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

My new photo blog

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashshot.org - My photo reactions to every Slashdot story.

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.

I don't see any photos...

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Funny, I don't see any photos. I just see numbers like '404' and '503'. ...

Does my screen not support those types of images?

Re:I don't see any photos...

[Spoing]

Try this link! It's never failed me! Slashdot THAT! HA-HA!

It has transformed photography for many people...

[SlideGuitar]

What's so strange about it?

You find something that you love... you share it with the world.

http://portlandground.com/

Without the pain and humiliation?

[datastalker]

"Fotolog CEO Adam Seifer, who posts a picture of every meal he eats on Get In My Belly!"

I hope this guy gets to be known for more than just that... ;)

Re:Without the pain and humiliation?

[nacturation]

Four hours later, he posts another picture on his blog "Get Out Of My Belly!"

Oh, I get it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Blogging for people who don't know how to type! It's a brave new world.

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

I eat macaroni and cheese with catsup everyday, eh. I could just take one photo and leave it up all the time.

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?

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

[NanoGator]

"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."

Heh I can't believe you don't realize you're one of those 20,000 hits today.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for sharing.

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

[ggvaidya]

You actually rtfa???

*shock and horror*

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

[k.ovaska]

I eat macaroni and cheese with catsup everyday, eh. I could just take one photo and leave it up all the time.

On a related note, this guy has the best webcam ever.

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

[LogicX]

Our you could use it to share your recipies, such as Egg With Hat

This too shall pass

[Ars-Fartsica]

How long until the novelty of photographing your dinner and posting it on the web fades into oblivion?

Not long, I figure, even for the CEO of the company.

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.

Re:This too shall pass

[superdan2k]

And sadly, six years ago, if he'd taken the idea to a venture capital firm, they'd have probably dropped a check for $10 million in his lap.

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!!

Re:This too shall pass

[robfoo]

Giving rise to "Get in my wallet!" where people post photos of the insanely huge cheques they get from venture capitalists..

Re:It has transformed photography for many people.

[EnronHaliburton2004]

To capitalize on this latest trend, I think I'm gonna take pictures of the people who take pictures of wierd things...

That's not wierd at all.

riiight

[The Amazing Fish Boy]

"only without the pain and humiliation"

I know of a few photos this guy hasn't seen yet. If he sticks around Slashdot he'll certainly run into them, though.

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?

[SoLO]

And this question right here is the reason that these sites are popular. You get to view every little detail and compare it to what you do or what the "norm" is.

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

[kamapuaa]

I believe slightly less than 50% of meals in the US are home-cooked?

There's a tone of condescension in your question, but when you're cooking for one or two people, it's easier and cheaper to eat out, particularly when you factor in time of preparation. In the cities I've lived in (Oakland Chinatown, Honolulu, Tokyo, & New York), the food can be quite interesting and healthy. Most of the people who cook do it more as a fun activity or hobby than a superior way of eating.

I'm aware that in many areas, restaurants are intended for special occasions rather than everyday eating, or are fast food. So people from different areas may have different predjudices.

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:I like internet pictures.

[trawg]

You would probably direct more users to her site if you added "... and yes, there are boobs"

Sad

[CosmeticLobotamy]

a million reality TV shows, only without the pain and humiliation.

It's sad when you have to start explaining reality (and pictures thereof) to people as "kind of like reality TV."

Humiliation

[Sheepdot]

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.'

I don't know what's worse, the fact that the guy is the CEO of a site that caters to weirdos and doesn't think it is, or the fact that he doesn't find his website name, "Get In My Belly!", humiliating.

IMO...

[goss]

"a million reality TV shows, only without the pain and humiliation"

Aren't those the main components of "reality" tv shows?

Didn't RTFA, but...

[torinth]

For a lot of city dwellers, yes. Kitchens are expensive real estate, grocers are always packed, and the combination of restaurant competition and higher-than-average salaries makes prepared food relatively affordable.

Re:It has transformed photography for many people.

[Anonymous Coward]

...I think I'm gonna take pictures of the people who take pictures of wierd things...

And I'm gonna take pictures of people driving gas-guzzling foriegn SUV's with "Support our Troops" magnetic yellow ribbons (made, of course, in China), for a Blog called "Support our Shieks".

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:Flickr has huge potential

[zurab]

I tried flickr. It failed to upload my images about 15 times saying server was too busy and there was nothing I could do but wait for few hours and see if something got uploaded or not. At some point, finally, one picture got through - I tried to view it - it tried to load the picture in flash and crashed my browsers. I kept asking myself why they would do such a horrible job, and then I found zoto.com. It has the best user interface that works cross-platform, cross-browser (yes, even with Konqueror) with simple drag and drop capabilities. You can upload pictures via the browser or via a PC client - yes, even a Linux client - that will keep your pictures directory synchronized with your zoto.com account.

