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Border Clashes
Daily Ink
Stored in: In Situ
Posted On: April 15 2007
By: Bryan Partington
Archival Photo
Once upon a time, every image on flickr had a light grey border.
Not just the photos on the photo pages, mind you, but photos posted to comments and group discussion threads as well. The light grey border wasn't that obvious unless a white element was at the edge of the photo, so it mainly served to outline blown-out areas and define the edges of photos that might otherwise appear edgeless. In short, you could blow out the sky and it wouldn't look weird.
Before the light grey border, flickr had put black borders around all photos. Borders as black as darkest night. 1 pixel of melancholy surrounding each and every photographic expression here.
Which was cool, although people did complain. After all, the borders that flickr added interfered with customized "photo frames" and drop shadows and other embellishments that some people wished to add to the photos themselves. It was impossible to shoot an object on a white background and have it naturally bleed into the page. There's always be that grey border awkwardly demarcating the transition from the white background in the photo to the white background of the page.
So flickr axed the borders, and good for them.
After that, people started using borders and mattes on their photos a bit more frequently. Sometimes to good effect and sometimes for the purposes of evil, but this was a small minority and did not represent a significant change to the appearance of flickr.
What did represent a significant change to the appearance of flickr was the absolute torrent of "awards" and "badges" and "big faves" and "poker chips" and "oscars" and "master swords of greatnesses" that "coincidentally coincided" with the removal of the borders.
.. and now, smileys.
Because, you see, there is this delightful greasemonkey script to help people add all manner of smiley to their comments and group discussion posts. Joy.
I don't think that with a border around them such images would look any less ugly, but they would certainly look uninvited and unwelcome. Most of these gaudy signifiers of photographic excellence rely on a white background bleeding onto the flickr page, enabled by flickr's new borderless philosophy.
Why must we pervert such good intentions? Or is it simply that I'm some manner of elitist for decrying the will of the people, which seems obviously in favour of borderless graphics used to signify how "awesome" every shot on flickr is?
If only there was some way to adequately express my rage ...
Perhaps a smiley?
5 comments on this Ink
On April 15, 2007, David Wilkinson said ...
:-)
On April 16, 2007, Catherine Jamieson said ...
David beat me to it :)
On April 16, 2007, Alison said ...
Hear, hear!
:-)
On April 16, 2007, Rob Ireton said ...
I didn't realize that we used to get borders. What interesting and unfortunate consequences from removing them. Thank goodness for Adblock!
On April 17, 2007, Gemma Grace said ...
I'm with you!
Otherwise, in In Situ:
- Previously: 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.
