flickr Photostream (Failed) Post 2000 photo to flickr (Pass) Spend the night at 12 places outside of San Jose (Pass) Use my text messaging more. (Pass) Use up all 500 of my monthly text messages at least once (Pass) Blog at least 150 photos. (Pass) Be open to the changes that come (Pass) Listen to 120 new albums (Pass)
I got 7 out of 10 passing. I am not sure that is a passing grade because the three hardest are the ones I failed at. I think it is important to keep track of these things.
I see this phone now and I wish I did a better job. I wish this was a better photographic. I wonder what I will find if I look back at the photos from this day. I need to look at more of my old photos in 2008. I need to put time aside to look at what I did before I had Flickr.
I am not going to make a total of 200,000 views this year for my flickr account. I have less than 190,000 views right now. I do not see anyway to get a 10,000 view boost this month. I guess I am going to miss that one.
If you want to look at what I think are good photos you should check out my set, "Should Have 100 Views." This is a group of photos that I think are underrated in my flickr stream. Go look and tell me if you agree.
This photo has over 500 flickr views. I cannot tell you why that is. It should not have over 500 view. I do not think it should even have 50 views. Tell me if you know why so many people have looked at it.
I made a hand full of resolutions in 2007. I have been successful for most of them. One I just finished was blogging 150 photos. I think that blogging photos makes my blog more interesting and it makes me think about photography. Both of those things are good things.
If you want to see all the photos I have blogged this year they are in one place, you can look at my set on Flickr. They are in roughly the order I blogged them. I think it is cool to just look at that set.
Lane Hartwell is pissed off at people stealing her photos, or at least infringing on the copyright. (Yes I am one of those people who think theft and copyright infringement are two different things.) There are items on Scott Beal's Liquid Squid and Like it Matters. I wonder if people like me make it harder on people like her. I know that I am not a great photographer. I am no where near Lane Hartwell in skill or talent. I am the kind of person who does not police his photos. I am the kind of person who does not know if people use my photos. Only once have I ever dinged a website for using a photo of mine without telling me. I had them add my name because I wanted to help the person who was in the photo.
I wonder if the web has made photography less valued. I wonder if so many people are willing to give it away for free, does it make it easier for other people to take? I am wondering if it is something that cannot be avoided because of the way other copyright holders act.
One of my stupid resolutions for this year is I want 200,000 views of my flickr stream. I know it does not mean anything, but it still makes me feel good. I know that Flickr comes up with this number in a way that does not make sense to me. I still want to get 200,000 views before the end of 2007.
Currently I have 181,632 views. That means I need to get another 18,478 people to look at my photos. That said, go over and look at my photos.
I have a set of photos on flickr I think deserve more views. I know that I see views as a way to measure the worth of a photo on flickr. I know not everyone sees it this way. Just humor me and go look at these photos. I think it will really be worth it.
I just make of photo set of my most interesting photos from 2007. To my disappointment every photo is from San Diego Comic Con. I know that Comic Con is the Christmas of my Flickr Year, but this is too much. It might as well be the only thing I take pictures of. I guess this means that If I miss Comic Con next year no one will look at my photostream.
Our eyes play so many tricks on us. Let and be bent and shadows can change what we seen. What we seen depends on our filters. We can never see what is really there, but if we know about our filters, we can try to adjust want we think about ourself. I am just not sure that people can even know all the filters they have.
Someone I meet recently just looked through all of my flickr photos. I always think someone could learn who I am if they looked at my photos. She took me up on this offer. She said that she learned three things about my from looking at my flickr photos.
1) I love people 2) I love color 3) The little things are important to me
I did not expect her to notice these things. They are all true about me and my photography. Even though I told her that she would learn about me from looking at my photos, I was not sure what she would learn. I think my photostream holds truths, but not truths I could figure out. I am just thinking about how I took the photos and want I am going to post.
This is one of my 200 most viewed photos. I have some 6500 photos on flickr. I cannot figure out why so many people have viewed this photo. I guess it is one of the mysteries of the internet.
