stellargirl returns

photography and creative ownership

I've been taking photos for as long as I can remember. I started taking classes in the Fall of 1996 during my sophomore year of college. I spent the next three years avoiding sunlight by spending long hours in the darkroom soaking my fingers full of chemicals. I never once dreaded a critique, I was always totally amped about it, prepping for weeks, and ready to talk it out. I couldn't wait until it was my turn to be in the hot seat.

During those years, I was inspired by many photographers like Mary Ellen Mark, Sally Mann, Diane Arbus and plenty of others. I was always drawn to the photographers that studied people, either people they just met, or lengthy studies of a family or community. Artists like these inspired me to embrace my niche: candid portraiture.

Through photography class, I made the greatest of friends, learned how to analyze images, find inspiration, study people, talk about my work. Photography is even the reason why I work in web. I taught myself html so I could share my photos with my friends and family. I would spend hours scanning my negatives and making little online galleries. I couldn't get enough of it.

Now I'm lucky to use a tool like flickr to share my photos with the whole world. And I'm even luckier to be a part of a huge community of friends, both old and new, that I can study, share, tag, etc. I love that I can type in a friend's name and all of my photos from 2005 on will show up. I love that after there's a big party or social event, people know to check my flickr page. I love the recent activity emails I get for days after I post a large batch of images.

One thing I don't totally love, however, is when someone grabs one of my photos and uses it without giving proper credit. Addressing this comes as a result of it happening several times over the years. I've seen my photos on blogs and even in print without any attribution. Mostly I just shrug it off because I am not really into making a fuss over stuff like this. But after a while, I want people to understand, that everything that gets shot with my camera, no matter how shitty or amazing, is part of my body of work that I will spend the rest of my life creating. If anything, I want people to be aware of who I am, so that they know where to find me, and can see what I've been up to.

I still entertain the idea of pursuing photography on a more professional level one day. Right now I feel very hampered by my lack of decent equipment, and I am trying to work on that. In the meanwhile, I'm happy to see my photos out and about in the world. I just hope that in fine print I will see either a link to my flickr page or my blog, or simply my name, Roz Duffy.

Thanks for reading.

hi to you

One of the many fun things about flickr is being greeted "hi" in a random language each time you sign in.  Up until today, I tried to guess which language, but it looks like they have started labeling the origin of each greeting.  I am particularly fond of the greeting below because as much of a watered down mutt that I am, I'm more Hungarian than anything else.  Can't say that I have been to the mother land, or the father land for that matter (Ireland), but I'd like to know how to say Hi! if I ever get there. Szia!

what the flickr: part deux

Flickr To Abandon Early Adopters (courtesy of Slashdot).  It really does feel kinda stinky for us early adopters.  I know it's just a simple login that I can auto-save in my Firefox preferences, but why!!  Flickr is (was?) the embodiment of cool, groundbreaking new technology and interface: clean, simple, useful and practical.  Why did you have to go and get all Yahoo! on us? 

what the flickr?

Waaaah! I have noticed each subsequent time that I have had to log into flickr, finding my "old skool" login area has become even more challenging since Yahoo! has taken over.  In fact, it looks something like this:

Pssst?  What's the big secret?  Oh yeah, I got it now -- in fact, it came in an email from flickr the other night:

On March 15th we'll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system.  From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.

I guess it's not really a big deal because I do have a yahoo id, but you see, I associate this id with where I send all of my junkmail, where I sometimes test out things, and where I reluctantly have to incorporate myself into a yahoo! group that I was invited to -- in which case, I make sure to use an alternate email.  Let's face it, I am not only addicted to my domain name, but I am a google-ite and a gmailer (note: I can still be a stellargirl on google).  I also consider myself a flickrer, and will continue to do so,  but I am feeling a little annoyed that I now have to associate my account with my junkmail account!

Am I crazy?  You tell me.

noticing the obvious

There are a few web applications that I interact with on a regular basis, such as Pandora and Flickr.  This week, I have made a new discovery on each site.

Pandora: Playing Bookmarked Songs
I've been challenging myself to bookmark more songs on my Pandora profile. And I don't know why it didn't occur to me before, but you can hear a sample of each song by clicking the play icon to the left of each song name.  I had it in my head that because of so many licensing issues, you can't listen to songs "on demand." Mind you, these aren't full songs, but they do give you a solid taste of what the music sounds like.  If I do bookmark a song, it's often because it stands out in the playlist, and this is a good way to revisit these songs and share them with others.

Flickr: Archives
Recently I was looking for some photos I had taken at a certain point last year.  I took a glance at my sets page to see if I could find it that way, but this particular series was not in a set.  I started clicking through each page, manually increasing the page number in the url so that I could jump back a month or so further (I know, crazy).  For some, it might be blaringly obvious to notice that Flickr contains an Archives option in the navigation.  I, however, did not ever really pay attention to it, until the other day when a friend posted her photos online via a specific archives link.  For example, here are all the photos I took in 2005.  Now, here is a detailed view of all of the photos I took in September 2005.  Here is a list view, and my personal favorite: the calendar view!  I realllllly love the calendar view.

So, just a few fun discoveries to notice and explore.  People interact with applications and software in different ways and with different purpose, so from time to time, I like to call out the things that improve my experience in hopes that others may also benefit.

the tagging project

I've just surpassed the 2,000 photos mark on flickr and I've been thinking that I'd like to go back and tag the crap out of my photos, or else do it a lot more going forward.  I am curious what other people's logic is when tagging or labeling their photos? In the very beginning, I would rename my photos to describe the content. Then I moved on to leaving the default image name as the title and captioning the photo and including details in the tags.  Most of my tags have been people's names since the bulk of my photos are people I know, so I am not exactly adding to the search capabilities or "interesting" factor of flickr. I am working on changing that.

Meanwhile, I'm exploring category creation in Typepad (essentially tags, right?)  Recent additions include pandora and flickr of course!  Typepad + flickr suggestion - how about a flickr tag cloud plugin?  I bet there is one already.  I know everything is basically out there, you just need to google it.

flickr GAMMA

looks like flickr is no longer beta, but gamma! yay!  i noticed it immediately today... i saw a lot more photos on my flickr page than i normally do and other neat little upgrades here and there.  i love seeing web apps (NERD alert) that i use a lot get refined into more logical and fun pieces of software. 

i was in nyc this weekend and took a bazillion pictures as usual... i got to see a lot of really old and very special friends from many different places and times of my life.  check out this set taken at my friend jenn's dinner party on saturday night. nothing like hanging out with girls like this to get your head on straight.

if you don't already have an account on flickr, you better get YOUR head on straight.