Why Bother?

Just a quick rant today.

The proliferation of poor stock photos or stock photos used poorly has reached its culmination.

Someone figured out that people are drawn to pictures. Those same people figured out if they wanted their text read by casually browsing readers, that a photo could grab some attention.  They started sticking stock photos at the top of their blogs.  Sometimes the photos actually have something to do with the subject matter, sometimes they are only peripherally connected.  I believe a cat has little to do with Extended Warranty but the desperate-to-be-read folks at the Consumerist blog seem to think so.

Or maybe they just hope the cute will buy them an extra look.

Lately there has been a more disturbing trend. Pictures that have nothing to do with the article – even peripherally.  Sometimes they just take a sticky note and write a word on it – a word that will provoke a reader – hopefully.

Yesterday, I saw the best effort yet.

Yes, the story is about bathroom vandalism and a disgusting read too. Rather than even find a useless stock image of a restroom, or a door, or a sign, they left this stupid graphic.  The graphic, however,  is full of implications:

Was the story so provocative that no picture could do it justice? Not likely.  They put cute little pigs on slaughterhouse stories and other incongruities. Inappropriateness of a graphic has never stopped them before.

Was the graphic carefully crafted to titillate the reader and get them to read an ‘inappropriate story’. Not likely. It isn’t that titillating a story.  And the graphic just made me wonder about their convoluted design process.

Do the Bots that build their articles and posts (or find them in syndication) not understand the story well enough to pick a keyworded graphic? This belongs in the realm of conspiracy theory.  But, it begs the question – are automated processes picking the graphics? Not likely but it could happen…

Are they just phoning it in at this point? I tend to think this is the real reason. Laziness or apathy resulted in a placeholder graphic that fails to add to the story but it does say something about the state of photography today.

Photo editors used to choose meticulously from a small palette of imagery.  If nothing was right, they commissioned it. Then stock came. Large numbers of ‘close-enough’ images were available for cheap. Next step in the descent was the remotely-close-for-free group of images. Now, it is splash anything with color or contrast to attract attention – content be damned.

The world of photography is somewhere in between those last two stages. It will be a poorer world soon.

Rikk Flohr © 2012

What’s In A Name? Google+ Censorship – That’s What!

Apparently, as evidenced by this example, Google’s new Social Media darling, Google+ loves to censor photos based upon certain keywords.

I posted a picture on September 1st titled “Full-Frontal Hummingbird: Yesterday’s best capture.” A few days later it was replaced with this black graphic and an international no-entry symbol. The only thing I can conclude from this is that Google+ is censoring photographs based upon keywords in the metadata or the description or both.  Certainly the picture isn’t offensive and no reasonable person would report it as inappropriate.

Now, I have listened to pundits-especially in the photography world- proclaiming Google Plus to be the best image experience in the social media realm.  Scott Kelby has been ballyhooing this on his many media outlets.  Read a blog entry or two by him and you will see (and rightfully so to many points) that there is high regard for the new sharing site. Watch an episode of The Grid and you will hear and see much more about the greatness (or aptness) of Google+ (or Google Plus if you prefer). 

Many prominent photographers are jumping on the Plus bandwagon as a salvation from the sins committed upon their images by Facebook and the like.  Even I wrote about Facebook’s horrid thumbnail cropping on the Holy Crop! blog recently.  But there is still this one nagging problem: Google appears to censor your images…

… even this harmless frontal image of a hummingbird. A few quick refreshes and playing around and eventually Google Plus will reveal the benign image. I hope you covered your child’s eyes if they were near the screen.

You might say, “Rikk, why not just rename it?”

I might reply, “Why? Does it not describe the shot? Is the shot not ‘G-rated’?” I chose this name because after a couple of days getting profiles, I finally got a front-on shot.  Perhaps, I also thought it clever.  When I shared it with non-public circles and not the general public, its content should be irrelevant in any case. To date, I’ve found no setting that will repair this erroneous designation.

As long as this type of oops is possible, can Google+ really be considered a photographer’s social medial alternative  to Facebook ?

Rikk Flohr  © 2011

But Is It Really That Blue?

I don’t blame most of the world for having become more skeptical of the appearance of photographs. During the past decade the acceptance and explosion of digital photography coupled with the proliferation of image editing programs has given, I think, too many tools into the hands of too irresponsible, as an aggregate, a user base. Whether it is the lowly saturation slider or a multi-exposure-heavily filter-laden crowd-wowing image, it is too easy to go too far and, sadly, too many photographers do.

Rio Celeste at the Interface where the mineral waters
mingle with the mountain stream.

When I show an image such as this recent capture on the Rio Celeste River in Tenorio National Park, Costa Rica, the first words out of the viewer’s mouth are usually, “Is it really that blue?”

My first reaction is to be defensive and say, “Yeah! It was that blue.”

“But you’ve enhanced it, right?”

After a thoughtful pause, I reply. “Yes, I have processed this image but the water was really a vivid electric-blue in person. In fact, it might even have been bluer.”

