The Peculiar World of Web Photo Sharing

theodp writes "Can't get enough pictures of dogs' noses? Circular objects framed within squares? Newsweek reports on photo-sharing sites and picture blogs, where amateur shutterbugs looking to share their passions with the world happily blast their photos out to millions of people. Fotolog CEO Adam Seifer, who posts a picture of every meal he eats on Get In My Belly!, calls the Fotolog-Flickr-HeyPix-Smugmug phenomenon 'a million reality TV shows, only without the pain and humiliation.'" Update: 03/14 07:09 GMT by T : Reader onethumb points out an important aspect of such sites: "The new breed of photo-sharing services expose their APIs for geeks everywhere to enjoy. Both Flickr and Smugmug have growing APIs with thriving communities around them. Write your own photo-sharing application, sister web service, or software toy today!" (Here's a link to Flicker's API, and one to smugmug's.)

Comments

Why are we interested in this sort of thing?

[SteelV]

I can't believe that 20,000 people visit Adam Seifer's site every week, just to see pictures of his meals. It's such a useless thing, and fotolog.net just has countless, random pictures. I know art is subjective, but I don't think they have that much subjective value.

I guess it's the same reason we like reality TV: we get to live vicariously. It's good entertainment. And stuff like that.

Personally, I waste enough of my own life eating meals (usually 3 square / day); I don't want to waste even more watching what others eat (or observing other mundane activities).

That's just me though.

Re:Why are we interested in this sort of thing?

[prichardson]

It's not about living vicariously, it's about validation.

'These people on this reality show are total incompetent assholes, I guess I'm not such a horrible person after all.'

'This guy eats take-out a lot, I guess it can't be all bad.'

'Look, this person isn't perfect, I guess it's ok not to be.'

The healthiness of these vary.

Re:Why are we interested in this sort of thing?

[tinrobot]

I recall a famous Japanese inventor who took pictures of all of his meals so he could understand how food affected his creativity. If he had a bad day, he could look back on his eating habits and make changes.

I would also think that if you were on a diet, snapping a pic of every meal might allow you to count calories or carbs or whatever it is you're counting.

Re:Why are we interested in this sort of thing?

[Lord_Dweomer]

I think you hit the nail on the head about living vicariously.

You see, thanks to all the recent advances in media technology, we are able to experience the lives of other people in ways unimagineable a century ago.

If life is about growing, learning, and experiencing, what better way than to peek in on the lives of others and learn from what they go through?

This is doubly true for those of us who may not be that social and may not leave the house very often. I'm not trying to pass judgement on those people, i'm just saying that if it helps make someones life interesting to look at the life of another, what is so wrong with that?

The guy doesn't make his own food?

[bourdeau]

It's interesting to note that almost every item that he has taken a photo of is some sort of take out food. Very little homecooked food is shown. Is that now a typical diet?

Re:The guy doesn't make his own food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what he was getting at is the move away from the "family table." It used to be a big thing to sit down to supper without T.V., radio or any of our other technological time theives and actually talk to each other... There are things that I'm sad to see go, and this one of them. When I have kids, I think I'll make dinner a family time to talk... For now, I'll take a number three with extra greese...

There is also a misconception that all take out is unhealthy (and a lot of it is), but there are some good places to subs or lighter food on the go. Yum.

I like internet pictures.

[delirium of disorder]

When you spends a certain ammount of time on the internet, you eventually realise there are pictures besides pron and goatse out there. I personally have taken a recent interest in photo art on the web. My favorite artist is Jenni Tampanila. Check out her work here:

http://www.suzi9mm.com/

Re:My new photo blog

[ScArE2100]

I just bought the domain http://www.slashshot.org:)

Should have it set up in about 2 hours. What should I use it for?

Discuss.

Flickr has huge potential

[Pyr05x]

I finally got the digital camera I wanted for Xmas '04.

I tried out Flickr, and signed up for a year about an hour later... It has an amazing simple interface for organising/tagging etc.

Better still though, is a published API: http://www.flickr.com/services/api/

The best usage of this i've found so far is Colrpickr: http://www.krazydad.com/colrpickr/index.php?group= flickrcentral

Re:This too shall pass

[metalhed77]

I use these services a lot and for me the primary value isn't such silly endeavors at all, in fact, these seem to be the exception rather than the rule. Most people use them as online photo albums, something far more useful. They are also fun to just browse randomly. It's like taking a short trip in someone else's shoes.

Host your photos yourself

[SKPhoton]

It's so much nicer hosting your photography yourself. No worries about how much of your work you can put online, other than how much hard drive space you can cram in. I've had great luck hosting with Gallery.

My Photography, for example.

LiveJournal Image Theft

[madmancarman]

I'm sure it's been mentioned before, but one of my favorite things now and then is to load one of the LJ Image Theft pages that are out there. It grabs the last 200 images posted to LiveJournal, and even though it's largely quizilla results and photos of teenage girls attempting to convey some sort of random emotion, occasionally some interesting memes occur. Recently, when Hunter S. Thompson died, a bunch of people posted photos of him or from the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and one linked to his piece "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved", which I probably never would have read had I not stumbled across it through LJ Image Theft.

However, it's important to note that some people post some pretty weird shit on LiveJournal - especially the Russians! - so it's not always work safe. Actually, sometimes that's what makes it so interesting - you can almost put your finger on the pulse of what's going on in people's heads across the world by scanning through the photos, and the time of day makes a difference, too. For example, St. Patrick's Day is coming up, so I'm sure there are going to be more and more images with shamrocks and leprechauns in them. Needless to say, Valentine's Day was an interesting one as well - lots of broken heart graphics and photos with faces scribbled out. Just get used to seeing this photo of a cat passed out next to a bottle of booze, because it's in there every other time I load the script.

of photo sharing & published APIs

[onethumb]

Of particuarly interest to /. readers are probably those sites with open, thriving, growing APIs. smugmug's got one, as does flickr.

The result, of course, is tons of user-created uploaders, organizers, applications, and even sister web services. Pretty sweet, if you ask me, and lots of fun. There's not many things more rewarding than a customer discovering the API and coming up with something brilliant.

Disclaimer: I co-founded smugmug, so bias is present, but I've been a geek my whole life, so open APIs still get me excited. :)

Re:This too shall pass

[senzafine]

One step past just photo sharing is photo/story sharing. FotoFlix lets you tell a story through your photos. As well as organize them with labels (aka keywords on Flickr).

There was no better way to share my recent trip to India...than THIS!!

What about the reverse?

[R.Caley]

Who looks at these things?

I recently hunted down a sudden spike in bandwidth use on one of our servers to a picture of my nephew. I had stupidly left the full-resoultion image beside a web friendly one and people from all over the world had decided to have a look. It really doesn't take many to be noticable when the file is 500MB.

My best guess is that the fact that my nephew's name, which was in the filename, is a simple one-letter typo away from that of a saint whose feast day was close to the start of the rise in bandwidth was the cause. Bloody google.

Re:It has transformed photography for many people.

[EvilStein]

And they didn't turn around and say "Hey you creep, stop taking photos of us!" or something?

Friend that tried to do a photoblog of college students ran into that a *lot* - girls generally got really upset upon having their photos taken in public places.

Re:It has transformed photography for many people.

[LogicX]

Surprisingly not. I don't even think they noticed me (though I was about 3 feet from them)

I've found quite the opposite - I go to Penn State University - main campus in State College, PA; and I ALWAYS see people taking photographs or video around campus, and no-one seems to care; they just go about their business. I've even just sat on a bench, and shot photos of people walking by for a long time, and not a single person noticed or cared.