Photography

I’ve been an amateur shutterbug for years.

iPhoto Quandries

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A few questions about iPhoto — things that don’t make sense to me.

  1. Why can’t I export items that are on a burned DVD (or CD, I assume)? I’d certainly understand not being able to edit photos, rename them, assign tags, and so on — it’s stored on read-only media. But why in the world can’t I export unless the photos are stored on my local hard drive?

  2. When I drag photos from an archive on DVD into my local photo library in order to export them, why can’t iPhoto keep track of the correct tags? While the tags are fine in the archive, as soon as I copy them into the main library, the photos end up tagged semi-randomly, usually with only one or two tags (and those often seem to be “wedding” and “family”, for some reason).

  3. What is iPhoto doing when it loads an archive from DVD that was created with an older version of iPhoto and it presents you with the “Updating iPhoto Library” dialog box? Obviously, it can’t be updating the database on the DVD, that’s write-only media. I think that it’s creating an updated copy of the archive’s database on the hard drive to use, but if that’s the case, why doesn’t it save that archive for later use? It seems to me that it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to do that, and yet every time I try to load an archived photo library, I have to sit and wait for iPhoto to think.

Thanks to these three issues, I may end up re-importing my three DVDs of archived photos so that they’re all on my hard drive — and then hope that having all the photos available doesn’t slog iPhoto down too terribly. Not my preferred approach (especially as, given issue number two, I’d likely have to go through and re-tag all the photos), but as it is, I dread having to go back to old photo archives.

iTunes “Shining Star” by Earth Wind and Fire from the album Pop Music: The Golden Era 1951-1975 (1974, 2:50).

Flickr’s on a roll

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Okay, so maybe this whole brouhaha about Flickr being purchased by Yahoo wasn’t such a bad thing after all. They’ve been on a pretty good roll recently, as evidenced by their news page (which I’m quoting liberally from here, as they don’t seem to have permalinks)…

10th May, 2005

Remember the 5MB limit per photo for your uploads? That was the olden days! Now pro account users can upload photos of up to 10MB each (while, perhaps, cursing their ISP for the slow upload connection – in this age of the two web, why the asynchronousness, o ISPs?)

11th May, 2005

IPTC support (finally)! Friends, today there’s another good thing in Flickrland, and that’s support for IPTC data embedded into your photos. Keywords become tags! Captions become descriptions! Marvel as one framework’s terminology is swapped for another! Smile as the location fields in IPTC become Flickr tags!

12th May, 2005

We’ll we’ve gone and done it. In answer to countless requests, photo pages no longer use a Macromedia Flash wrapper to display photos; instead we are using an old technology called “DHTML.”

In addition, the “Send to Group,” “Add to Set,” and “Blog This” buttons above photos now allow you to perform relevant actions right there on the page!

And also, links now work in notes! (And we’ll soon be adding some more cool auto-linking features when the links point to Flickr pages.)

Also rolled into this release are a whole lot of little tweaks and fixes that should make your photo page viewing more enjoyable all around.

Pretty nifty! Poking around with it, I like the changes they’ve made (especially being able to put links within notes), and there have been hints dropped that there might be more goodies coming up. Bring ’em on!

iTunes “If Your Kisses Can’t Hold the Man You Love” by Rasputina from the album Frustration Plantation (2004, 3:07).

Flickr Goodies

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Back when it was formally announced that Flickr was being bought by Yahoo!, they mentioned that those of us who’d already paid for Pro accounts would be getting super mega bonuses as a reward. Word finally came out today on just what those bonuses are…

Everyone who already purchased a Pro account at the old price ($41.77) prior to the switchover today, will receive the following upgrades:

  • If you have a 1 year pro account it will be extended to 2 years (if you bought a 2 year Pro account it will be extended to 4 years)

  • 2 invites for 1 year Pro accounts to be given to anybody you want to give them to (that is, anybody except people who’ve already got a paid Flickr account, and/or yourself).

[…] Also, Pro accounts now get 2 GB a month in uploads, up from a mere 1 GB previously. This of course applies to existing Pro accounts too.

Pretty good deal!

Now I just need to figure out who to give those two freebie Pro accounts to…

iTunes “Minas Tirith” by del Maestro, Ben/Shore, Howard from the album Lord of the Rings, The: The Return of the King (2003, 3:37).

It’s illegal to photograph Seattle bus stations?

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Looks like another Seattle-area shutterbug has run into more bogus “no photography” harassment from heavy-handed officials. This time, Alex Williams had his digital film card confiscated after taking pictures at the Pioneer Square bus station.

