Views on Flickr

No, not some treatise on Flickr but literally some comments on view counts on my photos...

This shot of Vancouver from Stanley Park is my most popular photo, even though taken a long time ago. It has nearly 2,000 views. Most of the traffics is driven by image searches on the word Vancouver. No surprise, eh?


Next up is a photo I titled Long Goodbye leads to the Doorway to Heaven. This photo's popularity is quite surprising to me as I took it using my iPhone, which isn't the best quality camera for sure, and the subject isn't exactly a happy one. Frankly I am not sure why it is so popular and Flickr is unable to really track back visits to its page. This is one of my photos I'm sure is being used without my being notified.


The number three photo is another that has a surprisingly large view count. In this case I know it's due to usage on this web site (scroll down a few times to see it). I took this photo on a whim and just posted it for fun. Never thought it would be seen by so many folks.


Not much to say about number 4. It is a happy image from the holidays. But I did find it is being used on a couple of different web sites (one for cooking and one for BJ Club employees!).


And rounding out the top 5 is a second iPhone photo of a somewhat dramatic sky. Part of its popularity is the fact it has a UFO tag as well as having been featured on Flickr in a iPhone set. But the majority of the traffic can't be tracked so the main driver of views remains a mystery.


Flickr has been an eye opener for me as a photographer. It has been a great way to see how other people see my photographs - and their reactions are often a real surprise.

Nikon D90

When I bought my Nikon D40x last year I don't recall receiving many comments or questions. However since buying my Nikon D90 I've been getting quite a few so I thought I'd bore you with my opinions/experience. Email me with any questions, arguments or juicy rumors about your love life.

Unlike lenses, digital camera bodies follow the rapid depreciation curve of other electronics as technology makes rapid progress. If you can wait to upgrade your camera you will surely get a better one in the next generation - quite likely at a lower price. If you're debating better glass vs. a new camera body I'd go with the glass unless your current camera actually prevents you from accomplishing something important.

I have an engineering mind so I do a lot of spec and review comparisons for major purchases. Nikon has a very handy spec comparison for its current models. I used dpreview's evaluation of the Nikon D90 as my primary review. From these I came up with a longish list of advantages in the D90 vs. D40x. Here's my list along with my brief comment based on my usage. The first group, in green, are the ones that have proven of real value in practical shooting.

• Much improved CMOS sensor [shared with D300, great high ISO at this price]
  
• Built in dust removal system [so far no visible dust on real or test images]
  
• Exposure and white balance bracketing
  
• Records HD video with audio [a bit tricky but can produce some cool video]
  
• 12 MP vs 10 MP [more is better...]
  
• 4.5 fps [didn't realize how much faster 4.5fps is compared to 3fps until I tried it...]
  
• Can autofocus lenses lacking built in focus motors [wider choice of used lenses]
  
• 3" high resolution LCD [provides great in camera review]
  
• More buttons and other methods to quickly changes settings [handier than I expected]
• More autofocus points (but still only 11) [don't see much improvement in practice]
  
• High speed flash sync
  
• Wireless commander for flash
  
• Custom Picture Controls (can save and export)
• Live View for composing via LCD
• Depth of Field preview button [haven't had much luck with this one]
  
• Active D-Lighting to help with shadow areas [don't use it]
  

From all this the tipping point in my decision to upgrade so soon was the video capability. It is well known the D90 will not replace a camcorder. Lack of autofocus while shooting is one of several major limitations. However I got tired of juggling cameras at kid events. My main love and vehicle of visual communication is photography. But there are definitely times as a parent I want to capture motion and audio. Last year this meant taking two bulky devices (D40x and camcorder) to concerts etc and trying to juggle between them. Cumbersome, makes you look a bit like an obsessed fool, and in the end results in missed shots/video. With the D90 it is possible to instantly switch between photography and videotaping plus you can take advantage of the variety of lenses available on a DSLR.

As a photographer there are definitely things to love about the D90 (over a D40/40x/60). Near the top of the list is the high ISO performance (i.e. ability to take good looking photos, low in noise, even in darker conditions). I created a set of simple shots over on Flickr to illustrate the camera's capability. The D40x was OK up to 800 and pretty marginal at 1600. The D90 looks very good at 1600 (as long as you're not planning poster prints) and up through 6400 is still definitely usable. This sort of performance really opens up the world of indoor natural light photography. This is a great thing for me as I love using natural light for indoor candids and portraits. When you couple the high ISO performance with a fast prime lens (in my case the 50mm f/1.8D) you have a powerhouse on a budget. I think this is a feature even casual users can take advantage of (though they may not know they want it...).

Hope the above info and insight into my twisted decision process is of help to someone. Now back to having fun!

