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 set a goal of blogging 150 photos this year. This photo will be number 102. That means I have to blog another 48 to mean my goal. I already missed my goal of taking a photo every day. I have made my goal of spending a night in 12 cities other than my home. It seems like a mixed bag for resolutions so far this year.
Whenever I see this picture I have to remember they were looking at me as I took the photo. Now it feels like they are seeing something in me that I am not seeing in myself. It is that feeling that they are seeing right through me. It is a strange feeling to get from looking at a photo I took.
From time to time I try to capture a place in a photo. I try to get to visually sum up what the place is about. Sometimes you cannot sum that place up. Sometime there is not a view that captures what you see. I feel that way all the time.
We take pictures of ourselves all the time. I think it is to answer the question "who am I." The funny thing is I do not think one photo of me has ever answered this question. I do think many photos of myself have answered this question.
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.
There is something about this photo that makes me feel sad. I am not sure if it is the distance, the lines the shadows or the colors. When I see it I feel a little bit of sadness. I just feel that way.
I like this picture. When I took it I did not even think of the Tooth Fairy. I just thought about how much it cost me to get these two teeth out. I guess it still makes sense either way.
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
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.
It appears that Azia Kim was also taking ROTC classes at Santa Clara Univ. This really makes we wonder what she was thinking. I wonder how long she thought she could pull it off. I wonder if she thought this might help her if she got caught. Did she do this just because she wanted to take the class.
The university and Stanford police department are still investigating how she led such a life, undetected, for so long.
But ROTC's Rosenburgh said the Army has no intention of investigating the incident further. "It seems to have been a harmless prank," he said.
It is funny when Stanford is more upset than the U.S. Army. I know this would be different if she made a commitment to the Army. That does not come until the junior year.
All of this makes me wonder who she was and what she was doing. Did she have a plan or was she just winging it.
I am amused that a photo I took is in the top image results for the Google Canada search of pictures of sad people. It is the photo of Antwon at the top of the page. That might be why that photo has almost 700 views. I am happy that Sad Salvation and my Sad People photo set are both in the top five for this search. For a long time Sad Salvation would be found by people searching for pictures of sad people, but there were no sad people on my blog. I am happy that I have been able to fill this web nitch. Now people can find pictures of sad people because of me.
When I am asked here "where did you good to college?" I get a lot of head scratch when I say Millersville University. Unless someone is from Pennsylvania or Maryland there is a good chance they have never heard of it. The bay area is full of people from elite schools.
I cannot tell you how out of line I think this is. She is over 21. She is a grad student. You cannot even tell if she is drinking beer in the photo. It is not like she is clearly on campus. The school is way out of line on this one. I hope she wins her lawsuit.
I was sure when I first took this picture and started the whole pose with your toaster movement I would be come some level of internet famous for it. The internet fame never came. I never got interviewed by any one about how it came up. I never got to tell my story about how unexpected it all way.
Now I am not even sure people would get the gag. That is what happens when you try to make fun of an advertisement. The joke only lasts as long as the ad stays in rotation.
All I have now is just this picture to look at. Maybe it is for the best.
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.
This woman Erin posed for a group of photographers last year. She modeled for us for about 3 hours. I took about 2 GB of photos that day. I have hundreds of photos of this woman I only met once.
I did not post very many of the pictures at the time. I went back over the past couple of weeks and posted some of the photos. I am impressed that I did such a good job with some of these photos. They might not be great, but they are some of the best photos I have ever taken.
I feel that I know this woman much better than I do. I have been looking at these photos so much, I feel a connection to her. I remember that she was really cool and I had a great time taking photos of her. The truth is if she walked by me right now, I might miss her.
I am just trying to think about the ways that image affects me.
I failed one of my goals for 2006. I tried for the second time to take a photograph every day for a year. I know lots of people who try challenges like this. It is long enough that it hard, but it is not a lot of work. You just need to make sure you do it everyday. It is about being thoughtful.