This is my second 1000 view photo. This was taken at Comic Con 2006. Yes my two most viewed photos are from comic con. Fifteen of my twenty most viewed photos are from comic con 2006 or comic con 2005. I do not think any of the photos from this year will make it that high. I think some of my photos got big blog attention in those years.
It is easy to see why this photo had received so much attention. This photo is also my most favorite'd and most commented upon. Lots of people have a reason to love it. The funny thing is that is not all that good of a photo. I guess there are other things more important than technical proficiency.
It will be a while before I have my next photo reach the ranks of 10,000 views. The next closest photo has around 3000 views. When it comes to getting this many views, I have no idea what I can do to impact it. I have to hope that other people promote it. Maybe I need to make a set of photos that are not women in costumes that I want people to look at.
I know there are panels about costuming at Comic Con. I would like there to be a panel about Photography at Comic Con. I would love to here how other photographers approach Comic Con. I would like to know how they handle the technical challenges. I would like to know how they approach the subject matter. I would like to know what they look for in a photo.
I love taking pictures at Comic Con. It is easy to see on flickr that my photos are not like other people's photos. I think that is cool. I think even if only comic con photographers showed up at this panel, it would still fill up a small room. Now I just need to figure out how I get Comic Con to have a panel like this.
At next year's Comic Con I would love for Flickr to throw a Flickr party. I would love to see some of the Flickr staff go to San Diego during Comic Con and have a meet and greet with Flickr users.
Comic Con is the highlight of my Flickr Year. It gets me more photos, more views, more favorites, and more comments that any other single event of the year. This year I have got lots of positive feedback for my photos. I got feedback from my contacts, people I do not know, and some of the people who are the subjects of the photos.
There are so many people taking digital photos at Comic Con. It would be a great place for Flickr to promote itself. Show the different Comic Con groups. Show people it is a great place to post photos from an event like Comic Con. There are lots of people there to promote your product to. A party might be a great promotion.
I think throwing a party would be a great promotional tool for Flickr. Maybe even do it as an art show. I know that most of us Flickr using Comic Con photo hacks would love to have our photos in a show.
For the last couple of years I have suggested having a gathering of Flickr users at comic con, but no one can ever agree on what to do. Not living down there it is hard to organize. No one wants to take charge because everyone is focused on Comic Con. Having Flickr throw the party might overcome that.
I would love the meet the other flickr Comic Con photographers. I have the feeling that it will not happen unless Flickr throws the party. I need a way to share this idea with Flickr marketing people.
1. Mary Marvel 2. One of the Cast of Heroes 3. a Leia I have not taken a photo of yet 4. a padme I have not taken a photo of yet 5. a Transformer 6. New crossover costume
As I said before, I am obsessed with Flickr. My obsession has dulled a little, but I still visit flickr several times a day. The main expression of my obsession is how many views my photos get. I think this gives me feedback about what people think of my photos. I think I learn a lot about flickr by looking at my views.
In the land of flickr Metal Slave Bikini Leia, is a 10,000 view photo. My guess is that 10,000 view puts it in the top 0.1% of all the photos on flickr. That is not saying too much. I have almost 6000 photos posted and this is my only photo with more than 10,000 views. It we look at the top 1% of my photos, that is about 850 view. My medium photo has 40 views. I understand this adds up to hundreds of thousands for my photos collectively, but it does not feel like much. I wonder what the chances of any Flickr user randomly finding one of my photos.
I just wanted to let you know what a 10,000 view photo on flickr looks like. I know that no one is surprised.
I understand that people are upset about their photos being blocked and not being able to see some pictures. I know as a user of Flickr I think the protest is good. I think it is good for people to put the heat on Flickr and Yahoo. In the end we are their customers. That is an asymmetric relationship. The customer's power is our ability make noise and leave Flickr.
There is a lot of energy on the Flickr Germany discussion. There are a lot of passionate people. I would love to see these people channel this energy to more serious Censorship issues. I know that some people will say that all censorship is serious. Honestly I think that journalists who are jailed or killed because of their work is more serious than people having photos blocked on flickr. I would love to see that energy transfered from Flickr to larger issues of Censorship.
