The "bokeh" phenomenon is fun to watch on Flickr. Bokeh is the diffused light we see on an image when the light source is unfocused.
In the image above, this is all bokeh. 99% of what you can see is the bokeh from the July 4 fireworks on the right, the bokeh in the water reflection, and the bokeh from the lights of boats on Lake Michigan that came out to see the fireworks.
You can get bokeh either by using a high aperature setting (e.g. low f-stop number, f/2.8, 3.2), or by manually defocusing , as I have done here.
So one of the new words that has been created by Flickrites is...
bokehliscious...
a bokeh image that is completely satisfying.
Flickrites have gotten to call anything that is defocused "bokeh". Technically, if it isn't a light source, it isn't bokeh... The defocused object is then appended with a +'keh", and voila--a new word!
Thus the image above could be called fireworkskeh, boatlightkeh, or lakemichigankeh.
...Oh geez--and it's not even Wednesday!!!!! That mean's this is Happy Bokeh Wednesday Eve, or HBWE! (Explore)
Tags: bokeh boke bokay boka boquet boquette i'm you're okay ok ピンぼけ 散景 lake michigan new buffalo water fireworks fire works july 4 4th 2009 independence day boat light watch explosion diffuse reflection canon 40d happy wednesday eve hbw hbwe 50mm 1.4
Image: Spirogyra, a type of green algae, at 1000X magnification.
One thing that differentiates Flickr from other social media where one can post photography is that Flickr functions as a social network AND a search engine. Others, like Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, or Snapchat, primarily only function as social networks.
I have 2063 Flickr images that have over 10,000 views; my most viewed photo has 522,000 views. For a photo with 10,000 views, about 1000 views will come from Flickr contacts, and maybe another 250 if I post to groups. That means close to 90% of the views I get are coming from people (or bots) finding the image while doing a search on Flickr.
For example, if you do a (relevance) search for "film", "2x2", "vibration", "facets", "tissue", or "pastel", as well as many other words, my image shows up as the first one on the first page. This means every time someone search for these words, I am getting views on that image. Now granted, that doesn't mean they open the photo, but it does mean I have a higher chance than almost anyone of them doing so. So this is what yields the other 9000 views on an image with 10,000 views.
Since I make all of my posts "creative commons", it means people can use them for free, with attribution. People looking for content on Flickr to use will often filter for "CC", so this really tends to push most of my images to the top of searches. In turn, these images are use by media, from the Atlantic to your mom and pop blogs. I have no way to know how many additional views I get from these, but I get used by media about five times a day.
Flick is designed to optimize search, giving users a choice of "recent", "relevant", or "interesting". It's "interestingness" algorithm is patented, and will tend to give a boost to newcomers, so they can get off the ground. Now, you can even couple search words with color or topical categories. The other photography platforms either don't support strong search functions or are too huge and diffuse for people to use for image search.
How do you get your photo though up to the top of the Flickr search engine? Herein comes the connection to Flickr the social network. Your friends and contacts are the ones who give you that initial rocket boost, and your momentum is carried by both the quality of your photo and your expertise at using the title, text, tags, and notes to maximize the strength of being linked to particular search words.
Tags: flickr search
Photo by Jamie Livingston
There's a lot of 365 series on Flickr, but as far as I know there's only one 365 series that goes on for 19 years--by the late Jamie Livingston.
Livingston was a video artist and musician who took a single Polaroid a day from 1979 until his death in 1997. The picture above shows the series as of March 30, 1986.
To look through these images one by one is to have an unparalled artistic and emotional experience. If you are a student of photography and/or of life, you MUST see this exhibit.
photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/
If you go searching around you'll find blogs and news articles which discuss the site, but I'm not sure any of the writers took the innumerable hours to look through every photo (it took me 3 months to get through). The subtleties of life's dynamics hit you right in the face, from the progression of his career to how his friends changes when he got new girlfriends to his obsession with the New York Mets and circuses to the changes in New York City over the period to the emergence and path of his illness. One also experiences a truly artistic photographer, with all the ups and downs of quality that we see in each others photostreams, except writ over 19 years. But make no mistake--these shots were not about creating photographic art--they are about documenting everyday life.
The photos over the last year will break your heart, and one in particular I find one the most moving I have seen in my life.
I wish I could have met Jamie. The two specific musical references that show up the most (not that often) are to Frank Zappa and the Residents--anyone who would have them as faves is a person close to my artisitic soul...
(Thanks to Lake Li Sun for turning me onto this.)
Tags: jamie livingston james artist photographer videographer shot a day 365 19 years 1979 1997 polaroid moving emotional art artistic life progression change illness friend hobbies new york mets manhattan film compelling fun best very good most more better excellent incredible super awesome much favorite exciting superior fantastic wow winner award winning pic picture image photo photograph photography phenomenal flickr interesting creative commons free free for use stock photography
© All Rights Reserved
There are three major waves of "views" that your Flickr image will get. Understanding each is key as to whether your photo gets viewed a lot, or a little.