On Saturday, 4/9/2005, a friend and I were photographing inside Pioneer Square Bus Station when we were stopped by a King County Sheriff’s Deputy and Transit Authority Police Officer and told what we were doing was illegal, and that the area was considered restricted.

I asked the officers explicitly if we were breaking the law. To which the Transit Authority Officer responded, “There’s no law, It’s just sort of an unwritten rule.” The Deputy rebuked my friend and me for not using common sense and repeatedly mentioned the word “terrorism”. The Deputy then confiscated my digital film and informed me that the compact flash cards would be sent to a lab to see what was on them. I offered to format the cards while he watched but he refused.

I did not receive a ticket or citation or receipt for my belongings. On parting, the officer asked if I had any questions, and I politely suggested that they may want to put signs up letting people know that it was illegal to photograph here. To which, he responded, they weren’t “going to waste time posting signs for something that’s common knowledge.”

I found out about this because as Alex researched similar instances after his encounter, he found and linked to my post about Ian Spears problems photographing the Ballard Locks last summer, which then popped up in my referer logs.

One bright side to Alex’ experience, though — after contacting a few people, his story will be on tonight’s 5:30pm KOMO 4 news broadcast.

UPDATE! (4/11/2005)
I emailed KOMO 4 news early this morning and got a prompt photocall from Molly Shen, reporter. The news crew arrived this morning and interviewed me for a story scheduled to air at 5:30pm today.

Molly had already done an impressive amout of work by the time she arrived. She talked with King County Sheriff’s officials and found out that it was, in fact, inappropriate for the Officer to confiscate my equipment. She was told that my equipment would be returned as soon as possible. Thanks, Molly!

I won’t be able to watch the broadcast, but I’ll keep an eye on the KOMO site and see if they post it online this evening.

Update: KOMO has posted their story online.

It’s official: Flickr now part of Yahoo!

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The rumors were true, as it turns out, and the official announcement was made today on the FlickrBlog: Yahoo actually does acquire Flickr.

Holy smokes, SOMEBODY out there is bad at keeping secrets!!  Yes! We can finally confirm that Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr and us, Ludicorp. Smack the tattlers and pop the champagne corks!

While I’m sure this is good news for both Yahoo! and Flickr, I have to admit that in some ways, I’m a little less than thrilled that Yahoo! is the winning buyer. While the Flickr post assures us that “nothing will change”, that’s the mantra we get every time there’s a merger of this sort, and I just hope it’s true.

My main concern is simply that I’ve never been overly impressed with Yahoo’s Mac support. The main offenders are Yahoo! Messenger — admittedly, a downloadable program and not a web-based offering — and Yahoo! Chat. The Mac version of Yahoo! Messenger has perpetually lagged years behind the PC version in terms of what features it offers, and I’ve never been able to get Yahoo! Chat to work reliably under Mac OS X.

Flickr, on the other hand, has worked flawlessly for me from day one, I quite happily paid to upgrade to a Pro account some time back, and was just recommending them to my brother last night when he and I were talking about how horrendously slow the family photo gallery hosted on my server can be (I can only afford so much bandwidth, after all).

Still, I’m not about to entirely write them off — as I’ve said, Flickr’s ben great so far, and I’m hoping that the acquisition by Yahoo! will be primarily a case of Yahoo! getting to add an incredible set of services to their system, and not one of Flickr being forced to dumb things down to coddle the lowest common denominator of Yahoo! subscribers.

Besides, I’m very curious about this section of the post aimed at those of us who have already paid for Pro accounts:

I liked Flickr BEFORE you even heard of it!

You shall be recognized for your discerning taste in web sites!! I bet you also liked the Flaming Lips before they appeared on Beverly Hills 90210, and for that we salute you. Pro account holders will get super mega bonuses, to be announced soon.

Super mega bonuses, huh? Gotta like the sound of that!

(via Jonas)

Update: Yahoo!’s Jeremy Zawodny has some encouraging things to say about the merger:

The first time I used Flickr, I knew it was something different and something important. It took me a while to figure out and try to articulate exactly what that was, but I took my first swipe back in September when I called it a Next Generation Web Service.

[…]

Since then a lot has happened and I’ve had the chance to meet the Flickr team a few times. That has only convinced me even more that they have what it takes to really change things. Combining their mix of tagging, communities, syndication, open APIs, and interactive UI with Yahoo’s services and millions of users will lead to even more great stuff.

As Caterina wrote, this isn’t about just throwing millions of users at Flickr or bolting Flickr onto Yahoo! Photos. Think more deeply about it. There are many parts of Yahoo that will be Flickrized in the coming months. And with more resources available, Flickr itself will be able to grow like never before.

Sounds like the concerns I’ve brought up are rather well-known in the Yahoo!/Flickr camps, which is encouraging. Time to just sit back and see where things go from here.

