Police clashed with protesters in Athens as Greek unions held demonstrations over austerity measures being applied as the government struggles to avoid a catastrophic default. Across Greece public transport was paralysed, flights cancelled, schools and courts closed, and hospitals operated only an emergency service.

Emphasis mine – click the image to see the text in full detail.

I have a few issues with this description.  First of all, this doesn’t look like a protester to me.  All that camera gear hanging off of her waist?  That’s quite a commitment, lugging it around.  Normal people don’t do that.  Amateur photographers don’t even do that.

But the professionals do that.

Seeing a police-type decking a photographer smacks of censorship.  What’s he hiding?  What is really going on? I won’t know from over here, but it sure makes it look like the government/police types aren’t the good guys.

Does anyone out there know the background behind this pic? I’m curious: who is the photographer, why is she being attacked, and what was the outcome?

This doesn't look like a protester to me

Interaction is probably the largest bit. It’s easy to follow other photo producers. But leave a comment, and it’s nearly impossible to track replies to your comments. It’s fine for building a following, or a list of followers. It’s a failure for building interpersonal ties. That’s unforgiveable in the age of social media, I think.

But it’s solveable. I suppose there are third-party apps that could help, or other workarounds. Flickr could (god forbid) do some actual development of their own site. Shoot, even Facebook rolled out a bunch of features recently. If they could shift quickly, surely Flickr could?

But if Flickr were to try to adapt, I fear their lack of attention to detail would kill them. It’s a hard thing to define – why are Google’s, 500px, and others’ sites so much easier to use? Why do bugs still exist in Flickr’s interface?

The experience on other sites isn’t perfect. But Flickr – shoot, I can’t click on images in the web app. My Android phone won’t position the lightbox-enabled photo properly. That’s a pretty important piece, don’t you think?

My own comment, citing 35mm was just an off-the-cuff response. Thinking about it now, I realize I’m wrong. You know what I use when I’m doing “street” photography?

Whatever I have in my hands.

Really, that’s it. If I have my G11, then I shoot with that – and make medium-wide to medium telephoto shots. If it’s my LX3, then I know I’m doing wide (20mm) to standard (50mm) shots. My cellphone: wide, and probably through a filter of some sort. The SLR? Whichever lens is attached (usually the 18-200).

There are no rules, just limitations based on the gear.

However, my own initial response interests me a little bit. I was really thinking about the simplicity and ease-of-use that comes with using a rangefinder.  In the old days, street photogs would set their f/stop to where they needed it, find an appropriate shutter speed, and pre-focus for optimal resolution – essentially anything that would get their hyperfocal distance set & give optimal sharpness.

When I’m going out deliberately to shoot on the streets, this is my favorite technique.  Not the most optimal, not the one with the best results or best creativity.  It’s just the most fun. Shoot, I still do it with film on fully-manual cameras! In fact, I’m still using the Graflex 35 and the Nikonos 2 – how’s that for old school?

So as a slightly different twist on Trond’s question: what is your favorite approach, or perhaps technique in the sense written here?

City Hall

I’m not sure what to make of this. It certainly changes much of the perception of its value, at least to me. From what I understand, direct links work . But if you try to browse through someone’s posts, it stops after 23 pages or so.

This is rational to me from a programming standpoint. But from a user standpoint, this is pretty bad. Not a deal-breaker, but certainly means that I can’t give up on the blog just yet…

Take this image, for example (screenshot with surrounding text):

Screenshot of Pictory blog

This came from one of Pictory’s recent blog posts (here, specifically). On its own, the image doesn’t mean much to me. An older lady spending some time with a hobby, perhaps. Some focused light and nice, deep shadows. But with the text, it turns into a human story, and gives a new meaning: in this case, it screams of loneliness and abandonment.

It’s quite a sad image. Yet there is an uplifting message, that you make your own happiness.

This would be lost without the text.

In your situation, would you have done anything different?

• Thomas Hawk doesn’t exist.  He’s really Andrew Petersen, a San-Francisco-based stockbroker (direct link).
• The overall consensus of Hawk isn’t terribly positive.  Similar to my own. I do find it interesting that people criticize his work, when in my mind it is very much subjective.
• A link (from here) to the most important page on Flickr. Yes indeed: the contacts page is indeed quite a mess. This ties in to my complaints about comments.
• There is a definite feeling that Yahoo has killed Flickr.  Flickr, after their previous layoffs, has definitely lost their key supporters.
• There is a feeling that the quality of photographers has dropped.  I believe they are heading for 500px and similar sites, where they are taken more seriously.
• I get a feeling that Flickr has become a commodity to Yahoo.  They are turning into the Budweiser of photo-sharing sites.
• There are multiple complaints from people that their comments/contacts have dropped off.  I have noticed the same.

Coming at this from a different angle: I’ve finally put my finger on what it is that frustrates me about Flickr, yet excites me about Google+. It’s the interaction.

On Flickr, you can comment. But it’s hard to follow a thread of conversation – you get lost in the noise, as it were. You can follow comments on your photos, but you lose yourself on other peoples’ threads.

G+ really doesn’t have that problem. Not yet, at least. Since there aren’t thousands of annoying banners, invites, etc., you don’t lose track of the conversation.

So for me, that’s really it. Flickr still has its place, but barely. Google+ is more appropriate (for now) for connecting with like-minded people.

I’m not shilling for them, mind you. This is just my opionion: there’s no better publication for B&W art-style photography. Even if the photographs inside aren’t to my taste, I’ll happily say: at least the layout is dependable and you’re not constantly crushed by ads (all advertisements are in the beginning & end of each issue, but not between pages like a typical magazine).

I’m only mentioning this because I’m having a hard time focusing on content in magazines these days. In fact, I’m dumping my Professional Photographer and American Photo subscriptions altogether, and just skimming all others.

Here’s the problem: I’ll start reading an article, then I get interrupted. I have to skip a page where some loud advertisement is telling me that their shiny tool will make my life better. What was I reading? Oh yeah, skip a page. Read a bit more. Get distracted by sidebars, the smaller ads, ads on the opposite page, etc. Find a “article ends on page whatever” & skip to the end. Search through two or three endings to articles, find mine. What was I reading again?

The disconnects in the middle of reading are killing me.

I suppose this is how they’re doing things – and I suppose this is what they’re used to getting away with. But in the internet age, I don’t have to wade through that mess to get content, so I’m opting out.

But I do like the style of the work and wonder: how would this look if applied to the typical person in the US?

On the road to Denali

I kinda liked it at the time – especially the wisp of cloud and the lower clouds on “normal” sized mountains (by some standards). I’m not so sure now, though. I can see how the HDR effect did pull in a great deal of detail in the foreground & effectively salvaged that, but the sky… It hurts to look at it now.

It’s strange in this case – I never noticed the gradation of the blues in the large size. Looked totally normal. If this were blown up to 16″x20″, it might be fine. But in smaller, web-presentation sizes… well, it’s painful.

So yes, the more I look at it, the less I like it. I think that most people have the same reaction – it’s easily the most viewed photograph of the last month by Flickr standards.