The first wave of views of your Flickr image is from your contacts. There's actually two sub-waves here. First, your close contacts view things quickly, either immediately or within the day. Second, your less-close contacts will visit sporadically, from a couple of days to months. The first group will tend to "keep up with you", whereas the second only looks at what is immediately recent at the time they look. It's not uncommon for Flickrites to get 100-300 views from their contact network, and a few may get 500 or 1000. In the end, the number of views from your contacts depends on 3 factors: (a) how good your photo is, (b) how many contacts you have, (c) how strong a recipricol relationship you have with them.
The second and third wave can happen at the same time.
The second wave of views is from group postings, and there are two types of groups, awards and non-awards. If you max out posting to award groups you can get maybe another 300 views, if it's a great photo.
Non-award groups have varying impact. In many, you'll get no or a couple of additional views. Others may yield 100s of more views spread over a long period of time. For example, the "Thru the Viewfinder" (TtV) community doesn't view each other's works very much, whereas the Fisheye and Pinhole communities are great for tons of views over time.
So far, maybe you have 500+ views. The only way to get into the atmosphere now is by having your photos show up at the top of search engines, and that depends on two things: how popular the photo has been, especially in your first wave of views from contacts, who tend to be the most likely to give you faves; and how good your text, title, and tags are.
Learning about titles and tags is best done by example...
1. "Each war is different..." has over 12,000 views because it shows up as the most interesting photo in all of Flickr when searching for "iraq war", and the fourth most interesting when searching for "war". Right topics, right text, right title, right tags.
And since my photos are Creative Commons, ones like this get re-published a lot, which yields yet more views to my photostream. (More on that in other post).
2. You can be topical--this pic of Beijing smog was hot right before the Olympics. It shows up as second most relevant to a search for "Beijing smog".
3. The lucky tags... This cloud shot is good, but good enough to get 75 views a day, day in and day out? The title is "Bowl of Clouds" and it turns out there is some doll called Blythe that has a "Blythe Cloud Nine Bowl" version, and so teenage girls searching for "cloud bowl" see my pictures as second most relevant in the search.
4. This photoshop experiment, which is actually one of my faves, has over 7000 views because I put celebrity tags on it. Go searching for Britney Spears or David Beckham or Colin Powell, and this monster is going to pop up.
5. This bokeh of a Wonder Woman doll has over 4000 views because I put sex tags on. What can I say, it's what people search for!
6. This photo of Stage 28 at Universal Studios has about 3500 views and is an example of a niche search jewel. Not many people search for "Studio 28", but when they do, this shows up at the top.
7. Here's another example of being popular by accident. This Christmas light shot has over 3000 views primarily because people mispell Christmas as "Chirstmas", and I also mispelled it so I had that as a tag.
Two other types of tags will increase traffic. First, you can add tags of different languages; second, you can add adjective tags, like "best", "excellent", "awesome", etc.
I've purposefully left tags off of this pic--go ahead, TAG ME!
Tags: tag carpet beach sand I don't know what the heck this is shadow light david beckham Ach, du lieber Sara Palin Sarah Palin Palin Hurricane Ike Kenny Hotz on Paris Hilton fire in the sky sunset batman Blythe awesome information Flickr addiction gone mad informative highly informative educational pedagogical wizardry best very good most excellent incredible super pretty gorgeous awesome much favorite exciting superior fantastic wow winner award phenomenal stunning breathtaking beautiful flickr interesting fiery sneaky flickr guru TheGoToPersononFlickr Kevinism
Five Decisions in Photography
Updated March 2022
The process of photography consists of five critical steps, or decisions points. When all five come together, we can have magic.
1. Where to take photos, and why? Location, location, location. If you travel around the world, you have a lot of image possibilities, and if you stay in your house all the time, less. That said, a good photographer can find interesting images in any setting. For me, it’s about whether I can achieve intense focus in that locale. Location is intimately tied to why to go? What's your purpose? What do you want to communicate? Is photography a passenger or pilot on this journey? For example, in my architecture shots, including from Google Street View, I feel a documentary/historian role, and that guides the aesthetic I use in selecting and editing images.
2. What photographic equipment to use? Expensive equipment is nice, not necessary, and often not needed, and may not even be the best choice. Don't buy into the megapixel myth. What my $10 Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim with some good film is incomparable by any what any digital camera or post-processing software can do.
3. What pictures to take? At locale with equipment in hand, what are you going to click at and how? Camera settings and POVs can make a difference, but a good eye is the foundation. Timing can be everything too. Everyone recognizes the classic picture the captures “the moment”.
4. What shots to keep? Some shots get tossed, some get kept but not shown, some get shown. Being a good judge of your own work is a critical but often over-looked skill. This requires both constraint and judgment, which in part can be developed by looking at other people’s works.
5. How to present image? These decisions include any decisions made during image post-processing, framing, and a decision as to where to show it, including what digital platforms to engage it with. In my own case, my Flickr, Instagram, and Facebook streams contain different content because I have different audiences.
These decisions occur within a web of context, experience, creativity, and social and physical dynamism. In the end, only we know how we “got” to the final image, if we even remember. But as photographers, we share in the collective experience of this general process.
Image: Prescott Valley at dusk, Arizona.
Tags: photography instruction decisions