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Eye Candy
Daily Ink
Stored in: In Situ
Posted On: March 23 2007
By: Bryan Partington
Photo © striatic
A photographer who I very much respect recently went on a hiatus from flickr.
In the ensuing discussion of this departure, mention was made that flickr was very much like a candy bowl where only the prettiest pieces are noticed and chosen. The idea being that the prettiest shots aren't always necessarily the most fulfilling.
I agree with that, and I'd also agree that this is an unfortunate aspect of flickr, one not easily remedied.
The main issue is that photos have to work at thumbnail size or else they aren't viewed very much. A recent study out of the University of Southern California looked at the nature of the traffic on flickr. They discovered, unsurprisingly, that the the primary driver for photo views is a photographer's contact network. Since the easiest way for people to find photos from their contacts is via the latest photos from your contacts page, the thumbnail is the most important entry point, the ultimate arbiter of whether a photo is seen or left to fall into obscurity.
There are benefits to this, of course. Reducing the photos to thumbnail size makes it easier to take a look at a lot of them at once and decide which ones you'd like to look at more closely. Unfortunately, not all good photographs read very well at such a small size.
I uploaded a photo the other day, a photo of my reflection in a puddle. Part of what drew me to take the photo is the subtlety of this reflection, caught in a dark surface.
The photo was viewed a few times, commented on a few times, until a random passerby I'd never seen before left a trite, unsolicited and poorly articulated critique:
Very good image - maybe fiddle around with the contrast, to give the silhouet more 'pop'? [sp]
The comment took me a little by surprise, as I do not normally hear people voice technical critiques of my photos. That's not what I'm on flickr for and that's not the type crowd who I hang out with. Still, I took notice of the comment, where normally I'd just ignore or delete the thing. You see, I'd already prepared a version with more contrast before uploading the subtler of the two.
So I replaced the photo with the more dynamic version and waited.
I don't check scout all that often, but the critique left me curious as to how the subtler photo would fair against the more obvious one. Not to my surprise, but perhaps to my chagrin, the photo jumped up into explore shortly after I updated it.
Is there room for subtlety on flickr? Of course there is, but there's not a lot of room for it. Flickr is not the kind of environment that fosters subtly. There's really too much activity for anything subtle to be noticed and enjoyed, except in rare instances of accident or perhaps if it is very actively sought out or showcased. It's one of the things I like about the Utata.org home page, for instance, where the contemplative commentary leaves the eye to rest on a single image for a period somewhat less brief than the time it takes to click a purple star.
5 comments on this Ink
On March 23, 2007, Lori Hale Williams said ...
I agree. The benefit of flickr is the social networking, your contacts which can respect the more subtle photographs that the general flickr public cannot. Groups (the good ones anyway) are good for that too. That's why I see Utata as an extension of my contact network.
And indeed, Utata.org is a great place to see one (actually two) spotlighted photos that have some staying power. Although sometimes I get antsy to see the next one :)
On March 23, 2007, Kevin O'Conner said ...
I've noticed the same thing, although I didn't really have words for what I was thinking until I read your post.
I've found that the photos that make it to Flickr's Explore pages tend to be the ones that are highly saturated with lots of contrast so that they do, indeed, "pop" - much like most of today's popular music, which is typically highly compressed in mastering so that it "pops" out of the speakers (though this causes listening fatigue, which may explain the record industry's current woes). Seldom do I see spotlighted photos that contain much in the way of subtlety or sensitivity.
At first, this bothered me, but when my contacts began commenting on my photos, I found that the opinions of these folks were more satisfying than whether or not Flickr chose to spotlight one of my photos based on some nebulous criteria of what constitutes "interestingness"...
On March 27, 2007, Joe Wigfall said ...
Excellent article and very true of flickrdom. Colorful, vibrant, contrasty, eye startling images are among the type of photos that seemingly do well in Explore. And it would be easy to succumb to the allure of pleasing the calculating Explore machine, except the opinion of your contacts (and your own) will and should hold far more weight,
especially the ones that give more than a two or three word response to your work...
especially if you value their opinions...
especially when some of them actually become your friends, (which the calculating Explore machine can never do).
Interesting, isn't it?
On March 31, 2007, Ryan Brenizer said ...
Very good, and important essay. I actually have to limit myself from looking at too many Flickr photos compared to "outside" photos these days, less the Eye Candy aesthetic affect my professional work too much. But I tend to post more of the eye-candy stuff -- for example, in work I tend to shoot wide, but on Flickr I'll post more of the telephoto, simple, bokeh-licious stuff.
On April 03, 2007, velvetair said ...
I found what you wrote interesting and it reminded me of a comment someone else made to me that they found that most images were taken in the landscape format and they thought that this had something to do with the way we look at screens.I know I have a "habit' of taking pictures in that particular format.
Otherwise, in In Situ:
- Previously: All Sizes
- Next: Filter Feeding
Utata Ink is a daily publication edited by Bryan Partington (striatic). Photos used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and obtained via the flickr API unless otherwise noted. To make a contribution to Ink, please visit Ink Me.
