Comfortably Numb

Yellow Orchid II

A photo posted by norm hanson (@apimageo) on Aug 19, 2016 at 4:56pm PDT

 

The Pink Floyd song (my I am showing my age) comfortably numb (I prefer the Van Morison cover) contains the lyrics

There is no pain, you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain, you would not understand
This is not how I am
I have become comfortably numb

This nicely summaries how I feel about uploading to on-line services, on the go. Once upon a time I thought I had it figured out but that is now just a smudge on the horizon. On my recent trip I totally lost confidence in google (and using picasa to upload to google “Private” photo albums, By the way, If you share a photo or photo album on google it is no longer private, just the weird address will be hard to guess). The waves of change are confusing and too often surreal like someone talking but no sound a kind of metaphysical painting in a very still piazza. I can feel/see something happening but it is hard to comprehend and where it is going. Thus I am shrinking back on the number of ways and places I try to share my work. DropBox for private shares, Flickr & Instagram for public shares with the occasional Tumblr. I am well over the pain of change and things not working or being deprecated, I just want to be Comfortably Numb.

http://myscratchings.tumblr.com/post/149207230105/test-2

 

PS All three versions of these flowers where processed on and posted from my phone.

Back on-line blues

Perhaps I was premature in blaming all my frustration on poor band width. I have been using microsoft's live writer to prepare blog post for a long time now. it not only allows you time to dveleop, reflect on and refine a post it gives you tools to create a much better layout, particularly when including images. Well I can now see that the weird error message I was getting was not a poor connection but I more serious compatibility issues. So far I have not figured out what it is but clearly live writer and blogger are no longer talking to each other.

In between posting my last post at near midnight in the Singapore Airlines Lounge and arriving back in Melbourne the next morning my on-line photos had "appeared" to move from google+ photo to just google photo. Whilst I investigated this in so detail and collated an offline post. I can't post it!!

So I can still post to blogger via the web interfaces? Yes! but now the duplicate posts as google google+ comments are back.

Not only that my phone has been busy for hours downloading updates to most of the google services I use. I'm back in the land of good access, reasonable band width and I'm pretty much being locked out of the tools I normally use. What are you doing to me google?

All apparently as punishment for happily being off-line for a few days (ok I am kidding)

Surviving in the Low Band Width and occasional free WiFi

A pleasant evening in Bandung

Its been almost two decades since I’ve been to this part of Indonesia. Back them I took slides and had to wait till I returned home before I could send then in for development and another week or so till it got back. Now with a digital camera the expectation is to have an image instantly and transmit it globally instantly.  Its not quiet like that what was once a beautiful mountainous area with clean air free from the tropical closeness of the coast is now constantly hazy and the traffic becoming very Jakarta like. Its still a very interesting place BUT internet connections are somewhat hard to fins and the occasional Free WiFi is overcrowded and so slow. Seems eveyone has a smart phone these days in Indonesia, and very few if any have apple logos) , You could also pay exorbitant rate for international roaming but the speed won't be much better.

The solution is simple go back to the old way be patient, dont try and post (or at least wait till you get to the Singapore lounge and good free WiFi.')


This has prompted me to rethink about the fact that some many of the trends in tools for digital photographers are on-line, or as the first step an upload. (Google’s Autobackup and the Flickr’s Uploadr have been going frantic in the low band width. Dropbox has released it should just wait.) I’m quiet happy doing it the old fashion way, but I do carry a laptop that can be my place to upload and edit photos, Trying to access those on-line tools and subsription system are just a real hindrance, I'd rather spend my time wandering around on a pleasant evening.

Is Google+ the Kragle?

I’ve made a lot about all the many mistresses (software applications) managing my photos on my computers, but that number pales into insignificance against all the potential software available on the net and/or via smartphone or tablet apps. There are just way too many. So I will tell you of just a few.

Flickr & Photobucket, both are well established services that began in the time before the social media thing exploded and they offer fairly similar features. They are primarily place to share photos on line, and the have features to suit groups and communities for those with similar interests . They have grown and now offer many other facilities such as on-line editing, book printing, slide shows, its a long list. I like them both but haven’t been using them much at all, Possibly I’ve become too obsessed with trying to understand what's happening with the next mistress google+ photo.

