I suppose I'm not the only one in the world who makes a connection between music and photography, but I've recently become aware that there is for me at least a very strong correlation.

This is particularly evident in my interactions with Flickr, which are approaching addict level. For example, recently, a virtual friend of mine on Flickr posted this rather attention grabbing image...

Predator ...
Originally uploaded by Yubi4. Now, Yubi4 clearly sees spiders in a somewhat different light to me. It's not that I'm terrified of them, or that I don't find them interesting, but I don't exactly find them attractive. However, thinking of a completely different perspective on spiders made me recall the lyrics to Brian Eno's "Spider & I", which I instantly posted as a comment. I doubt that Eno had any intention for these lyrics to be taken as anything other than sound, but then again, they are rather poetic (and he's far more of a romantic than he is ever given credit for - imho). Anyway, "Spider & I" was on a record called "Before and After Science", and this worked away in my background processing, until it retrieved the photo from my mental archives that fits the title - which I therefore posted: Associations creep in everywhere. A few weeks ago, a verse from the song Priest=Aura by the band The Church popped into my head, and I decided to illustrate it.

An enemy often = an adorer

...and Priest = Aura

I doubt that any of my visitors on Flickr had the faintest idea what I was going on about - or indeed cared ... or maybe, unbeknownst to me, there are whole groups dedicated to photos illustrating lyrics by Steve Kilbey. But anyway, I seem to be making these associations all the time. Since I'm currently in a phase where I'm listening to a set of old ELO songs, heavens what that will trigger....

I've just started to use a Nokia N73 (amongst others) for testing things at work, and I decided to try out the camera. I'm very impressed. The photo below (posted directly to Flickr using the Nokia's built-in software) was taken a few minutes ago in downtown Lugano... I don't think I've seen a camera phone that could cope with a backlit scene like this before. The detail and sharpness are pretty good, the colour balance may be a touch cool, and a smidgen magenta, but it isn't far off. The 3.2Mpix sensor (which must be minute) and the Carl Zeiss Tessar f2.8 lens seem to work pretty well. With this sort of progress, the demise of low end (at least) point & shoot cameras cannot be far off. Ok, so it hasn't got a viewfinder, and the shutter lag is sometimes (but not always) dreadful, but we're certainly getting there.

A book I'm currently reading (by Alain Briot) recommends an exercise where you create a set of photos, rate them yourself, and then ask other people to rate them. He says you should be prepared to be surprised by the results.


Well, although Briot intends that prints should be used, I have had an interesting experience on Flickr.. This photo, from Lake Lugano, I only really uploaded just because it was there. In my opinion, it is pretty weak. It is one taken over a period of one hour, on a very cold morning, from a location I've vsited before. I actually took a whole series, and this was one of the last. The earlier ones were, in my opinion, far better, but because I made the bloody stupid mistake of not checking the ISO, which was set at 3200, and was not even awake enough to realise why I was getting such relatively short exposure times, the first 45 minutes or so were a waste of time.

So this, I think, is one of my weakest photos on Flickr, as well as being the weakest from this area. And yet... it is so far, and by quite a wide margin, the most popular and highly rated photo in my photostream.

Even in terms of location, in my opinion, either of these, taken 3-5 years ago, are better.


Maybe I should not have posted the photo if I was not particularly happy with it. But then again, people like it! There must be a lesson in there somewhere....

Well, time of reflection and all that, so here is a bit of seasonal philosophising. In the last couple of weeks, I've been spending quite a lot of time on Flickr. Previously, I bought into the "old world", i.e pre-2005 Internet, that Flickr was just full of here-is-my-cat, here-is-me-unpacking-my-iMac, and hopeless holiday snapshots from the world of oblique horizons. Fueled by writings such as Mike Johnson's amusing parody, I, and I suspect others, felt a smug sense of superiority over these "newbies". Well, guess what:

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong

There is some utterly fantastic work on Flickr, and the scary thing is, it is almost infinite. It certainly seems that digital photography has opened the floodgates, and brought forth a flood of creativity. Flickr has spawned true media megastars, such as Iceland's Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir, but also countless other wonderfully creative artists. Here's just a few I've discovered, pretty much through random walks through comment trees: Helga Kvam - also from Iceland. Graham Foster, from Wales. James Vornov, from the USA. Whimsical Chris Hawkins, from the UK, or all over the world Agata, discovered through Chris, from the UK The list is basically endless. Every day, new people join, new people upload photos, and new discoveries are made. So what to make of all this creativity ? The urge to be recognised is a strong character trait, particularly evident in creative people. But in Flickr, you can drown in creativity. Nobody has time to recognize you. A few people, like _rebekka, will get huge recognition. It is difficult to avoid saying that the fact that she is female, attractive, and quite exotic does not do her any harm, but at the same time, she's hardly lacking in talent or originality. Compare her work, or that of countless others, with the self-styled "fine art photographers" who's pompous web sites proclaim their various unique visions. Are these "artists" better ? Nope. They're actually quite often dull, pretentious, very boring, and very irrelevant. Ok, so that's another gross generalisation, but to be honest, there are plenty of photos on Flickr I'd rather look at than the average "fine art portfolio". There is also a refreshing lack of gear addiction on Flickr, at least that I've noticed. You get the occasional "did you take that with you 20D" comment, which can probably be translated as "could you post a topless self-portrait please", but in general, the great leveler of (more or less) 800 x 600 pixels sure adds a touch of democracy to the proceedings. There is a real spirit of experimentation, of trying things out in public, which is infective. I've certainly published stuff on my Flickr photostream which I probably would not have published here. Flickr is endless and full of stars, and actually, it isn't even the only universe (although it probably works better than the rest). I feel very diminished in this company, probably at best a very, very dim flicker in a far off corner. But it really feels good to cut loose from the remaining aspirations to "fine art".

I recently put together a slideshow of my ancient Antartica archive. Since I needed to find something to put on YouTube, as an experiment, I decided to use this. I had to split it into two parts to meet YouTube's limitations, and obviously it isn't exactly HDTV... but whatever. Part 1 is here: Part 2 is here: Note, penguins ARE included.