In Flickr, this can often be remedied by choosing to search by "interestingness" (as they phrase it), rather than by "most recent". Tends to get the better photos to the top, and breaks things up so you don't have 5 pages of photos in a row from one guy who uploaded his vacation shots.
What are you looking for in pictures of Yosemite if not rocks?
F, F, F, "interestingness" doesn't get you the better photos, it gets you the twee, oversaturated photoshopped stuff that everyone oohs about.
But those photos are so OMG gorgeous! What else could you be looking for?
"interestingness" does tend to correlate strongly with color saturation on flickr. They should have a separate measurement that controls for color saturation. "This would be the most linked to & favorited & viewed photo in this search if people were indifferent to color saturation."
`interestingness' is pretty badly broken, but partially this is a problem of the sheer size of flickr. If you realize that `interestingness' actually means `won a popularity contest of average viewers' then it makes more sense.
The problem with searches with the type of refinements you are asking for is that they are resource expensive for flickr, which is already a problem for them. So long as most people don't care, there is an economic disincentive to do it.
There are some interesting algorithmic approaches out there in other spheres, but they aren't cheap to run.
"interestingness" does tend to correlate strongly with color saturation on flickr .
I think this characterizes interest in a lot of commercial or popular fine art photography.
Your search is only as good as your metadata.
8: I'd disagree about fine art photography in general. Almost the opposite in many cases (in reaction to commercial photography? I dunno). Then again, I don't know what `popular fine art photography' means; I mostly think of f.a. photography as not being popular in that sense.
a lot of commercial stuff is pretty saturated, certainly.
The other problem with talking about this stuff with respect to flickr etc. is that almost nobody is viewing this stuff on a properly calibrated monitor, so you are also averaging over a bunch of distortions of your image.
7:I actually don't think this is a bad thing. Humans like pretty colors, we shouldn't deny it. But there are some circumstances where you would like to put that aside, like looking for a food that tastes good for some other reason than being made of pure sugar.
8: for flickr, true. If people there were better with tags, it would help. Not so true in general, as some of the content-based image searches are getting interesting.
I don't know what `popular fine art photography' means
The stuff that's sold in that store in the mall, I assume. The photographic equivalent of Thomas Kinkade dealers.
I was trying to include fellows like Richard Kern or Timothy Greenfield Sanders, photographers who are essentially commercial photographers but whose practices is so viable it allows them to do photography outside any editorial or commercial context.
Then they should send him an email and tell him that no one cares about his stupid rocks.)
A modest proposal?
Speaking of art and photography, anyone in Chicago should really go to the Richard Misrach show at the Art Institute. Not oversaturated! I swear!
As annoying as it is to not to have a good search function in the absence of good metadata, I don't want to even think of what mischief the surveillance state will get up to once the metadata can be cheaply and reliably extracted from pixels.
Soon metadata will be too cheap to meter.
16: I've got a pretty good idea of what state-of-the-art is. At the moment, nothing particularly scary on a personal level, but some pretty impressive things are possible even today, on commodity hardware. There are some difficult recognition problems left to solve between today and the really hairy 1984 stuff, but buckets and buckets of money are being poured onto it --- mostly under different guises --- so I wouldn't hold out too much hope.
You really don't want this feature on YouTube, because it would mean copyright holders would be able to painlessly search for their content, which would render YouTube entirely stupid and boring.
On the oversaturated thing: the use of digital oversaturation (and HDR imaging) in commercial/pop photography is an exact corollary to the loudness war in pop music, and doing a search of popular singles on iTunes would reveal exactly the same pattern as searching for "interestingness" on Flickr. Discuss.
20.a: This is going to happen. The technology mostly exists for still images, but you have a few barriers for youtube: 1) video is harder 2) there is no commercial gain, all you can do is ask youtube to drop a video 3) for the most part, people don't care if their stuff is on youtube because currently in that form it isn't commercially competing.
20.b 1)digital saturation isn't novel, people used velvia for a reason. 2)HDR itself is more technological fall out, as people sort out how to use digital sensors. Done right, you don't even notice that it's HDR. Mostly it's done wrong. 3) commercial photography cycles. Ring lights are back in but this will change again. It's cyclical `novelty' like other areas of fashion. New tech helps with this, but doesn't fundamentally change it.
I've got a pretty good idea of what state-of-the-art is.
