notes.husk.org

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?

Flickr Catchup: A Technique

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:12:00 +0100

I’ve been on holiday for a fortnight, so I haven’t had a chance to check Flickr. How to catch up?

Well, the search box on the “photos from your contacts” page has a handy filter: “from your contacts”. Put in space, press return, and you get… an error. Then go to advanced search, change “date taken” to “posted”, and put in the date you went on holiday, and you’ll end up at a page like this.

(Note the date in the URL; you can change that if you want to skip the navigation outlined above.)

That’s sorted by “interestingness”, so you’d hope the better / more noticed photos would come to the top. If you’re more egalitarian, you could always go for “recent”, and then start at the end of the list and work forward.

If I was away from a computer more often, I might use the API to turn this into a service, but I’m not, so I won’t. Also, as I’ve noted before, it’s a shame more sites don’t offer filtered search to your contacts. I kept up with Twitter pretty well, but I have no idea what I’ve missed on delicious, for example. Hurrah, then, for Flickr.

Facebook vs Flickr

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:31:00 +0100

A crude rule of thumb: Facebook is for photos of people. Flickr is for photography.