Whether that is true or not, I don’t know. I certainly remember a vivid blue from having been there. When I look at the unprocessed RAW file it certainly looks less blue than I remember-by a long shot. When I look at my point-and-shoot JPEGs of the scene they look pretty close to the processed image above. My philosophy is to edit the image until it looks like I remember the scene based upon my memory, my emotions and my intellect for rendering a scene accurately.

Was it that blue? I don’t know. Are you viewing the image in a dimly lit room or a bright sunny environment? Is your monitor calibrated? Does your internet browser support color management? Is your monitor turned up too bright as so many are? Did you just wake up? Come in from bright sunlight? Drink caffeine recently? All of these things greatly affect our perception of color. 

I checked the exposure and found that this shot was taken at 1/6th of a second. No one has yet asked me if the water in this shot was really that smooth-that blurred-that indistinct. Was the water really that silky?  We have come to expect and even accept the distortion of time in a photograph even though its manipulation of reality can have a greater outcome on the appearance of the final image. Why is color so suspect? In the days of Kodachrome, the casual observer never questioned the color shift due to the film reciprocity over a long exposure-we just lived with it and move on. Why is it different now?

If you hike the 3 km trail to the Rio Celeste mineral water origins and remember with crystal clarity (perhaps blue-tinted clarity) the color of the water you may know the answer to the question. Till then, you have to take my word for it.

Was it really that blue? From where I am sitting-right now-yes… It was really that blue.

“You can do anything you want to do. This is your world.”
– Bob Ross, The Joy of Painting -

Rikk Flohr  © 2010

del.icio.us Tags: color,true-to-life,image editing,saturation,realism,color mangement

Fun with Photo Clues

Aside: They say the best camera to take the picture is the one you have with  you. There has been a lot of buzz on the net lately about a new I-phone app called “Best Camera”. No matter what camera you have with you-just take the picture-even if it is a mere cell phone camera.  I had to shoot a job with one once. Read about it here.

Now back to the article:

Lets look at this non-I-phone cell phone capture and see what details we can glean from the image. Consider it a cell-phone-photo scavenger hunt.  This image was taken on September 30, 2009 as was gleanable from the original file name.

1. You can tell the image was shot with an LG Envy cell phone.
2. You know the outside temperature was 30° F.
3. You know I am traveling north.
4. The image in the mirror shows I am moving on a divided highway
5. There is frost on the ground outside the window.
6. Leaves are beginning to turn in the road-side tree
7. The sky is clear.
8. The sun is very low in the sky by its color and angle.
9. Because we are moving north, we know it is sunrise.
10. I am driving a Prius
11. I have a passenger as indicated by the seat-belt lights on the dash.
12. There are no passengers in the back seat.
13. That’s enough help for now.

Some of these clues are valuable-some are incidental.  Perhaps there are other clues you can ferret-out yourself. With the tremendous availability of data on the internet, you can probably pinpoint my location pretty closely. You would need clues provided by this photo and a little fastidious web searching but it is possible.

Anyone take a guess as to the highways name? My destination? The first person to email me the name of the highway on which I am driving will win a free copy of Rikk’s Natural Forms Keyword List for Lightroom.

While you are here, think about subscribing to my blog by clicking here.

Rikk Flohr © 2009

del.icio.us Tags: cell phone camera,clues,keyword list

Don’t forget your bloggers this Christmas

If you are celebrating “Holidays” instead of Christmas, this still applies:

It seems each year that the Emily Posts and other police persons of civility in society come out and tell us how we should be tipping various persons with whom we have casual acquaintance, passing relationships or other connections. I have seen holiday-based tipping guides for various providers of indispensible service for Daycare Providers, Hair Dressers, Garbage Collectors, Mail Delivery persons and a host of others. There are amounts and recommendations available to anyone with a Google screen handy.

What about your favorite Bloggers? I ask.

Blogging on the sidewalks for loose change

I stumbled upon this article the other day: Tipping Your Blogger. At first I got the laugh as it was no doubt intended. Then I started thinking. ‘Why not?’ Bloggers are an indispensible source of news, knowledge, tips, and entertainment in general. If not that, we also spend many hours filling your empty spaces with something other than empty space.

When you walk past the man on the street playing guitar before an open guitar case, you toss in a few coins in appreciation. So, as Bill Murray’s character in Caddyshack said to the Dali Lama for whom he had just caddied, “”Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know?”

Here is my virtual tip jar, my open instrument case, my outstretched hand, my bell hop rocking expectantly on his heels at your hotel room door. Toss a quarter at the jar and have the satisfaction of helping the less-fortunate! (I will be a little more fortunate for every quarter I receive!)

 
Tip your Blogger via PayPal

Of course, if you don’t tip, God won’t call me home, the blog industry won’t collapse (who would read a blog in bankruptcy-there’s no resale value), and we won’t take up a second collection. We won’t lay off our staff (there is only one of me after all), raise our prices (we don’t charge), outsource our entries, or move our computers off shore. Rest assured we will still be blogging in 2009. No Pressure!

Just be mindful of the many people who bring you your blogs throughout the year and remember them at least with a kind comment, a gentle link, and a warm feeling.

Have a great holiday season.

Rikk Flohr © 2008

del.icio.us Tags: blogging,tipping,humor