I first tried this in 2004. That time I only got a month into the project before I failed. That was before I was a flickr user. I was interested in Digital photography at the time, but I did not know anyone else doing the same thing.
This year I thought it was a good time to try this again. In 2005 I really got into digital photography. I started using Flickr a lot in 2005. I started to meet a lot of people doing digital photography. It seemed like the right project for 2006.
The project started off well. Flickr is the perfect tool for a project like this. Not only did I have a place to put all my photos. I also had a good way to show the photos month by month. It helped me keep track the photos.
I failed at the start of August. I cannot remember why I failed, why I missed some days. My guess is that the living of my life distracted me from taking my camera everywhere with me. I currently not even sure what days I missed. I know that I stopped posting photos from everyday.
This year I will try again. I will try to take a photograph everyday. I will try to find new things to take photographs of. I will try to find new things to take photos of. I will try to cover as much new territory as possible.
Here are my month by month photo a day sets from 2006. I made sets for the months that I failed also. I want to see how many days I missed total. I think it might help me in 2007.
I think this is my best photograph of 2006. I took this driving back from Comic Con in San Diego. We were detoured off I-5 because of a brushfire in the hills. It was hot and hazy to start with. There was a lot of smoke in the air. I had heard other photographers talk about taking sunsets after fires before.
Traffic was really slow. I dropped far behind the car in front of me. Knew the car would fit into the photo. I grabbed my camera and snapped some photos. It is always fun to use my steering wheel as a tripod.
The photos turned out great. I played with the colors until I got what is above. The colors just jumped out at me. The funny thing is that this photo is not like most of my photos. Some times I try to capture some beautiful, but it is not what I am doing most of the time. It makes clear that a good percentage of photography is just having your camera ready when you need it.
I am happy I took this photo. When I started 2006 I could not have predicted I would take a photo like this. I like the idea that I do not know what the future has for me.
Awhile ago I decided that I wanted to get more of my photos on Flickr 100 views. I have created a set on Flickr for photos that I think deserve 100 views. You can come over to flickr and tell me if you agree or not. I think these photos are better than the amount of attention they have received so far.
There are a few different types of rewards on Flickr, Interesting, Views, Favorites, and Comments. Views have always been the reward that has been the most important to me. To me, what I really care about is how many people see my photos.
For most people on Flickr the most important reward is Interestingness. It has become a way to measure how good photos are against the Flickrverse of users. It is not that important to me because I do not think I am a great Photographer. When I look at my photos that are some of the most interesting photos, I do not think they are my best photos. I feel that I am rewarded for whimsy most of the time. Here are my photos that rank in the most interesting for specific days. I know that people even go as far as to game the system to get more interesting.
I would like to have about 25% of my photos to have 100 views. Right now about 16.5% of my photos have 100 views. I know this is a meaningless measurement. I know there are no meaningful measurements when it comes to my photos. I know that most of my photos I place on flickr are not great. My photos are about what I see in my life more than trying to take great photos. Even if they are not great photos, I still want people to look at them.
Here is some random data about my photos.
Total Photos Posed: 4230 Photos with 100 views: 700 Photos with 200 views: 285 Photos with 1000 views: 28 Percent of photos with 100 Views: 16.5 Number of views for photo ranked 2115: 37 Photos who at last 1 persons counts as a favorite: 454 2115th most interesting Picture Total Photostream Views 90,279
I feel sorry for all the people stuck in Denver. It makes me happy that I got home so early. I am a little worried about getting back to San Jose. I heard on the radio that the do not expect air travel to get back to normal in the US until well into next week. At lease I will be here for Christmas.
It appears that that my photo, Somewhere around Thunderdome ended up on the Flickrotica blog. I find this to be funny. I am not sure if I could have got a photo on this blog if I tried. By not trying it was very easy to accomplish. I am not sure if I should hold this as a badge of honor or not.
I saw these drawings and I knew I had to take a photo. If I had someplace to hand the art I would have bought something. When I took the photo the art was for sale at Barefoot Coffee.
