There are some gorgeous colors in the fall in the Seattle Arboretum.
As well as some rather odd wildlife.
More photos of today’s walk through the arboretum with Prairie and xementio are, as always, just a quick click away.
Photography
I’ve been an amateur shutterbug for a long time. This tag is primarily for posts about photography and the associated tech.
Cal Anderson Park
Another excursion for me yesterday, as I went down to Capitol Hill to explore the newly re-opened Cal Anderson Park.
Northgate Theatre and Medical Office Building
Word came out this week that Seattle’s Northgate Mall was finally going to be getting an upgrade, part of which is going to involve demolishing the Medical Office Building and the Northgate Theatre that have long stood empty and unused.
Since I had some time to kill yesterday, I wandered down to the Northgate Mall and spent some time wandering around the old buildings. I was able to shoot my way around about three quarters of the soon-to-be-demolished buildings before mall security took noticed and asked me to stop. To their credit, the guy that spoke to me was very polite, just letting me know that the mall didn’t allow photography on mall property, and told me that I’d be welcome to take photographs from the street if I wished.
Best Viewed Large
I have to admit to a certain curiosity about the tendency for so many people to add “best viewed large” to the descriptions of a photo they’ve uploaded to Flickr. Two things are constantly popping into my head when I see “best viewed large” added to a photo:
- Is there really any photo of decent quality that won’t be “better” (that is, clearer, easier to distinguish fine details, and showing less JPEG distortion) at a larger size?
-
How long (assuming it hasn’t happened already) before someone uploads a picture of a penis with this phrase tacked onto the description?
Chances are, if I like a photo enough, I’m going to see if there’s a larger resolution available whether or not someone tells me to; conversely, if a photo doesn’t interest me, I’m not likely to try downloading a larger version just to see if it magically gets better.
All in all, it seems a little silly.
“Under Pressure” by Queen from the album Classic Queen (1981, 4:03).
CascadiaCon
For the past few months, there’s been two different events on my radar for the Labor Day weekend that I was interested in: Bumbershoot and CascadiaCon. Some time ago, I’d decided to forego CascadiaCon in favor of Bumbershoot, but then over the past week I got a bit ticked at the Bumbershoot people over their “no cameras” foolishness, and ended up deciding that I didn’t want to head that way, either. So this weekend was looking to be pretty low-key.
Thursday evening Prairie and I went out for dinner with some friends from the Vogue (something that’s becoming a weekly event), and found out that Erin had been asked to showcase some of her clothing in a fashion show at CascadiaCon. Over the course of the conversation, I ended up getting asked to photograph the show, and Prairie was asked to be one of Erin’s models!
So, Saturday evening, Prairie and I headed down to the SeaTac Hilton, picked up CascadiaCon attendee badges at the registration desk, and found our way up to the designated “green room”. Prairie was soon buried in hair, makeup, and clothing, so I wandered back and forth between the green room and the conference room where the show was going to be.
The show itself was much fun — three designers showcasing four clothing lines (Imp of Satan, Fetishwear, Winter Couture, and Notorious Curves) in a late-night, 18+ only Fetish for Fantasy Fashion Show, hosted by Betty Rage of Glitzkrieg Burlesque and Cherry Baum (aka Mickey, who I know from the Vogue).
There are, of course, lots of pictures in a Flickr photoset. While my photos aren’t nearly “professional” quality (after all, there’s only so far you can push a little point-and-shoot, no matter how many dials and buttons they stick on it), I did the best I could. Here’s a few sample shots…
No Cameras at Bumbershoot?
According to the Bumbershoot website:
What is the camera policy at Bumbershoot?
Cameras are not allowed at Bumbershoot—please leave them at home.
So, there’s no public photography allowed at Bumbershoot this year?
The best word I can come up with for this is ludicrous.
Anyone out there have any more info? What’s the deal here? And how are they going to be enforcing it?
(And anyone feel like getting together on one of the days and blatantly defying the ban?)
(via Seattle Metroblogging)
Teatro Zinzanni at Pacific Place
If you get a chance, stop by Pacific Place just at touch before 5pm any Thursday through Sunday in August. One of the performers from Teatro ZinZanni is putting on a short show throughout the month to promote their dinner/circus/cabaret show.
