The Photography Thread

[MartyG]

What you find with comments is people copy each other because many are unable to properly critique a picture either on technique or on artistic merit, so the sheep effect occurs. The comments about that pic being too dark are just ignorant, because they don't understand how it was done.

I quite like the 1 on 1 comments group.

[Nijo]

Perhaps they do this already... or they should. Weight the ratings of different people, so somebody with 1000 highly regarded shots is a pro and knows what they're talking about (maybe in certain categories?), while somebody with 10 bad macros is a newb.

When I look at the comments now I can't see whether the people posting them have any idea about photography.

[MartyG]

Yes you can ... go look at their photostreams

Worse than people posting stupid comments is people not posting a comment at all when they're suppose to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martypg.../in/pool-1on1/

[PeteJ]

Yes you can ... go look at their photostreams

Worse than people posting stupid comments is people not posting a comment at all when they're suppose to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martypg.../in/pool-1on1/

1on1 group is weird because you don't have to post on the shot to your right, rather any shot that takes your interest. Stick it in the discussion thread and it'll actually receive more comments than it normally would do!

edit - my mistake, different group than I thought it was!

[MartyG]

Here's a fun group for you Pete: http://www.flickr.com/groups/isquishyourhead/

[Alastair]

I still like Flickr a lot. If you think of it more as a place to show your mates pictures than anything more then it seems spot on.

Saying that it's probably because I just got 41/50 in the score me group - Hooray It does all depend on who posts after you though, I was lucky and the guy who was posting "Nice shot" 5/10 was done just before me and the people after me were all pretty good snappers.

[Paleface]

Flickr: so, the weird thing is, it all depends how you use it. I've been on it for quite a while now. I use it to publish photos, and the main group I engage with is the D50 group because I like helping people use equipment.

But I don't really buy into the whole "delete me", "score me" group - I tend to work quite hard on my pics.

And the sway towards high-contrast, bright-colours is noted; I believe that their top-secret "Interestingness" algorithm actually weights against colourful high-contrast photos, because everyone loves bright skies and kittens, and clicks on high-contrast thumbnails, but the thumbnails of Pete's light-paintings aren't so exciting - and so any clicks on them were "earned" more.

I like it, but it's many things to many people, and for me the least interesting is people writing "great capture" on my blog.

That said, I've learned a lot there. The larger, more generic groups, are often good places for discussion; similarly, the big topic-specific groups. Also: I'm picky with my contacts/friends, so "my friend's photos" is exactly that, and I really like that functionality. But again, a lot of my friends have been Flickr users for a very long while.

Weighting comments: bad idea. Lots of people take bad pictures and leave good comments. Lots of people take great pictures and I find their comments patronising and condescedning. What if someone who'd taken thousands of pictures that were well-rated said Pete's pictures were too dark? Does it make any difference? The way you ascertain if someone knows what they're doing is by a) talking/listening to them and b) looking at their pics.

But that's just me. You don't have to buy in to the obsessive-grouping-and-pooling-stuff to be a serious/heavy Flickr user; it's very non-proscriptive as to how you use it. That's the big attraction for me. (Also: the API is ****ing awesome).

[MartyG]

I dunno, my most successful pic on flickr has been this one, and it's not really that high contrast, but did get placed in expore: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martypg13/188662876/

[Alastair]

There's a lot of contrast between the dark frame and the light sky though isn't there.

I think the interestingness thing has a lot to do with unique views coming from different sources as well. And also people leaving comments

My one and only shot on explore (trooper) got there quite quickly and I have no idea how except that it got a few comments within the first half hour that it was up and I sent it to a few groups (not groups that 'require' comments to be made though). It was only once it was in the 'top 20 for the day' on explore that it really took off and got nearly 1000 views in 2 days.

If we all knew how their code worked though we'd all be abusing it so I'm glad to just get creative, honest comments about my shots.

I find the comments here to be more useful as I 'know' all of you and your style, experience etc but I get much more volume of feedback from flickr.

It's also very handy for online storage which is what I signed up for it initially for!

[Alastair]

Another thing I've just found:
http://flickstr.basementserver.com/famr/all_time/ rubbish page but basically lists the top 20 ranked flickr users by interestingness and contacts etc. A good way to find some great photographers.

I've been watching rebekka's stuff for ages now (she was #1 when I just looked) and have just seen imapix for the first time. Very good both of them.

[djjimbob]

Bloody hell, rebekkah's stuff is amazing. It just embarrasses everything I've ever snapped.

[Alastair]

That's exactly how I feel but they are very inspirational. Her long exposures are great.

Her work also inspires me to visit Iceland, looks great.

[Ginger Tosser]

Nice pic by rebekkah. I like the use of the wide angle on the 10-22mm

[SubparMario]

Some phone camera efforts from Norway.

[Ish]

Couple of efforts from today.

Unfortunately I can't post my favourite two as I my sister won't let me post her photo on the net. Bah. Much annoyance... as I think they're great photos!