bikes and things

Well everyone on Flickr that is. It seems that a little bit of rising mist in the woods with some sun behind it is a bit of a winner.

I shot this whilst out riding at Swinley a few days ago. Bizarrely enough I took my ‘proper camera’ but forgot it and left it in the van. We got there early and the frost was being warmed up by the rising sun and then beautifully back lit. Hence the effect you get below. I shot it with the iPhone and then processed it with VSCO Cam before sticking it on Instagram where it proved to be my most popular photo to date.

I thought I’d stick the full version on Flickr. I added it to a few groups and got on with whatever I was doing. Then an hour or so later the phone started buzzing with notifications. It didn’t stop for two days. Whilst some people, like Finn, are used to this I’m certainly not.

So my account trundles along at 500 – 1000 hits a day generally, nothing special but there’s the occasional traffic spike. This on the other hand is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

Now it’s not me saying I’m amazing, I’m not, and this was just a shot of some mist and being there at the right time. What does surprise me is that quality of the camera in the iPhone and how much I didn’t actually miss my proper camera. The second thing is how the explore page can drive traffic to your photos. If something gets a few hits it starts to hit the bottom end of Explore (popular page in Flickr language) and then it can rapidly climb from there once the views and favourites start piling in. If you look at the explore page it does generally seem to be sunsets and mist so I guess this one hit the spot.

It now sits as my most popular photo with over 8000 views and 180+ favourites, so far. I’m amused to see that my most popular shot is a mobile phone shot which I never thought would have happened just a few years back. I guess those camera makers are in real trouble as they’re only going to get better. The link to this article I found yesterday was entitled “Cameras will die with an iPhone 6s in our pockets” and reference this quote from the article.

After two and a half years, the GF1 was replaced by the slightly improved Panasonic GX1, which I brought on the six-day Kumano Kodo hike in October. During the trip, I alternated between shooting with it and an iPhone 5. After importing the results into Lightroom, Adobe’s photo-development software, it was difficult to distinguish the GX1’s photos from the iPhone 5’s. (That’s not even the latest iPhone; Austin Mann’s superlative results make it clear that the iPhone 5S operates on an even higher level.) Of course, zooming in and poking around the photos revealed differences: the iPhone 5 doesn’t capture as much highlight detail as the GX1, or handle low light as well, or withstand intense editing, such as drastic changes in exposure. But it seems clear that in a couple of years, with an iPhone 6S in our pockets, it will be nearly impossible to justify taking a dedicated camera on trips like the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage.

Convergence is going to continue to be a real killer for a lot of companies.

Stats, love them. See what people looked at, what they searched for etc. But oh my Flickr stats doesn’t half turn up some odd things. Here’s a selection from earlier. Highlights include “ugg love” and “shaved babes”. I’m not sure what’s more concerning, the fact that people searched for those terms or that they ended up on my page.

A while ago I wrote a bitchy post about Flickr bemoaning it’s lack of development in recent years. Following that I was contacted by a member of the Flickr team saying the following (slightly paraphrased).

Hope this finds you well. We saw your blog post about the new Flickr t-shirts and I’d love to send you one… Keep your eyes peeled for more from us. Thanks for your enthusiasm

I kind of poo-poohed this at the time but thought, hey a free t-shirt, why not? Then they released their new iPhone app fulfilling pretty much all of my requested features – most importantly of which is the notifications of new activity on your photo stream. So you can actually respond and engage with these rather than respond two weeks later when you remember to log in.

But yes my post was driven from frustration but also enthusiasm for the platform and the work that gets posted there. It seemed like it was drifting into irrelevance. However the release of the app seems to have changed that as it gives people an easy and intuitive way of engaging with content on their mobile devices iPhones. Yes they also released a set of image filters you can use when you upload to Flickr which various people bitched about, Twitter released similar filters with their app around about the same time, but I don’t think this is the key feature of the app. The filters don’t really interest me as I don’t upload those kind of shots there, even though I’m addicted to Instagram.

The layout and design of it is superb, just large enough to see decent quality images but not so big that you can’t see what’s next. Vertical scrolling through your contacts and then sideways to see what else they have if one of their images takes your fancy. Very nicely done. I’ve often wondered why this sideways scrolling wasn’t in Instagram. There’s even more nice things to find and they’ve done a little blog post pointing out some of the less obvious features.

One of the nicest is the ability to search other networks for people – I found about 60 people who I didn’t know were on Flickr. The personal homepage is also pretty decent too.

For a while though the biggest problem with Flickr was that it was seemingly irrelevant. It just wasn’t talked about. No articles were written about it in the tech press, even the ones about it dying a death stopped a while back. It didn’t arouse any excitement, people didn’t renew their subscriptions or if they did then just used it as bulk storage for shots from other services such as Instagram.

But then something weird happened a few days ago. Instagram changed their terms of service…

Some or all of the Service may be supported by advertising revenue. To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.