I do still feel I was railroaded into google+, from gmail & youtube but mainly from Picasa,the web side view of which is now google+ photos. There are certainly a lot of “features” and I only use a few but the auto-backup and notifications are driving me crazy. There have been a few nice surprises, some of the HDR images have been fine and I working hard on being a member of a communities. While google+ photo does give access to a larger and growing community of photographers its really only on her terms. They are not well explained, kind of just take it or leave it.  The on-line google+ photos edit features are pretty good, and certainly cover most basic needs. The picasa web style albums are still fine but auto-backup is creating a really big conglomerated mess (if you can't remember the date taken good luck finding your photos!). The highlights (seem to overlook too many good photos) the stories are not worth mentioning and the “gifts” aren’t in my view autoawesome at all. They are more like the second rule of lord business,"Never listen to anyone else's ideas, yours are the best", in the lego movie. Perhaps google+ is really the kragle to make things social web permanently the way the google-verse wants? 

I am taking steps to get less involved, only letting her backup from a specific directory, returning to picasa as my preferred method of sharing, reducing the number of people in my circles and turning off notification (with  the exception of  ThePatch Community)

The last on-line mistresses I want to discussed, she is actually more like a butler, she is DropBox. The service that provides easy file transfer between computers and across the web. Unlike the other services above her photographic credentials are pretty simple (Ok I haven’t tested carousel, because my android phone is still running an old version, however most android apps have no trouble sharing with her, ie DropBox) She can be instructed to atomically upload any photos from you phone (or tablet) when she detects a WiFi signal. She can also manage a small part of your file system on your computer onto which any new files will get synchronise. So one minute a photo is on your phone the next it can easily be accessed from any computer you have connected and synched. If you want you can set up little albums (virtual  organizations of these photos) still within the drop box synch area (and synched across all devices). It is also easy to share with one (via email) or many (email and conventional HTML links). I do appreciate DropBox.

Google+ Stories, yet another “leave it to us” offering.

I noticed yet another autoawesome style offering from from google called Stories, which seemed perfect to add into my week of autoawesomeness. It is basically a on-line slide show that has been automatically prepared by yet another google algorithm to automatically select your best shots and is being prompted as a tool to  “brings out the richness of the memories behind the photos” and present them as “beautiful, interactive stories so you can relive your adventures”. Ok thats the hype, what actually happens? Well it does choose your adventures for you. At the moment you can not create your own from scratch! For me this is a very puzzling omission. You can however “tweak” the slideshow by adding or removing photos or videos and can change the cover photo. Thats about it!

 

The stories are supposedly about your “memorable” travelogues and it would appear these stories are triggered by either locations (geotags) information embedded in your photos or by landmark detection tools shifting through your images (and possibly including having your home address already known, eg. typed into google maps). Perhaps I am not the only one just a little concerned about who or what knows I’m not at home and when. 

This is an interesting in the context of a recent program titled “Digital photography: message and memory” on the ABC Radio National’s Series Future Trends. Which presents a different view, the rush to photograph every moment may be leading to us remember less and less. 

So should we leave our memories to google+ to manage?

Not sure I want that, and I worry many will not even realise their real memories have gone and been replaced by something else.

I guess the one redeeming feature is google+ stories (and movies) are private until you share them.

How many is too many?

This post on “Are There too Many Visual Artists Online?” by artpromotivate, touches on a few key issues that has been bugging me.  Flickr, Instagram & google+ are pumping out masses of imagery, …but

• How much of it is really art?
• Are there even enough collectors and collections to sustain the apparent explosion in artists and photographers?

The first key issues is that an image on the net is usually not the art work. So many think that once they see a small image on their screen they have seen the art. However this is not true the original art work has a physicality, that relates the scale it is produces and how its surface reacts in different lighting and position. A blown up photo hanging on a gallery wall will look quiet different to its reproduction on the net, no matter how much colour calibration has been done. I expect the true art and photography collectors and curators know this already and they are carefully about purchasing off the net. In other words physical art and brick and mortar galleries still have a place.

The second key issue is the decline of originality, this is really a personal view. The social web and the “look at me” celebrity obsessions are actually producing and facilitating an explosion of imitators, ok copy cats, and a lot of plagiarist (they just steal and  repost your work as their own). What was once original suddenly floods the bandwidth with lesser but superficially much the same works and boredom takes over. The general lack of attributions means that it is pretty much impossible to find the creative individual behind the avalanche of imitators. For a collector this is a real buyer beware situation. If you are a creative and have something really unique, but easily cloned, it might not be a place you want to set your work free within.