Thomas Hawk said the he was going to put his money where his mouth was for Zooomr and adopt standards that Yahoo would not adopt. I invite Thomas Hawk, every blogger out there who has made a post about this, and every Flickr user who has protested about this to actually put their money where their mouth is. I would like to challenge all these people to donate money to Reporters without Borders or Committee to Protect Journalists. I would suggest that you donate a $1 for every blog post, forum posts, and protest picture you posted and five cents for every time you used the word 'Censorship' in this conversation.
I have already donated $25 dollars to Reporters without Borders. I doubt that anyone will join me. I think that we should be able to raise $4000 for them, but I doubt that I will be able to raise $100 dollars. Tell me if you donate money in this effort.
Note: If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local Terms of Service so won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off.
This has caused a big dust up at Flickr. There are lots of users that are upset about this. It seems to be going past the level of people who think "any content filtering on the internet is censorship" crowd. There seems to be a lot of average users who are up in arms about this. Flickr is all about sharing photos. It is easy to see why people are upset.
This is a great story, because there are lots of stories here. The ones that are the most interesting to me is how Flickr SafeSearch works. It is an all or nothing filtering system. You cannot mark why something should be filtered. Content is not marked for sex or violence, you cannot mark things not work safe, you cannot mark things based on appropriate age range. It is only marked for Safety Level.
1. Safety Level
* Safe - Content suitable for a global, public audience * Moderate - If you're not sure whether your content is suitable for a global, public audience but you think that it doesn't need to be restricted per se, this category is for you * Restricted - This is content you probably wouldn't show to your mum, and definitely shouldn't be seen by kids
The second story is how Flickr reacts to these things. With a community bases site things spread like wildfire. This fire has been burning for 18 hours. The users are all over the place why this happening. There seems to be no answer of why this happening. It is true that this has been happening while Flickr is on a world tour rolling out in new countries in new languages. It sounds like a bad way to launch a product. Right now the users are fending for themselves. There is no voice of the company saying why these things are happening.
All of the recent censorship issues at flickr seems this way. The users are on their own to speculate about why things happen. Flickr seems slow to respond of why things have happened. I think they need to show the users more of how the sausage is made. I think it would be better for the users to know how the company is going to react. At last we would not be in the dark.
The last interesting story here is about the future of world wide social networks. I think this story is just the tip of the iceberg. I think we are going to start to see the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 in these kinds of censorship stories. If I just posted all of my photos on my website and those photos broke some German law, it would be very hard for Germany to act against me. They might block my website, but they cannot shut me down or have my message taken off the web. They would have a hard time taking me to court. If I am using a service like flickr, Germany have a much easier time using the force of law against that company. They have a much clearer path to shut them down or sue them to take action.
I am not sure what other web 2.0 companies do. I am not if any of them have a real global reach. I am not sure what would happens to people who break German laws on YouTube.
I think there are more of these stories to come. I think we are going to see more companies have to chose between their users and local laws. It will be interesting to see this play out. What will Flickr do? What will other web 2.0 companies do? What is the right thing to do and what will be done?
There has been a lot of blogging lately about Flickr and Censorship. Flickr is the favorite photo site of much of the blogging crowd. Flickr was the first photo site that understood social networking and community. It gave them a big head start over everyone else.
One thing that gets a lot of attention is when people think that Flickr is censoring them. Last month there was a big dust up when Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir had one of her photos deleted. The photo could be restored but none of the comments could be restored. Her are Rebekka's final thoughts on the flickr event.
I want to say here that I loath calling what Flickr is doing censorship. I was always thought that censorship we denying someone their right to free speech. To truly deny that you need force of law, force of violence, or force of economics. Flickr has none of these things. There is nothing stopping a Flickr user from posting their photos someplace else. Flickr users are not a captive audience, they can go anywhere else on the web to see photos. A business can set their standards what ever way fits their business model, as customers we can vote with our wallets. Censorship to me are things like insult laws and journalist getting killed.
Yesterday I read that Violet Blue received a message that her account was being moderated. Some of her photos were being blocked by safe filters on Flickr. Over the last few months on flickr I have noticed that a lot of photos get blocked by these filter. Few of the blocked photos are pornographic. Many I cannot figure out why they are being blocked at all. Violet Blue is a sex writer, but most of her photos are not unsafe. Some are risque, but she has some good questions about why they were blocked.
