Flickr Tip: Delving For Good Photos

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 21:01:00 +0000

It’s already the time of year when people look back and try and pick out the best of the year. If you’re inclined to do that with the photos you’ve posted to Flickr, here’s a good way.

The search function has three key features that make this work. Firstly, the “interestingness” (a somewhat arbitrary, but still useful, measure of how, well, interesting a photo is) is available as a criteria for sorting. Secondly, there are ways to filter by time (either by date taken, or by date uploaded). Thirdly, you can limit photos to your own photostream.

Putting that all together gives you a this URL: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=&m=text&s=int&d=taken-20100101-20101231&w=me

The arguments, from right to left, make it search through all photos (that’s the q=, an empty query), in text mode (as opposed to tag mode), searching by interestingess, taken between the dates specified, and limited only to photos by “me” (which magically maps to the logged in user). If you’re tempted to find a best photo from those you’ve uploaded this year, why not use that as a starting point?

Another image from the Reuters best of the year. “The natural...

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 02:00:35 +0000

Another image from the Reuters best of the year.

“The natural phenomenon called the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) happened to show up on a clear night when I was taking photographs of the [Eyjafjallajokull] volcano the evening before I left to return to New York. During this assignment some of the more interesting images of the volcano had come at night when I had the ability to take long exposures and get the glow of the lava in the camera. Out of the week I was there, only about 3 or 4 evenings were clear enough to see the mountain at night. This was the last evening and as the ash plume was very high I was excited to take images of the glow of the lava against the ash cloud. The Northern Lights showed up around midnight and only stayed for maybe 30-40 minutes before disappearing. It was extremely exciting to see them and even more exciting to know I was in a position to photograph them. I knew the story had begun to die down but these images would renew a bit of interest in it for another day or so. It’s a rare time when preparation meets the occurrence of something as beautiful as this so it was easily a once in a lifetime experience that I enjoyed.” Canon 5D Mark II, lens 16-35mm (at 16mm), f2.8, 6 s. Photograph: Lucas Jackson.

notes.husk.org

Flickr Tip: Delving For Good Photos

Another image from the Reuters best of the year. “The natural...