I now believe that this statement is true, since #21 contains three terms I've never heard before in a mere 70 words.
re: 21
Yeah, I find most HDR images almost offensively bad. Although I've seen it used in subtle ways on black and white digital images to create interesting effects that aren't crass -- mostly in ways that are analogous to existing 'wet' dark-room techniques but which take advantage of digital. I've seen it on colour too but that's even more vanishingly rare.
re: colour saturation. The under-exposed Velvia + polarizer look is over-done but sometimes it can look great.
The loudness-war [something which drives me a bit nuts at times] is a pretty good analogy too.
21.a.1) yes, video is harder. or at least bigger. but audio is easier.
21.a.2) incorrect. you can do other stuff.
21.a.3) also incorrect.
True, excluding search results would be pretty useful on Flickr. I do like the general way the tagging thing works, though; it's nice to be able to use an account exclusively for yourself if you know that no one cares about your rock pictures.
Anyway, Ogged, you should be able to find Ansel Adams pics quite easily enough without going through the bother of Flickr, no?
Third view has some interesting photographs and re-photographs of Yosemite and other western U.S. places.
I wasn't actually looking for photos of Yosemite, it was an example.
I was just recommending Third View for anyone, with this comment thread as an excuse.
The Flickr search API doesn't include any options for excluding items, which strikes me as something of a flaw.
EB, thanks for that link. I'm beginning to wish there were a search feature to the contents of your brain, man.
28: Now you're anonymizing your thoughts, too?
The Flickr search API doesn't include any options for excluding items, which strikes me as something of a flaw.
You can exclude terms when you search on the site itself. You can't exclude a user's pictures (as far as I know), and that would be really useful.
I note for Emerson's benefit that Third View's view of the west doesn't include North Dakota.
36 -- Neither does mine. Only TR thought so. And he was a sissified easterner.
The whole internets--no, the world at large--should have an "exclude crap" feature. It would simplify my life immensely.
34: Thanks. Somewhat disturbingly, I find myself searching for old comments and/or posts for references I remember making.
You can exclude terms when you search on the site itself. You can't exclude a user's pictures (as far as I know), and that would be really useful.
Yeah, but there doesn't seem to be a nice way to create a third-party service that would do what you want. Like I said, I'm somewhat surprised.
36: I'm sure that the problems with Third View are many. Thinking that North Dakota is near Ohio probably isn't their worst error.
It's closer to Ohio than Alaska is.
Third View has about two things to see in Northern California. One of them is Yosemite, and the other one is a podunk town somewhere near Davis, as far as I can tell. My pronouncement: Unsatisfactory!
Rfts and I and two friends of ours once drove down from Berkeley to Davis on a Sunday night out of a zany urge for adventure. There is very little adventure to be found in Davis on a Sunday night. We ended up going to a Lyon's for bad chain restaurant margaritas; the blender was broken, so the saintly waiter brought everyone little juice glasses filled with tequila.
drove...to Davis...out of a zany urge for adventure.
Sounds like my kind of people. I'm always trying to convince my fiancee to take a weekend trip to Jamestown, N.Y. or Huntington, W.V. or somewhere. "There must be enough interesting stuff to at least occupy a weekend!" I say.
I thought the Dakotas west of the Missouri were in the west. There was an h-net discussion on this, I think.
or Huntington, W.V. or somewhere. "There must be enough interesting stuff to at least occupy a weekend!" I say.
There isn't. Trust me on this one.
Isn't Davis up from Berkeley?
So the mullah's would have you believe.
mullah's
I don't even have the excuse of bourbon's sweet embrace. I ban myself.
44: I have spent a weekend in Davis looking for adventure. Really, beyond a decent farmer's market and proximity to vineyards, there ain't no fun that ain't homemade in Davis.
We had a fondue party and watched all three segments of The Lost Room. It's about as good as it gets.
We had a fondue party
So that's what the kids are calling it these days.
See, each of them wore a different color of fondue, and then...
Hey, I'm not just into sex, you know. I'm also into food.
I'm not just into sex, you know. I'm also into food.
Fondue savoyarde, or fondue bourguignonne?
We did cheese and then chocolate, and then drank the red wine we got from the vineyards because we really wanted migraines.
Third View only has one site in NM. It's a good one, but still.
I had a really good time in Davis just a couple of years ago. All the people involved have since relocated, mind you. Anyway, it was kind of like an all-girls pyjama party, except that everyone else was a medical student. That led to the hilarious moment when one med student said to the others: "no, no, no, don't use the five dollar bill! Don't you remember that literature about the percentage of hep-C contamination with the small bills? Anyone have a twenty, or something higher?"