To be honest, I have no problem with Flickr blocking photos. They have a business they need to run. They need to create a landscape where families feel welcomed. They need to be able to offer their service to the wider world. I understand why they want to have some rules.
My problem is with how vague the Flickr Community Guidlines are. They want people to figure it out themselves. This worries me some. I feel in a situation like this you have to spell out users rights. This means that as a member of the community I can complain if I do not like the political or moral message of a photo. I do not have to respect anyone's rights. Every photo I don't like I can say it should be blocked.
Flickr will never be able to provide a comprehensive list of what content should fall in which bucket. This is simply impossible to do on a global scale.
That's why we wrote the Community Guidelines, to give you a sense of the sort of things that are allowed or not, and what will happen if you publish content that doesn't follow those guidelines.
The most important thing for you to remember when you're moderating your own content is that Flickr is used by millions of people of all ages from all over the world. We're relying on you to use your best judgement about whether or not you think the content you publish would be offensive to anyone in this enormous public space. If you even have a hint of a doubt, you should use a different safety level.
The other simple question is whether or not you'd feel comfortable showing the content you publish to a child, or your mother, or someone you're sitting next to on a bus. If the answer is no, the content should be restricted.
If it turns out that you judge "the right thing" poorly, the community will probably speak out. If we receive complaints about your content, we will take action, in line with the Community Guidelines. You really should take a moment to read them.
Hey, I want some guidelines. I want to know when I am on the wrong side of the line. Flickr is a world wide community. Anyone in the world can see my unfiltered photos. That means that standards should be easy to set. Either I can have a woman in a bathing suit, which would be fine in the US, but considered wrong in Saudi Arabia or I cannot.
There are two things I want from Flickr:
1) Better defined guide lines. If you are going to have rules you need to protect your users rights also. You need to give me the right to political photos and social photos that other people might find offensive.
2) A tool to report photos that are behind the SafeSearch filter that seem they should not be there. I have seen photos of cats, apartments, and cars where I have to click through the safe search filter. I would like to be able to report when I think the safe search filter is wrong. I would like other people to request this of Flickr also.
On the Sunday edition of the Mercury News there is a tease banner of 'Who Is Reading Your Blog?' The story is in the Perspective section. The column is about how people are obsessed with who is reading their blog, looking at their photos, watching their video, and visiting there myspace page. Views are one of the main currencies of the web. The numbers of views you get is the amount of attention we are getting.
I do not worry too much about who is reading Sad Salvation. I figured out a long time ago that I am a not going to be an A, B, or C-List blogger. I have always seen myself as a K-List blogger. My technorati rank is around 400,000 and I do not see it going up anytime soon. For whatever reason, I do not appeal to a mass audience. I know that people are reading it because I am getting comments from time to time.
I am obsessed about views when it comes to Flickr. Views are my main driver. I care that my median view does not drop. It has been slowly climbing this year. It seems to be stuck between 40 to 38. I have a group for photos that I think should have 100 views. For some reason I get the most reward out of people looking at my photos.
There is one quote in the story which I found interesting.
One concern, however, looms on the horizon for all those creators: In a world where everyone is busy churning out videos, blog entries, and podcasts (and counting the number of people who tune in), do we run the risk of having no one left to watch?
Yes, I spend much more time working on Sad Salvation than I do reading blogs. I spend much more time working on my photos than I send on looking at other people's photos. I am more focused on me than I am on other people. I guess that is part of why I like being a blogger.
Thomas Hawk is making a big deal about Flickr deleting a photo and the corresponding comments from one of their users. He says that Flickr deleting the photo and the comments is censorship. I will step outside my usual idea that only the government can truly censor someone. Flickr/Yahoo cannot keep Rebekka from posting the photo someplace else. They cannot keep the users from commenting someplace else about this photo.
I will say that if any internet user expects to own the comments, they need to own where the comments are being placed. My blog does not have an end user license agreement. I am the person who backs up my pages and my comments. That is the only way I can really control it. Flickr is not a co-op. I do not have an equal say on what happens and I do not have a say if they think I broke the rules. Flickr is a business and I am their customers. Like business and customer relationships, there is asymmetrical power.