I went to the tapestries art festival in San Jose on Monday. One of my goals was to take photograph of cool products. The first one I found was the Record Purse. It was kind of cool. When I pulled my camera out the guy jumped in front of me and said no photos. He said that it was patented product and that his wife wanted to protect the design. I said that the patent protects the design. I told him I was only going to post a photo because I thought it was cool and that would promote his product. He said that he is only doing what his wife said.
If I wanted to steal the design of the purse I would have just bought one and reverse engineered it.
I think I am finally done posting my comic con pictures. I posted 369 photos. I think I took a total of 1028 photos at Comic Con. I feel like I spent more time looking at the photos than on the floor at Comic Con.
I am still going through the photos from the rest of my vacation. It will be a long while before I am done with all of them, but they have a longer shelf life.
I just felt I should post one last Comic Con 2006 photo to Sad Salvation.
As anyone looking at my flickr account can see, I have been thinking a blog about photography lately. The newness of my new camera has not worn off. At this rate the newness may not go away for months. It is so cool and I love the kind of pictures I can take with it.
Having this camera makes me want to take lots of photos. I have been averaging 50 photos a day since I got it. That is a lot of photos. Some of them are good, some are no better than my old camera, and some of them just stink. I am taking a lot of photos so I can learn how to use this camera.
I also take a lot of photos because I am looking around more. I spent some money on this camera (and camera accessories) and I want to get the most out of it. It is also very enjoyable to use the camera. In cases where I used to take just one or two photos, I am now taking ten photos.
Now that I am taking so many more photos, I am not sure what I should do on flickr. Up to this point I have seen myself as a journaling photographer. I was just taking pictures of my day to day life to share with everyone. I was not worried about the limits of my camera or my skills. I was just working with what I could.
With my new camera I can take some better photos. One out of every 50 or so look really good. I have noticed that most of my flickr friends who are really good post very few photos. To make those photos stand out you limit how many you post. Maybe you post everyday but you only post one photo.
But there are thousands of really good photographers on flickr right now. There is only one person living my life. If I quite posting the photos of my everyday life, I might lose what makes me special on Flickr.
I guess I need to figure out what I want out of flickr. Do I want it to be about my life or do I want it to be about my photography. I can keep on posting the good pictures, but they will be lost amount the flood of all the other photos I am posting.
I know that my good photos are not what get the most views. Views are about lots of funny things. All of the sudden all of my photos of laptops have over 1000 views.
I have no idea how to messure what people like about my flickr photos.
I love having comment boxes on weblog. The feedback is great. I think it improves my writing and Sad Salvation. I like knowing that people are out there reading my writing. It helps me know it is more then just yelling at the wind.
So far this entry with the picture below and this entry about the picture have received the most comments. Because the way the comment boxes work, it is hard to find the comments. I thought the comments below deserved.
Date/Time: July 10 2002, 05:46 pm
Poster: Bonni
I feel that I am violating her just by looking at her picture. Just her eyes are so expressive.
1. This muslim woman( who fully covers herself) puts her picture up for everyone's eyes to see. It is attracting men to her eyes. As a Muslim she cannot do this....
2. Because of her picture Rich she's got you thinking about her, making you think about whats underneath..etc. This is almost as worse as her taking her hijab and niqaab off. But I cannot judge this woman. Maybe she posted her pic wth different intentions.
When a woman covers herself she is respected, and the eyes of men are lowered out of respect.
Thank you for you comment on my web page. I think you added something to the ideas there. I would like to ask you a question.
You Wrote:
2. Because of her picture Rich she's got you thinking about her, making you think about whats underneath..etc. This is almost as worse as her taking her hijab and niqaab off. But I cannot judge this woman. Maybe she posted her pic with different intentions.
It did not get to think of her in a sexual way. I was think thinking about her body. I was thinking about how she views the world and what kind of person she is. Is that also wrong? I have heard that one of the reason Muslim women cover themselves is so they can be thought of as a person and not as a sexual object. Am I misunderstanding this?
