Photojojo Time Capsule

Now, here's actually an interesting idea, Time Capsule, which I sort of wish I thought of first. But, I can't think of everything first... Anyway, the idea is pretty simple. Once in a while send out photos from your Flickr stream that are older but were ranked well in "interestingness." That is, those photos that were commented on and viewed more often. Time Capsule will then send them to you in an email. It won't let your best photos be forgotten.

Tag Galaxy

As far as Flickr viewers go, there's no other that comes close in coolness than Tag Galaxy. The rough idea is that each tag is a planet (or satellite) and selecting multiple tags will eventually lead you to the pictures you wanna see. It's neat, and extremely well done.

Thomas Hawk and a few others are working on a new photo show called PhotoCycle and recently sat down to talk to Ansel Adams' son Michael. 10 Interesting Things I Learned About Ansel Adams, is a post he wrote up and posted on Flickr describing the experience and what he learned.

Photoshop Express has added Flickr integration. It's adding features like this that will kill off those other up and coming online editors.

I can't help but find Storm Trooper action figures posing, incredibly hilarious.

100 Strangers

If you wanna get good at street portraits, there's no better way to do it than to actually take them. Luckily, 100 Strangers is challenging you. They've got some tips to get you started and as an added bonus, it's actually a Flickr group, so it's relevant to this blog (my attempts at humor are horrible).

Backup (and do other useful things too) your photos from Flickr using FlickrEdit. (Very useful in the event Yahoo! gets acquired by Microsoft)

I've decided that Photub should actually be renamed to Flickr News Network. Flickr Code is a site to talk about and discuss writing things for Flickr. The Flickr team has made the source available for Uploadr, a cross platform tool for uploading content to the site. There is also a blog.

Why are Flickr Users Such Whiners?

Flickr Users Cry Mutiny Over New Video Feature They are no longer than 90 seconds, so It's not going to replace or compete with YouTube! You can use it for cool things like timelapses, or you can actually just get creative! Please, stop frakking complaining!

And seriously, if you're so upset about it that you need to stage protests, just stop and GO MAKE PHOTOGRAPHS!.

Picture This

You're deep within the confines of a government-run camp of football fanatics, deep within the jungle without your camera. Suddenly, you find a block of wood with a small pin-sized hole in it, a roll of black tape, two pieces of black cardboard and a canister containing 1 roll of Kodak Tri-X ISO 400...

It doesn't look like the projects are that extreme, but Picture This sort of seems to work this way. They setup a weekly project, you read the brief summary, grab your camera and interpret it however you want and then upload your best shot. The Picture This community critiques your work and you continue to improve your shot building your portolio in the process.

Oh, and it's powered by Flickr, which makes it even easier to get involved with.

Flickr Adds Video

Flickr adds video to your photostream. Looks like Pro account holders can now upload videos no longer than 90 seconds to their photostreams. It looks like for now you'll have to use the web interface to do the uploading, but I'm sure API support, and then modifications to their uploaders will be forthcoming. I've gotta say, the video player has the same charm as the sllideshows do, clean and easy to use.

Maybe it's just an east coast/west coast thing (I'm east coast), but I've often wondered about the name "Flickr." I originally thought the site was a video sharing site, and wasn't the least bit interested in it until I realized otherwise. Doesn't the term "flick" refer informally to a motion picture?

Blackr: For Viewing Flickr Photos

Those of you who happen to be frequent Flickr users might like Blackr, a bookmarklet for your browser that hides all the fluff of a Flickr photo page by turning it black. It's sort of like framing the picture...

Library of Congress Uses Flickr

The Library of Congress has started making photos from it's archive (that it believes to be in the public domain) available on Flickr. They hope users of Flickr will help provide some more metadata for the images. PopPhoto has more

Gimp users who are also Flickr users will like GimpPublishr because it cuts down on an important step in your workflow. GimpPublishr supports exporting photos to Flickr and to Picassaweb.