I will not make fun of Thomas Hawk for his protest. He is trying to change the way Flickr does business by applying pressure. This often can change how a business works. I as a customer thinks the best thing I can do it take my business elsewhere if I have a problem.
In the end this is not a rights issue. Flickr is well within its rights to do what it did. Since they are not a monopoly we can all take our business elsewhere if we choose.
Yahoo no longer trying to be all things to all web users
Yahoo announced that it is closing their auction site. According this this article it is getting killed in the space. My guess is that this has something to do with the Peanut Butter memo. I think it is a good move to get out of businesses you are not really competing in.
I am not sure getting rid of your photos business is the best move. I know that you also have flickr. It is possible that different users what different kinds of tools. I love flickr, but it does not seem to be about the same idea as yahoo photos. If you kill one tool for another, you might end up losing more users than money you are saving. I think making these two tools one business unit might work better than only having one tool.
I will admit that I do not know what all those additional resources could do for flickr. If all the photo resources go over there, you might be able to get something great. It will be interesting to see what happens at Yahoo.
I think flickr is changing the way my brain works. I know this sound extreme, but I think it is true. I think that using flickr all the time is changing the way I see the world and the way my brain processes visual information. I am not sure if this change is a good thing or not.
I have not always been the most visual person in my life. I am usually a word person. I think about the words that I hear and I have a running dialog going in my head. I am a person who thinks about the world by thinking about how I would describe it. I have been that way as long as I could remember.
Using flickr has changed that. More often I am thinking about the world in the ways I would take pictures of the world. When I see something I am thinking about the pictures I might be able to take. I think about something I have seen on Flickr or how another photographer would take the picture.
Flickr is changing the way I see the world. I do not know where the limit of that change is. I am not sure if I should just let it go where it will or try to push for the change.
Have you wondered what it takes to be an A list photo on flickr. This is what it takes to be an A List photo. Pinhole has gotten over 50,000 views in just a few days. This photo has captured everyone's eye. It think it is easy to see why. I just hope I take a photo that touches this in 2007.
I have received a lot of complements for this photo. I think I am more or less lucky when it comes to a photo like this. I have to put myself in the place to get a good photo.
Thinking about photography, the first and hardest challenge is finding places to take photos. It is not always easy to go out and find things to take photos of. Sometimes it is as easy as just walking down the street. For a photo like this I had to find my way up to the top of a mountain at sunset.
The second challenge is knowing that the shot will look like before you take it. You have to be able to see your subject in the world and have an idea what the photo will look like. Even if you are not totally correct, you need some idea. I think this is what some photographers call having an eye.
The third challenge is having the ability to capture the photo. Sometimes it is a matter of skill, sometimes it is a matter of equipment. I often see a shot that I do not have the lens to capture. If I had more skill I would be able to get shots with lessor equipent
The last thing you need it luck. Sometimes you get the photo without trying. Sometimes you have everything set right and you still cannot get the photo. Some people looking at my flickr photostream might say that I rely a little too much on luck.
I am not sure if this is my best photo of 2007, but it might be. Tell me what you think.
At the SFlickr second anniversary meetup I got in a conversation about Flickr Rankings. The guy was talking about how we are all obsessed with explorer. That is the bit thing at Flickr. He got his father on flickr. His father is now retired and spending all his time taking photos. He father is getting more photos into explorer than he is.
I told him that I do not care about Explorer or interestingness. I do not care about these thing because I cannot predict what photos these ratings will reward. I know it has something to do with how comments an your photos and who likes them. That is not interesting to me. I am never sure what will get the good ratings. I told him that is why views are my obsession.
For a long time my obsession was with my most viewed photos. I quickly learned that my most view viewed photos were going to sort them self out. After the group laptop stickers got posted to boing boing some pretty bad pictures got over a thousand views. I realized that I had no control over my most viewed photos.
Now I am interested in the middle of my collection. Where is the 50% point for photos, the average, I think this is a real measure of a photostream. I even started a group for people to post those photos, The Middle. I think of the great things about flickr is seeing how good average is. With hundreds of average photos all together you can see how beautiful this world really is.