The only relevance Davis qua Davis has to this story is that real estate prices were low, so we were in a beautiful 1920s bungalo.
61: So that's why you're supposed to use a C-note to do coke? Who knew coke fiends were so public-health-savvy?
I've only had cheese fondue. I should try chocolate some time.
I highly recommend cheap supermarket fat-free poppyseed pound cake in chocolate fondue. Something about the dryish stale nuttiness of it is perfect.
I highly recommend cheap supermarket fat-free poppyseed pound cake in chocolate fondue.
I had a GENIUS IDEA today. So, I have the moosewood dessert cookbook, and it contains a recipe for olive oil cake. It just so happens that pastry chef a few pastry chefs ago at Applewood made an olive oil cake served with pernod-soaked grapefruit slices and either grapefruit or pernod sorbet—I can't remember which. So naturally I thought, well, some pernod drizzled over such a cake would be good, after all, it's made with olive oil and orange juice & zest, two flavors with which pernod goes well. One could even put some pernod in the batter, hopefully lending the finished cake a subtle and delightful flavor of licorice blending with the oil and orange. Yum, right? WELL. What if, as a result of halloween-themed suggestions, it occurred to you that hey, campari and grapefruit and orange go really well together; what if you had some grapefruit slices immersed in campari and put them over the cake? That might be good. BUT then, what if you just put the campari in the cake itself instead of the pernod, perhaps leading to its being a grisly blood red, and having a pleasantly bitter, but still toothsome, taste?
Well, my friend. If that's what occurred to you, you would have had the same genius idea that I did.
You go too far. Some of us have, you know, limits.
You know what Halloween fad is entirely too prevalent 'round these parts? Dick-in-a-box costumes. I saw like ten this past weekend.
I saw a great number of sexy nurses, but that was because I was creepily bumming around the NYU dorms scoring lights from undergrads at the time. Undergrads == sexy nurses.
You go too far. Some of us have, you know, limits.
Vorwärts, Lahmfuß! Vorwärts Faultier, Schleichhändler, Bleichgesicht! Daß ich dich nicht mit meiner Ferse kitzle! Was treibst du hier zwischen Türmen? In den Turm gehörst du, einsperren sollte man dich, einem Bessern, als du bist, sperrst du die freie Bahn!
I just made my crown of thorns today, from some rose branches. Tomorrow I get some railroad spikes. That will be my complete costume, which I have no place to wear.
oh christ like i need another fucking dimension of elitist to further separate me from the hoi polloi
the music anology is good until you realize there isn't a dial on your monitor to turn up the awesomenses liek there is on your reciever
re: 72
Ah, but there is. Loads of people have their monitors set incorrectly -- brightness too high, contrast too high, colour temperature set at 9000K, etc.
those are only good for wanky fiddling and shit. turning a volume nob up is instant greatness.
i have been using teh brightness control to turn it way the fuck down late at night to prevent it fucking with sleepyiness.
re: 74
When people are talking about volume-wars they don't mean that people can just turn up their hi-fi, obviously. They mean that tracks are mastered so that their levels are basically slammed up to max and so that there's basically zero dynamic range.
Turning music up loud and heavy limiting when mastering are two entirely different things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
re: 75
In my day job, part of what I do involves consulting on colour-management practice and workflow in a digital imaging studio. I do a lot of monitor calibration. It's pretty striking how low the brightness levels generally are on a properly calibrated monitor compared to how people generally set them.
F, F, F, "interestingness" doesn't get you the better photos, it gets you the twee, oversaturated photoshopped stuff that everyone oohs about.
i started to look, but i decided i didn't care which meaning of 'canon' was being used.
71: bitching about "the hoi polloi" would be too obvious, right?
what if you just put the campari in the cake itself instead of the pernod
Congratulations, w-lfs-n! You've solved the incompatible food triad problem!
It's pretty striking how low the brightness levels generally are on a properly calibrated monitor compared to how people generally set them.
Yup, I've always got my monitor on the brightest possible setting. Any advice? It just seems to look better that way, with those bright whites.
ttaM also doesn't think you should put sugar on oatmeal, or use pepper and other spices alien to Scotland. Sugar, spice, and bright monitors rouse carnal desires.