Flickr and Getty

I'm obviously a Flickr addict and love photography. I'm also a business man and of all the web-based services I use regularly Flickr is the one that has always mystified me. They started with a great idea and then - they did NOTHING. Last year they added video in a completely lame attempt to do what???? compete with YouTube? I think it was a waste of money and hasn't gained traction. All the while the low hanging fruit was left to ripen. Maybe now it is on to the rotting stage.

But Corazon Girl twittered today about possible moves Flickr is making to connect at least certain users with Getty Images. Flickr has attracted a large community of very talented photographers yet provides no marketplace for their work. Worse yet Flickr, in spite of their terms of usage and ability to have user's mark their work as copyright etc., virtually facilitates, via their API, the inappropriate and illegal use of photos. As you know it is hard to do a search for a photo someone may have downloaded and stolen for inappropriate use. Yet nearly anyone who posts much on Flickr encounters it on a regular basis. Obviously it is a rampant problem and has been a great source of tension between serious amateurs and professionals and Flickr.

Although I'd be delighted to be paid for photography it's not a focus for me so this isn't a critical issue at the personal level. But I'd love to see Flickr do something to put some teeth behind Copyright and Creative Commons while at the same time making it easy for people to make legitimate use of the great photos on Flickr.

Maybe now that a business person is taking over Yahoo more attention will be paid to monetizing, in a win-win way, properties like Flickr.

Photography Guides

I recently upgraded to a Nikon D90. I purchased a guide for my D40x and was pretty content with the job the author did but he hasn't put one out yet for the D90. I couldn't find any credible alternative on Amazon (which is the whole world, right?).

Then one of my Flickr contacts mentioned a new guide just published by a guy named Thom Hogan. I was a bit skeptical at first because most of these guides/sites run by individuals are pretty lame (Ken Rockwell's, for example). But I kept seeing strong reviews and finally decided to blow a few Hamiltons. These DSLRs are complex and powerful and a good guide can save a lot of time in experimentation in order to get your desired results.

My guide arrived and, as advertised, is comprised of a CD with a wealth of information including the D90 specific guide in PDF format along with a printed "pocket" version. I am really impressed with the PDF content (which is all I've had time to read so far - it is a massive 764 pages long) which covers the fundamentals of digital cameras, file formats etc as well as details on the D90. Even in the fundamentals and general sections of the PDF Thom brings the info home to the D90. It isn't just boilerplate repeated from guides for other camera models.

Thom's guides look well worth purchasing for all but pro users. You can obtain them from his website. Note that his site also has a bunch of lens reviews, articles and tips on photography.

He's here!!!

Starting...

Hopefully we will fill this later today...

Lovely...

way to spend Sunday.

iPhoneApp Winners

I've gotten questions from several newer iPhone 3G owners along the lines of "I'm too lazy to browse the App Store, just tell me which apps to look at." Well, actually none of them admitted being lazy :-)

Rather than continue to answer these one at a time I think a blog entry is in order. So without further delay here is the list. Click the app name for more details:

• Klick - best Flickr companion
  
• PCalc - best utility belt for anything involving numbers
  
• Jott - best to-do and list application
  
• WeatherBug - multi-locations, radar, alerts and more
  
• Bloomberg - world wide market indexes and news
  
• Facebook - missing some key features but still convenient
  
• Where - finds events, friends, cheap gass, etc nearby based on GPS
  
• 2 Across - crossword puzzle app, a free lite version also available
  
• Wikipanion - guess what, this is a Wikipedia front end. Surprised, aren't you ?
  
• Now Playing - find movie times, theaters etc near you
  

All are "Ron Approved" and receive near daily use. Oh, did I forget to mention all but one of these is free? :-)

I got a bunch of others I use less frequently. I'll get around to posting on those soon.

Front Row now Supports Aperture

Thanks to a tip posted on Flickr I found out that Front Row now supports Aperture as a photo source (previously you had no control over this as iPhoto was the only option).

To take advantage of this install the new Front Row (2.1.6) then start it up. Navigate to Settings->Photo Source and click to change from iPhoto to Aperture. At least in my case when I clicked on Photo Source it took awhile for Front Row to do anything. I think it might have been traversing my large Aperture library before changing the text indicating the source.

One small victory for users :-)

Flock

One of my favorite low-volume bloggers is Bryan Frank, a broadcast news photographer and all-around good guy in LA. I've been a reader for years and recently noticed his posts were made by something called "Flock". Being the curious type I clicked the link and found this Firefox/Mozilla browser called Flock that provides some cool "hooks" into your online presences (like Google and Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Flickr, Blogger and so forth). I'm sure I've seen mention of it but I'm so inundated with innovations, gadgets and new tools/sites it takes some effort for one to break through into my consciousness.

I decided to give the Flock 2 beta a try and this post is coming from Flock's built in blog creation tool Hope it works :-) I'll give Flock a couple of weeks of play time before deciding if it can earn a place in the starting line up of browsers (I sometimes have 3 different browsers running...). BTW Flock is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Well, this post should have had a tag line of something like "posted by Flock". You'll note it doesn't because it refused to post to my Blogger account. Filed some feedback on that. I'm using a beta version so I'm not going to ding Flock for now over this. Though the fact this is failing really undermines the value. I might have to forgo the beta and drop to the current stable version.