I wanted to send this as an e-mail, but it got bounced back to me.
Like you I have a web site, but mine is on the reason why We [Muslim women] dress the way we do. I have pics of fully veiled women, ONLY for the sole purpose to show people the different styles of dress, and what is in acordance with the Islamic Law [Sahri'ah]. But just to have a pic of a veiled woman on a site for no reason doesn't sit right with me. But this is my own opinion.
I want to start by thanking you for stopping and thinking about the fact that you were USING her. I know most people don't think of the image of a person as USING them, but in a way, that is what is going on.
I have two point of view, which counter each other, in some ways.
1- any image, male or female, covered or uncovered is NOT public property. It is that persons. We steal something from them when we use them without permission, for it is their "copyright" of their face/body.
2- Images of individual styles of dress help explain and educate others. As the saying goes, Picture is worth a thousand words.
So how do we use, but not abuse? That is the real question. So, I give you permission to use my images of my veiled face (with eyes exposed) or covered from my webpage, ok Rich?
It did not get to think of her in a sexual way. I was think thinking about her body. I was thinking about how she views the world and what kind of person she is. Is that also wrong? I have heard that one of the reason Muslim women cover themselves is so they can be thought of as a person and not as a sexual object. Am I misunderstanding this?
Amongst the soul reasons a woman wears the covering, is to be respected and honoured of her right as a person who has the potential of any other woman. But that beautiful gem is hidden to the eyes of the world and with that comes great respect. I have to agree with your comment there abt that yes. But I also strongly agree with my fellow Muslim sisters above. By protraying that Muslim woman's picture, you ARE using her as an ad (maybe not intentially) to your website...(for that is how I got here in the first place). I'm curoius to see your viewpoint on that.
When I feel that one of my sisters in Islam, no matter what nationality she is, or even if she has done any wrong to me, is being treated with direspect, I am obligated to stand up for her when she cannot. The rest of what I have to say has been said by my sisters above.
I am looking back at the picture I posted an hour ago. I wonder if I am abusing this woman's image. There are two arguments. The first is that she posted her picture on the internet. She should know that when you post something like this you are releasing it to the whole world. The second is that she put her picture up for a specific purpose. I had to dig pretty deep to find it. I am out of bounds to use it for my weblog.
I want to know what other people think. How would you feel if you found a picture of yourself on someone else's weblog? Someone you do not know?
During my surfing tonight I came upon this picture.
I will admit you have to go to a muslim singles page to find a picture like this. This picture if of a 17 year old woman who is living in Oman . She is a niqaabi (a muslim woman who totally covers herself in public) and she convered in Islam in the past 1-2 years.
I look at this picture and I entranced. I just cannot look away from her eyes. I wonder how she sees the world. I wonder what go on behind her eyes. I wonder is her what I would think if I hear her speak. The sad thing is that I will never get a chance to know any of these things. That might be the reason I cannot look away from this picture.
This picture was taken while driving in San Jose. I have no idea how I achieved this effect. I do feel the whole world looks like this some times. More often it happens when I am on the streets of San Jose.
Now that I have this camera, I want to start putting a new picture up everyday. I have already taken 100 pictures with this camera. Only about a dozen look any good.
This is my friend Eric. This picture fits much of my mental picture of Eric.
I finally finished posting the First Day Project. It took me a while to put it together. All of the pictures were taken January 1, 2002. I have not seen anything on Not.So.Soft making reference to this project.
I hope that it gives people some insight to my life. I am not very good at taking pictures. I cannot capture what I see in a place. Hopefully you will be able to see what I see around my life.
Welcome to 2002. It is really the new year, I have already gone to bed and gotten up again this year. The weblog Not.So.Soft is running The First Day Project. The idea is to take pictures of the first day of this year. Here are some pictures that I took right after midnight.
There are more pictures and even a short video. I think that I am going to add more pictures, but I am not sure. It depends on how my day goes from here.
The Godfather of cross over characters
record purse