If your middle photo is too good, you are not posting enough photos. If your middle photo is too bad, you need to take better photos. I think there is a zen of the middle photo. This is where you learn what someone thinks of flickr.
One of my goals for 2007 is to get 200,000 views for my flickr photostream. I know that is a kind of sad goal, but I am obsessed with flickr. Part of that obsession is how many views my photos get and how many views my photostream gets.
I just figured out that I need to average 350 views per day to get to 200,000 by the end of the year. I know that this is not about averages. Events like Maker Faire and Comic Con spike my views. I need to get as many views out of those events as I can. As long as I can find cool photos, the pub about those events do the rest.
This feels strange because I feel that I can do very little about getting more views for my photostream. I know what having my photos in groups get more views for my photos in general, but I cannot predict how a specific photo will do in a specific group. It is the same thing with blogging a photo. I can never predict how blogging a photo will effect the view count.
On a friend's flickr post I saw a link to San Francisco Zine Fest. I have been thinking about zines for a while now. I wonder if zines still matter. Part of me think that zines are nostalgia or an anachronism for the most part. I get the feeling that the time for zines are past.
I am not usually someone who thinks that the internet has killed print media. I think that that it has changed the place in the world for some print media. Newspapers seem to be the most displaced. I think it has to do with the timeliness of the information. Newspapers seem old by the end of the day.
I feel that zines have been displaced by Blogs and Websites. When I was reading and writing zines (yes it was much more reading than writing) back in the early 1990's it felt like zines were the only way to get these messages out. There was no other way for people making zines to be published to the world.
Zines were a whole world of people expressing themselves that you have to look for. People had to put effort into finding zines they liked. It was not something like TV which is there no matter what you do. Zines seemed to be about finding voices like your own is a world that was filled with people who are not like you.
With blogs I guess I am not sure why people still make zines. I think it is much easier to connect with people who are not right around you. With the effort and money it takes to make a zine, is it really worth it. Are the people who wrote the good zines writing good blogs now?
When I went to the Seattle Central Library they had zines in the Teen area. Seeing these zines made me think about doing a zine. The problem is I am not sure how a zine would be different that just a mash-up of my blog and my flickr account. Could I make a zine that is worth reading? I am not sure what I would make a zine about.
As of March 22nd, I have had my Nikon D50 for one year. Flickr has was the main driver for me to get the D50. In that year I have been obsessed with flickr and taking photos to put on flickr. Many times If I know I will not be able to put the photos on flickr, I will not bother taking them.
A year later, I still really like my camera. It is not perfect, but it has served me well. It might be the most useful piece of consumer electronics I have ever purchased. I know that I had a camera before my D50, but it did not inspire me the way my D50 has. It did not make me think about photography or take chances with photography the way my D50 has.
There is still a lot I have to learn about photography. I know that I do my best learning when I go out and take pictures. My Nikon D50 makes me want to go out and take pictures. That is a good thing.
Is there anything I should try taking a picture of in the next year?
While I was in Seattle I tried to stand in the background of as many photos as I could. The challenge now is to see if any of those photos show up in flickr. I am wondering if anyone can find me is someone else's photos.
Terms that might help this search
Seattle Space Needle Seattle Center Pike Place Market SAM Olympic Sculpture Park Waterfront Park
Autumn was talking about how communities on the internet have been fragmenting over the last few years. People either you LiveJournal or Zanga, MySpace or Tribe, Flickr or SmugMug. She said that she ends to fall out of touch with people who use the tools she does not favor. Just because you switch to Vox, that does not mean the people reading you will also switch to Vox.
My internet brands are Flickr, LiveJournal, and Vox.
I did not make any resolutions for 2006. It seems like I take some years off. I am not sure these are really resolutions. They are goals. I know that these are not that challenging. It still stuff I want to try to do this year.
Take a photography everyday Post at least 200 pre-2005 to Flickr Use my text messaging more. Use up all 500 of my monthly text messages at least once Blog at least 150 photos. Be open to the changes that come
Tuna Noodle Casserole by loumcf
Median
Average
The Godfather of cross over characters