Serendipity

Just have to share this bit of serendipity, happy accident, or whatever you want to call it. My 4 year old daughter was playing around with my p&s camera during the oath ceremony and when I uploaded the pics later there were some pretty awesome looking abstract photos. The room was dark so I have no idea exactly what produced this effect - maybe some crazy flash reflection off of something? Best not to think about it and just enjoy it. BTW this is SOOC. Anyway, I think it is way cool :-) Click the image to see it larger on Flickr.

Please don't repost or otherwise use this image without my permission. Thanks!

Woo Hoo!

Here is a mosaic from yesterday's oath ceremony. Click on through to see some commentary I posted on Flickr. It was an exciting and event and very well done.

Life Poster

I've seen life posters around and found them intriguing. A few years back someone posted instructions on how to create them manually in an old version of iPhoto. With the passing of my mom earlier this year I embarked on a project to scan in a bunch of old photos, mostly B&W, to share with family members to help in remembrances. It struck me as I was working on this that it was going to be a bit of a shame for all of us to look at those memories only to file them in a folder to, in spite of best intentions, be forgotten. Or to be forced to only pick a couple to frame and leave out. A Life Poster project seemed like the perfect solution.

I recently did some searching around and after looking at a number of approaches including scripting, Picasa, and shareware tools I settled on a nifty little commerical application called Posterino. I liked the convenience of its UI plus its ability to create irregular posters. Unlike Posterino a number of the tools force you to have every photo the same size and aspect ratio.

I downloaded the demo version of Posterino and in not much more than one hour I learned the program and populated an irregular poster with nearly 100 images. Posterino allows you to individually resize each image to fit its spot in the poster as well as repositioning each one so the proper portion of the photo is being shown. Another key feature is the ability to simply drag a photo from one part of the poster to another - when you drop the photo in the new location the application automatically swaps with the previous photo in that spot (this is configurable behavior). Since I already had all of the old photos in a project in Aperture the fact Posterino could directly access my photo library was a big plus in quickly finding and placing the images.

Once you're done you can transfer the resulting poster image into iPhoto for ordering via its Kodak interface, upload it to Flickr, or export it to a file for other uses or for transmission to other printing services.

I am normally quite hesitant to spend money for software to automate a task I will do only infrequently. However in this case I think the money was well spent in ensuring a high quality result in an amount of time I could afford to spend on the project. Plus the license fee is about the same as the cost of one large poster print and so a misfire in creation of the poster to print would eat up any license fee expense. The demo is fully functional but does place a large image over the top of exports until licensed. This means you can give it a complete dry run to see if it will meet your needs before forking over your hard earned cash. Wander over here for more information.

Not wanting to completely leave out the Windows users, I found a nice blog entry at HelpMerick.com describing some options for you. Click here to give it a read.

Bringing Aperture and the World Together

Most digital cameras still lack GPS and hence their photos are not geotagged/location-aware. I've long made the effort to manually tag location info on photos I upload to Flickr but it is cumbersome in their UI. My iPhone has geotagging on its photos which has whetted my appetite for a convenient way to add this info to shots with my far superior Nikon D40x.

You can imagine my delight when Maperture was released. This is a plugin for Apple's Aperture tool that works with Google's mapping feature. So far this new plugin looks great and even better it is another freebie.

Thanks ubermind!

Radiant Green

Radiant Green, originally uploaded by Road Fun.

I really liked this houseplant image and wanted to post it on my blog for those who don't wander over to my Flickr stream. I'll do this from time to time...

P.S. The image is copyright and cannot be downloaded or reproduced in any fashion without permission.

Klick for Flickr

One of my favorite iPhone apps is called Klick. A deceptively simple app that brings a whole lot of capability to anyone who is a fan of Flickr. Klick is much more powerful than it's competitor Exposure and in my experience it is more stable and has a very cool UI. Klick displays your contact's photos and has a UI that allows faving and commenting from the iPhone. You can also view your own stream and the comments folks are making. A quick tap on your photo shows the most recent comments. Clicking on the comment bubble takes you to a screen that shows all the comments on the photo. You can also view photos "Near Me" using the iPhone 3G GPS as well as your favorites and a sampling of Interesting photos from other users. The developers are extremely responsive to questions and enhancement suggestions.

Almost amazingly, given its breadth of features, this app is free in the AppStore. If you use Flickr you gotta try this one out.

Threatening Clouds

Took the above photo using my iPhone 3G a few weeks back. Some dramatic-looking clouds brought to us by Dolly - but we didn't even get any rain from this. You'll be hearing more about my iPhone in coming posts. But I promise there will be a lot of other topics too. Apple haters fear not.