The final issue is simple exposure. Yes posting your art on the net can potentially get it seen by a much wider audience, even an international one. So go and join the online throng but remember the real buyers might be wary, and still prefer physical exhibitions and galleries. There is a real potential to have your creations copied into oblivion. Staying original and creative may be easier if you don’t join the crowd and support your local gallery.

My Art In the Clouds

An on-line “cloud” gallery for just my art (& photographic) works has been a sub-project of mine for a long time. Many social web services promised such things or even greater wonders but none seem to deliver what I wanted. I wasted a lot of time on the likes of Redbubble, Google+ pages, Adobe’s creative cloud and Behance, but you are supposed to learn by your mistakes they say. So I have created one of my own. Its pretty simple. It contains just my recent works available for sale or rental.

It doesn't have any built in web store features like a shopping cart but you are welcome to email me directly. More details in the cloud gallery itself.

Looking Back … …

Last year was a big year for digital photography, not so much an obvious big fanfare, most of the changes were small incremental adjustments. Three things that have been around for a while but have come into popular view last year.

1. First there is the death of the “mine is bigger than yours” paradigm.Hardware, gear envy and megapixel concerns should be a thing of the distant past. Most camera, from smartphones, point and shoot, through mirror less to the big DSLR are all pretty good. The camera you have is probably the best one to use right now. Go take lots of photos rather than worry about new camera hardware.  The obvious camera for you, will make itself obvious when you get to about 10,000 photos. It may well be the one you already have.
2. On-line storage, This has seen some strong competition with really large amounts of disk space offered for free, most are connected with social network style groups of services. Flickr, Google+ are two I am familiar with, and I have tried out a few like Everpix (now defunked), Photofeed (I’m still persevering) and Picturelife (given up with its slowness). but honestly I have been underwhelmed and I still use the dropbox facility which has been around for a while now. This just synchs my phones via available WiFi, if and when it is available to a place both on the net and on my harddrive. Sending all your images to “free storage” on the net has a dark side it will use up a lot of your precious bandwidth (and from a smart phone that could become expensive) and if you are not careful this may expose more than you might want to the world. That 10,000 photos equal 1.6 terra bytes if they are RAW 16 megapixels images, that might be several months of your bandwidth!
3. Photo Filters and Photo Apps, the zannier the better! This unfortunately is not a good trend in my view, because they get overused and instead of creating something new and exciting, they are just really boring, after you’ve seen the same effect for the third image in a row. It could have been a great trend but it really requires some user constraint and a lot less “copycat”,”look at me”, fashionista social media self promotion. Perhaps I am being a bit judgemental?

What is the web of images coming to? …15,000 likes!

Pixable, is a great idea, it is a kind of photo inbox. The idea being you can tame that stream of incoming images, from facebook, and other social connections. It does this by organising them into categories and giving you a kind of personal gossip mag, which can give you, recent mobile uploads, most popular photo of the day week or month, based on likes comments etc. there are apps for you phone to keep you instantly connected. Ok that’s the theory & claims BUT sadly it is the personification of why social media is really just so bad for creativity. Pixable is already bloated and loaded down with the same old “me too” celebrity glitter and same over-filtered look alike images, Looking at what offer people are looking at is quickly very banal and so disappointing, everything soon looks the SAME, it is not only pixable that suffers here, relook at pintrest, instagram and even google+ and you will quickly discover what I mean.

Crowd sourced art and images dosen’t bring the creative to the light, they follow very narrow fashions and that fashion is not edgy, it is really really bland.  Andy Warhol recognized this when he when he suggested everyone will have 15 minutes of fame, alas that ephemeral light has now transformed into a modern trend where every iphone and ipads must see a copy of the 15,000 likes of an embarrassing photo of a celebrity, or wannabe copying of someone’s else’s creation.

BOOKED OUT

BOOKED OUT, originally uploaded by imageo.

I was going to share this invite on this blog but the course is already booked out. Sorry about that!

Don't despair there is plenty of on-line help both within flickr and externally to get you started.

Flickr was actually one of the earliest Web 2.0 social services. Sure there are a multiplicity of other sites serving up photo hosting place now but flickr has evolved into something much more than just a photo publishing place. With an actve community still finding creative & interesting ways to interact.