I’ve been wanting to go to one of their shows for quite a while now, and seeing this guy go twirling and spinning sixty feet above the floor — without any sort of safety harness, just the red fabric strip — just made me want to go more. It’s a pricey show at $99 a ticket, but for a full five-course gourmet meal and a three-hour show, I’d say it’d be worth it.
One of these days…
Interestingness
I’m probably one of the last people to actually make mention of this, but the big news in the Flickrverse over the past few days has been the introduction of two new features: tag clusters and ‘interestingness’.
Tag clusters are a great addition, analyzing photos by all the tags associated with them and then ‘clustering’ them with other photos with similar groups of tags. This allows for distinguishing photos of feline tigers from operating systems code named tiger, even though they both share the common ‘tiger‘ tag.
‘Interestingness‘ is much more vague. Here’s how Flickr explains it:
There are lots of things that make a photo ‘interesting’ (or not) in the Flickr. Where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing. Interestingness changes over time, as more and more fantastic photos and stories are added to Flickr.
In a sense, it works in a somewhat similar method to Google’s Pagerank system, using community interaction with the photos to determine what’s catching the communal eye at any given point. Page views, number of comments, how many people have marked a photo as a favorite, and the tags and groups a photo is assigned to seem to play a part in how ‘interesting’ it is deemed. Obviously, this isn’t a qualitative ranking of the photo itself, and shouldn’t be seen that way, but it’s a very nifty way to go bouncing through the Flickrverse and discover photos you might not have found otherwise.
Each user has now gained a list of their top 200 ‘most interesting’ photos as determined by the system. I was somewhat amused to check mine and find that of my top five, only one of them is actually a picture that I’ve taken — the other four are screenshots or satellite photos from other sources. I think I’ve got a lot more photos that are a lot more interesting than those — but then, a computer algorithm is only going to do so well at figuring this stuff out.
Here, then, are my current top five ‘most interesting’ photos:
And, for entertainment purposes, my current ‘least interesting’ photos (though these change more frequently, and as the ranking only counts 200 out of the 3492 photos I’ve uploaded so far, I guess they still count as pretty interesting…programmatically, at least):
“Somebody” by Veruca Salt from the album For the Masses: A Tribute to Depeche Mode (1998, 4:05).
Quick Black and White viewing in OS X
A quick Mac OS X tip for photographers that I’ve found to be really handy in instances where you’d like to get an idea of how those color shots from your digital camera would look like when converted to black and white.
When you have your latest photos displayed in iPhoto (or whatever photo management software you use), just go to System Preferences > Universal Access and click the Use grayscale checkbox.
Your entire display will switch to greyscale mode, and you can flip through your entire photo album to get an idea of which shots work in black and white and which don’t without having to tweak each photo that might work one-by-one. Obviously, it’s probably simple desaturation and not the same quality you’d get using Photoshop’s channel mixer or some other fancier technique, but it’s quite handy for a quick overview to narrow down which shots are the best candidates for black and white work.
“Running Wild” by Soup Dragons, The from the album Hotwired (1992, 4:02).
July Seattle Flickrites Meetup
Had a very pleasant time at the inaugural Seattle Flickrites Meetup tonight. I showed up just a bit after 7pm and hung out until the last of us left just a bit before 10pm. Not a bad turnout for a first gig, either. Eight of us ended up showing up: Weave, studiozoe, Voodoo Zebra, ChrisB in SEA, me, Tom Harpel, Shaylor, and kreminem.
Conversation bounced between the requisite gadget ogling, podcasting, and various Flickr groups and personalities, but by far the most popular topic for the evening was the “Seattle (n)ice” syndrome. Much (good-natured) fun was had at the expense of the only two “native” Seattleites in the group as we laughed about the inability for either of them to just pick up and do something without at least a day’s notice — bare minimum. A few days is better, if a week or two of warning can’t be given first. Otherwise, they’re just too busy doing something…even if it’s nothing at all.
My photos from the evening are up, and more are starting to appear: ChrisB in SEA‘s, Tom Harpel‘s.
“Push Upstairs” by Underworld from the album Beaucoup Fish (1999, 4:34).