The change in terms essentially aligns a little closer to what Facebook has always had. They pretty much own any content you post there which is all a bit creepy. Anyway the change in terms has built up into the end of the world for some on Twitter – the Mayans and their end of the world have been completely out done this time. There’s been a great deal of furore with people even deleting their accounts so that they can’t have their images “sold” or “monetised” obviously completely missing the point that most images on Instagram are utter shite – many of mine included. Many have also reminded people that – if you’re not paying for it you are the product which is kind of true, but then most people don’t expect the pics of their cat to be sold on to someone else.

What has further transpired is that Instagram don’t own your images more than any other service and have rushed out a blog post to try and calm the storm.

Instagram users own their content and Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos. Nothing about this has changed. We respect that there are creative artists and hobbyists alike that pour their heart into creating beautiful photos, and we respect that your photos are your photos. Period*.

*I hate it when American’s say period, it’s FULL STOP.

So, the net benefit for Flickr? Well it’s suddenly become relevant again and the timing of this couldn’t have been more perfect for them. All sorts of people have been posting about trying to find their password to login to the site after not going there in years. I’m seeing lots more activity and more people adding me as a contact as well as generally being more active there. It’s hard to say whether it’ll be the mass migration that will make it as popular as Instagram but the interface is there in the app (and filters) so we’ll see but early signs seem to be promising.

It’s kind of exciting to see a platform come alive again as I don’t think I’ve really seen that before. Most just wither and die and don’t really ever get a second chance – MySpace anyone? Fingers crossed they don’t squander it and keep investing in it.

And finally, have I deleted my Instagram account? No, not yet as I have a decent network of followers (and followees?) there. But I am starting to look at uploading more things to Flickr via VSCO Cam which has a nicer set of more subtle filters. I’ve left an image on Instagram pointing people to my Flickr and hope that takes off a bit more.

I used to be very strict on not uploading iPhone shots as I didn’t see it as proper photography. As the camera has got better the lines seem to have blurred slightly. Here’s an old shot re-worked in VSCO Cam which is along the lines of what I intend to upload in the future. Unfortunately VSCO Cam doesn’t have native Flickr uploading built in but you can email directly to Flickr from the app instead to do an upload to avoid using two apps. Got to yout settings in Flickr to find your own upload email.

You got a second chance Flickr, please don’t screw it up.

Updated:
It seems like they’re on a bit of a roll. Loads more activity on my stream and then this nice email arrived this morning. Free three months for everyone.

After recently re-engaging with Flickr (yeah I know I was wrong), I’ve been adding loads more shots to my favourites seeing as it’s so easy with the new app. I thought I’d share some of the amazing images I’d found. Click through and add them to your own faves.

T-shirts, they’ve launched fucking T-Shirts! They’re letting an amazing platform die and the only news that comes out of Flickr in recent memory is T-shirts? They have to be shitting me. How about better features like smart sets – based on tags to organise your content? Smart geo-tagging features? A decent mobile app that allows better engagement with your content? Notifications on your phone when someone comments that isn’t via email to further that engagement?

Actually that’s not fair, they changed the individual image page to show the ISO, ƒ stop, lens and shutter speed of the shot. Big whoop.

There’s loads they could do to improve the platform and see off or even engage with competition such as Instagram.

But no, we’ve got FUCKING T-SHIRTS!

RIP Flickr.

Some lovely work here from “polarisandy” who I originally found via the Singletrack forum and a long running thread entitled “Photos you’ve taken in the last month that you’re proud of“… I’ve since given up posting in that thread due to the quality of his work. A small selection of which is below.

A few photos found on Flickr recently from a variety of sources. Lots of great inspiration and a variety of styles. Click through and add some to your faves.

Finally something for my much loved photo service after years of languishing in the back room without much attention. Some of the changes are starting to roll out and hopefully more are coming in the next few days. Worth reading more about some of the changes planned.

One of the best things about Flickr is the community of other photographers that exists around it. This is the primary reason I’m still so addicted to it. Perhaps one of the best functions of this community is the ability to mark a photo as a favourite – add it to your library of things you like. I have a fairly large set of favourites, currently running at 4,144 photos so far!

For me one of the best ways of finding new and interesting work is by looking at another users favourites collection. It’s easy to go from user to user and find a bunch of incredible work to look at. It’s like a curated guide to Flickr.

…not in real life but on Flickr. I’ve been getting back into uploading more personal work to Flickr rather than just more formal work stuff thanks to getting my hands on that lovely Fujifilm X100.

I used to be a bit obsessed with hits, favourites and the possibility of getting into explore which is a way of showing what’s popular at present on site. This was during the 365 project time but that moment seems to have passed now. Having said that I have a set of images which gets updated each night showing which of my shots are most popular – via the very useful Flickr set manager. As a side you’d think that this kind of “smart set” would be built into Flickr as a standard feature but since being bought by Yahoo where all development seems to have stopped.

Anyway, back on track – I uploaded this image I took in the recent thick fog we had in London and added it to a few groups on Flickr. Since then it’s gone bonkers. At the time of writing this post it’s had 525 views, 35 comments and 59 favourites as well as making it into explore. I think I have better pictures but this seems to have appealed to a bunch of people.