Interface Holiday

I am off to New Zealand in a couple of hours. I have a new 28 - 135 mm lens to play with on the trip.

Back on the 9th with some new images.

A New Angle

With my favourite lens away for repair, I have been using the 20mm wide angle lens more often. I like the effect a wide angle gives to a lot of images. And, regardless of you good a telephoto lens is, there is just something about the sharpness and crispness of a prime lens.

However, a wide angle can't be used in all circumstances, so, while I have re-discovered wide-angle photography, there is a lot of work I want to do that is just going to have to wait.

Not a lot happening...

My photography is curtailed at the moment. My favourite lens, the one I use most of the time, is in at Camera Clinic for repair. Unfortunately there has been some difficulty getting the correct part to fix it. Camera Clinic have been very good at keeping me informed of progress, but they are still waiting on Canon to deliver a part.

In the meantime, I am using a 20mm wide angle and a 70 - 200mm L series zoom. This combination doesn't work in all circumstances.

To complicate the issue, we are off to New Zealand for a walking tour on the 31st of March and I don't know if I am going to have a lens to take with me.

I am spending my time learning a bit more about Photoshop and trying out different types of images on Flickr.

My Friend Flickr

It has been a while since I posted. During that time I was kept busy learning how to drive Flickr. It took a little while to upload enough photographs for my account to be approved as suitable and made public. I also read up on the benefits of posting groups and contacts and indicating photographs are ‘favorites’. I read an article by Thomas Hawk on how to become known on Flickr. By the time my photostream was public I was all set to go.

I posted some images in a couple of groups. I searched for and found some images that I liked. I marked them as favourites and made some nice comments about them. And those photographers returned the compliment and looked at my photos and made some nice comments.

It continued in this fashion for a few days and I was enjoying it, and then…

I added the Canola Fields image on February 28th. By that time I had a small group of people who were regularly looking at my work. I also added the image to the Australia Photographers pool and the Landscape and Nature pool.

People started looking at the image and commenting. I got invited to add it to several ‘by invitation only’ groups. One of those had several levels of membership, based on how many group members liked it. I eventually hit the highest level in that group.

As the day progressed the number of views and comments and awards grew. Each day the Flicker people record and display the top 500 images on the Explore page. During the day, I got a mail from a new contact saying it had just gone into the top 20 for the day. As that Flickr averages 20,000 image submissions per minute, I have been told, that ain’t bad.

Canola Fields briefly made it to the main image on the Explore page and finished the day at number 43. It currently has 1226 views, 73 comments and 111 people have marked it as a favourite. Last time I looked it was still in the top 50 for that day. It is still getting the occasional comment.

Those few days were addictive. I had trouble walking away from the computer because I wanted to see if there had been any new views, any new comments. Had more people selected it as a favourite?

I can see how people get attracted to playing the Flickr interestingness (as they call it) game; looking for fame and attention. It doesn’t necessarily mean it is a great photograph, just that a number of people who like that type of image have seen it.

There are a lot of very good, very knowledgeable photographers on Flickr. In fact the display of talent is awe inspiring and humbling. There are also a lot of very generous, charming folks. There are also overwhelming numbers of amateurs, wannabees, people posting their holiday snaps for Auntie Emma and just plain wankers.

Conclusion? Flickr will be the way forward for me, so I will shut down the photoblog. But I don’t want to find myself taking and uploading photos purely to gain Flickr brownie points and therefore feature in Explore. I will be trying to concentrate on improving my images and will be attempting to contact and work with other serious photographers. That’s the plan. Stay tuned.

Visit me on Flickr

Hyphen Abuse

While reading today’s Geelong Advertiser (online), I came across an odd sentence:

“Four cranes were called in to clear the right-hand lane of the steel barriers and to stand them back-up right.”

Two hyphens in the one sentence, in a provincial paper? My theory of writing (and I don’t think it is original) is that the purpose of a sentence is to convey meaning and information, and to communicate. So what on earth is that second hyphen communicating?

The word ‘up’ clearly belongs to the word ‘right’. The crane stood the barrier up right (or even upright, which is a perfectly good word). So why has the word ‘up’ been connected to the word ‘back’ with a hyphen?

What meaning was the writer trying to convey? Or does someone just not have a clue what a hyphen is for?

And furthermore…

I am not crazy about that “right-hand” either. There is no real reason for the word ‘hand’ to be appended. Using “right lane” is quite sufficient.