TiltViewer

Airtight Interactive (makers of SimpleViewer), have a really great Flickr browser (photos are pulled from the Interesting) with lots of eyecandy called TiltViewer.

While it's definitely a very cool Flash application, I don't think it's going to revolutionize the way we look at photos, especially because most photos do not require that you look at them any other way but straight on. However, I could see Apple coming out with an extension to iPhoto which uses Core Graphics to do some sort of photo browser, or perhaps it'd fit better into Front Row. I think this is doubtful.

Getting Exposure from Flickr

It's no joke that Flickr is popular, and with it being popular is a great place to be found. Thiru Murugan has posted 5 Tips to Get Into "Flickr Explore."

The Gimp and HDR

It seems that there are lots of people that don't understand that The Gimp is not capable of doing HDR images. There is a simple reason for this, which involves the way The Gimp represents image files. Without being too technical, I'll try to explain.

The Gimp's basic model represents each pixel as 3 different numbers between 0 and 255. This means that it can represent only 16581375 different colors per pixel. I say only, because, if you were to use 3 floating point numbers, from 0 to 1, or 3 numbers from 0 to 65535, or some other power of 2 (minus 1), you then are able to represent many more colors; you become able to represent a higher dynamic range of colors.

Even if The Gimp supported more pixel values, our monitors can't, and we need to use a process like tone mapping to convert the computed HDR image (comprised of some combination of multiple exposures), back into something viewable; something where the range of pixels is made up of 3 integers from 0 to 255 (in the general case).

This doesn't mean The Gimp sucks, because it certainly doesn't; it just means that it has some limitations and one has to be mindful of them. This "problem" of image representation is only really visible if you're looking for ultra-high quality output, like movie producers, and most photo professionals. Amateurs need not worry.

I just noticed that Flickr is no longer labeled as Gamma. Instead, it Loves You.

Flickr Color Selectr allows you to search for images on Flickr based on the primary color within the image.

Since today seems to be all about flickr toys, there's no reaon not to mention flickrvision, which is a (some-what) live view of flickr, viewed on a map. Flickrvision takes advantage of the geotagging feature found in Flickr.

flickrSLiDR, makes it easy to add Flickr slideshows of your images to your site.

Trip to Belize

After being disconnected from as many electronic devices as possible (aside from my Nikon D70s), on our weeklong trip to Caye Caulker, Belize in Central America, I'd like to share some photos from the trip.

The Street, is an amazing street photography gallery.

Top 10 Flickr Hacks

As you can probably tell, I am a fan of Flickr. You can tell this by the number of posts I make citing Flickr resources and "hacks." Well, Thomas Hawk has published a list of the Top 10 Flickr Hacks, in which he talks about 10 different uses of Flickr that aren't Flickr themselves. While I agree that some of these sites are "hacks," I was surprised to see another site I truely love, Tabblo on the list.

You see, unlike Flickrleech (#1 on the list, btw), which relies totally on Flickr to function, Tabblo enables you to upload your photos to its site. The Flickr integration is only a convenience and the site does not rely on Flickr to function. I think the Tabblo approach to this is genius too. They being a startup, much like Flickr was, have seen the success and the flock of people using Flickr. They aren't competing with Flickr and in fact they have a totally different product. But, they are able to capitalize on Flickr users, because afterall, who wants to maintain two photo collections on the web? Certainly not me.

There's a great article about Flickr entitled "What Makes Flickr So Special Anyway".

Sorry for the lack of real updates. Things have been a bit busy for me as of late, but I will resume real posting habits soon.

The High Cost of Keeping Clean

A Wal-Mart in Taylors, SC is filthy, as shown by Flickr user "Filthy Wal-Mart". Without getting into political bashing of Wal-Mart, I must say I'm not surprised that this could happen at a Wal-Mart, given the apparent mistreatment of it's employees.

Flickr Related Tag Browser

Coming from Airtight Interactive is a nice tool for visualizing tags on the popular photo sharing site Flickr. Airtight Interactive is also the creator of SimpleViewer, a popular flash image gallery application which you can use for free on your site.