(via Stewart in FlickrCentral)

iTunes “Medusa Bitch (cry.on.my.console)” by Prodigy, The from the album Always Outsiders Never Outdone (2004, 2:37).

Cards, anyone?

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Arboretum, Seattle, WA I got a nice compliment from mom on one of my recent photos earlier today:

You sure have some beautiful photos. You could open a side business (in your spare time) selling them for cards.

Thanks mom!

This makes me curious, though….

Might this be a viable idea? While I’m still not sure I’d call myself a “photographer” — I generally tend to prefer “some guy with a camera” — I do think that I do occasionally manage to get some pretty decent shots. If I could find a good way to produce cards or prints, anyone think there might be an interest?

And if so…any ideas where to look as far as vendors go? I know CafePress is one option — I’m using them now (if you can call the five or six sales I’ve made so far “using”) for my I’m Just Here to Get Laid, I’m Too Sexy for My Blog and I’m Too Sexy for Your Blog t-shirts, but the profit margin is so miniscule there that I’m not really sure I see using it for anything more than the occasional hobbyist cute idea (like the aforementioned t-shirts). Of course, if anyone is using CafePress more seriously than I am and finds it worthwhile, feel free to let me know. Any options other than CafePress?

I’m not entirely sure how seriously I’m thinking about this just now, but it’s at least worth poking around at a bit to see what I can find out.

iTunes “Attached” by Orbital from the album Snivilisation (1994, 12:25).

Kubrickr

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Here’s a nifty toy for all you WordPress users that have recently updated to v1.5 and are using the default ‘Kubrick‘ theme: Kubrickr. Given a tag, it will search Flickr for all licensed photos with that tag and then allow you to crop the photo down to create a replacement header graphic that drops right into the Kubrick layout.

Quite nifty, and given that there’s something of a glut of Kubrick-themed sites right now (don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice template…I should know, I’ve seen it often enough), this should help ease the monotony a bit.

(via Matt)

iTunes “Dead Souls (Live)” by Nine Inch Nails from the album Familiar Sting (1994, 6:15).

New camera!

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The day finally came when I had enough funds available to replace the camera I lost nearly a year ago.

My new toy: a Canon PowerShot A95. I’ve only had it for about a day now — Prairie and I picked it up yesterday — so I’ve still got a lot of leaning to go, but so far, I’m very happy with my new lil’ toy. Small enough to fit in a pocket, so I’ll be able to carry it around with me all the time and have it handy at a moments notice, solidly built, lots of options and buttons to learn, a handy little flip-screen display, and 5 megapixel resolution.

Prairie and me, Seattle, WA

Puke! Puke! Puke!

Plus, this lil’ guy can even take short video clips! This was something I had to play with, so I made a short little one-minute movie taking a look at a silly little M&M dispenser that Prairie got me. iMovie was able to compress it down to about 1.5Mb, so it shouldn’t take too terribly long to download. There’s not much to it — mostly just me being silly — but it was certainly worth a few minutes of playing around.

Hooray for new toys!

Oh, and Rick — you can come pick up your camera now. Many, many thanks for letting me borrow it for nearly a year!

iTunes “Central Reservation (Ibadan Spiritual Life Radio Edit)” by Orton, Beth from the album Plastic Compilation Vol. III (1999, 4:00).

Engine Ice

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Engine Ice

This picture wasn’t taken by me, I just thought it was incredibly cool! A friend forwarded it to me along with the accompanying text explanation.

“We had a mixed-precip event last night as the temperatures started rising above freezing and the snow changed over. The ramp was a sheet of slick wet ice, and even with crushed stone (urea) spread, it was glazing over as quickly as we could deploy it. As flight 1830 was coming into the stand, I motioned to the deck for them to proceed very cautiously, which apparently they’d been doing for the whole taxi (it took a long time between calling on-deck and getting to the gate).

When it finally pulled in, we noticed what is in the attached picture. None of us had ever seen it before. Very cool. I ran and grabbed my camera. I apologize for the quality, since it was melting off quickly as the fan had stopped spinning I just pulled out the camera and took two quick snaps. I guess I didn’t have a steady hand in the rain!”

(via The Usual Suspects)

My best photos of 2004

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Seattle, WA

I’ve just created a flickr photoset of my favorite photographs from this past year (hey, every news organization on the planet does this, I might as well join in the fun, right?).

Seventy-nine photos culled from a little over four thousand. Some have been featured on this weblog in the past, some were already on flickr, but quite a few of them are being posted publicly for the first time. I had fun picking out which ones to toss up — hopefully you enjoy looking through them.

Enjoy the show!