Blume, you'd better make sure Teo isn't curled up on your doorstep. It's kind of cold out there.
re: 82
If you have Adobe Gamma [comes with Photoshop] you can run that as a simple monitor calibration program.
Or you can look at something like this:
http://www.photofriday.com/calibrate.php
The tones in the boxes should be barely visible against the background. Also, all of the tone patches in the top bar should be distinct. Monitors that are set too brightly usually blur together the right-hand couple.
Most people go for whites that are way too bright and usually the 'wrong' colour temperature, i.e. a colour temperature with a much 'colder' tone than daylight. 6500K is better than 9000K.
However, if you're not doing colour work and just want the monitor to look nice to you, set it any way you like. Since I do need colour accuracy my monitors are regularly calibrated with hardware calibration kit.
re: 83
Sugar on oatmeal is fine. I'm not a purist. I don't tend to use sugar when cooking it, but a light dusting of brown sugar when it's ready to eat is good.
85: Sugar on oatmeal is fine. I'm not a purist. I don't tend to use sugar when cooking it, but a light dusting of brown sugar when it's ready to eat is good. permissible.
84: My sister the drug-alcohol counselor knew of a woman who finally refused to let her drunken, abusive boyfriend into the house. It was in the middle of the winter here in Minnesota and he curled up on her steps and froze to death.
he curled up on her steps and froze to death.
It's nice to be reminded there's still justice in the world.
Oops. That was me. That's what I get for deleting my cookies.
Re 87, 88. You know what would have been a real hoot? If he had dived into a shallow swimming pool and been paralyzed from the neck down!
I freely admit that bad things happening to bad people warms my heart.
Anyhow, people freezing to death is just funny. Hey, popsicle dude, chill out! Ahahahoohaha!
Mary of the Wild Moor is like, the funniest song ever.
Mary of the Wild Moor is like, the funniest song ever.
You want funny? You gotta check out this Jack London story called To Build a Fire
My sides ached!
Is that the same story mentioned here recently? By LB, maybe?
OK, how about my brother's grandfather-in-law who froze off all his fingers drunk. His wife's response: "It's your own damn fault". The ending was amazingly happy one. I met him a couple of times and he was remarkably jolly. At age 70 or so he visited NYC and spent a whole day sitting on a bench and watching people walk by. More in 20 minutes than he's see in Pekin, N.D. in a year.
To my knowledge, there's no afterlife where justice is handed out, so bad people taking themselves out of this world is something to enjoy. I'd like to see a lot more of it.
Is that the same story mentioned here recently? By LB, maybe?
I don't know. There's a detailed plot summary in the link. Try to contain your laughter.
My favorite bit is when the dog gives up on him.
My favorite bit is when the dog gives up on him.
Jack likes to take out the people who are mean to dogs, i.e. having those city people fall through the ice after Thornton takes Buck from them.
Or the story with the French-Canadian guy who's mean to his savage dog, and then some people who think he's committed a murder tie him up and leave him alone with the dog, and the dog kills him. Really, as between most people and most dogs, London's rooting for the dog.
Wallace Stegner wrote a story called "The Wolfer" about a frontier loner who made his living killing wolves. His only companion was his wolfhound, which he inadvertently kills. I can't remember any more detail, but the Jack London flavor is strong
"The Wolfer", Harpers' subscribers only
Then there's a guy who died and quit feeding the dogs locked up in the house with him. After a few days they started eating him.
Or maybe it was ferrets. Sometimes I tell the story that way.
Or the story with the French-Canadian guy
I'd forgotten that one. It's high time I read London again.
Tommy Chong has some good French-Canadian stories too.
Tommy Chong has some good French-Canadian stories too
Please tell me he has a fat stoner friend they call "Lardon Fumé"
jake, I know the thread's long past this but --- re: 25, I didn't know about google adding that system, interesting. The third point pretty much holds though; I didn't mean that there are no cases of people asking for material to be pulled down, just that there is a huge amount of maybe infringing material (some of it is fair use) on there that nobody has made a peep about .... yet. I'm sure this is largely because they aren't sure what's best to do with it.
I'll show you, KR. I'll make that cake and it'll be delicious.
"To Build A Fire" gave me nightmares as a child.
Heh. You want disturbing, try "Love of Life". I didn't get nightmares, but I did read it over and over again obsessively, getting more and more freaked out by it.
"Moon-face" is a twisted Jack London dog story.