Overall, I like zoto.com way better than flickr, as you can tell.

Re:Flickr has huge potential

[slinky259]

Flickr is also cross platform and cross browser.

Every now and then they mess with the servers, though, so there is some downtime. When it is working, though (which is most of the time) it works beautifully.

Re:Flickr has huge potential

[zurab]

Flickr is also cross platform and cross browser.

Maybe, but that "cross" does not cross to anything I use.

First off, as I said before, I don't know what flickr does with Flash, or most importantly - why they bother using it - but images don't display in either Firefox or Konqueror for me - they crash the flash plugin (Konq survives the plugin crash while Firefox goes with it but that's another browser issue). I question the use of the flash plugin to display images altogether. Zoto.com displays images as they are without using any flash and uses DHTML drag and drop interface that works in IE, Firefox, Opera, KHTML (Safari and Konqueror) and any other browser that is based on one of those. It has many drag and drop features besides categorizing and picture management as well like Zwipe, blog publishing, etc. For me flash plugin crashing doesn't qualify as cross-browser.

As far as cross-platform, again not for me. From the flickr help page:

We provide a range of uploading tools to help you get your photos into Flickr, for both Windows and Mac users. (emphasis mine)

That's like saying a European auto service garage fixes both European cars - BMWs and Volkswagens - as if those are the only 2. While Zoto.com upload/sync client page besides having a Windows and Mac port has a Qt/Python port as well making it closer to truly cross-platform implementation.

Re:Flickr has huge potential

[he-sk]

Flickr uses Flash to display the photos, so you can add notes to them. Notes are litttle squares with text underneath, that render directly on the photo. Makes for great annotating. When the mouse is over the photo you see the squares, when the mouse leaves the picture, they fade away. See this and this.

Also, there is a Linux uploader for Flickr available here.

How about a ...

[ggvaidya]

Slashdot-like website, except that every article *has* to be a single "shot" - a one line single statement, with either a word or sentence limit? So the front page will be like:
* Google changes dictionary provider [categories: google, business, wikipedia, dupe]
* Adam West in new Batman cartoon [notserious, batman]
* Apple litigation in ending stages [legal, apple]

Some suitably smart mechanism will make the categories be votable (allowing category tags like "w00t", "dupe" and, heck, "boobies" to be added by readers, for instance). The most visited websites will get onto the front page. People posting crap will get categorized "crap", and stuff which is silly but funny can become "unintentional-funny" or something.

My rather worthless two cents :P. But slashshot.org sounds cool - keep us updated. Why don't you write about it in your journal?

Re:How about a ...

[ggvaidya]

Oh yeah :P ... thought my idea sounded kinda familiar.

Well, categorization would be better, commenting would be more slashdot-like, and the site would be more SFW. Also less squirrels with big nuts :P

Also, getting stuff up on the site would be more of a community thing (yes, like K5) and would be tech-focussed (like /.). Sorta like the quicker, faster, neater younger brother /. never had ...

I could be just dreaming. It's all I ever do at college, anyway :P.

My experiences with Flickr

[metalhed77]

Flickr, if I may say, is one of the best designed web apps out there. It's quick to use, clean, and very featureful. Additionally it seems to have a semi-open API because I see tons of projects (like the squared circle collage) being made out stuff on there. And, most importantly, the interface makes ample use of DHTML and flash in a way that is genuinely useful. Interface elements that on most sites require loading a new page (say changing the title of an image you uploaded) or changing your navigation style are either javascripted or implemented very elegantly in flash. It feels quite close in many ways to a traditional app.

The groups on it are also good for meeting people and sharing tips / techniques. My one complaint about these groups is that people are *too* nice. Even in the ones where it is required that users include negative feedback, none ever is.

I phlog hard.

[Anonymous Coward]

Another photo-sharing site not referenced in the original article is http://www.phlog.net/ (as in PHoto webLOG or PHone webLOG).

I've been using that site for a few months now (refer http://www.phlog.net/user/OzDJ) and I'm hooked. Family and friends often ask me "why would you bother?" and I tell them that I look at it this way....

I reckon that the extraordinary events/times/places that we experience typically occupy less than 5% of our conscious lifetime. The other 95% is very mundane day-to-day stuff, yet it shapes who we are and - ultimately - how the world itself advances (or otherwise). Photos of the day-to-day make up some of the best historical photographic exhibitions I've ever been to.

And when I'm on my deathbed in (hopefully many) years to come, I anticipate that my loved ones will care more about "the little stories" than "pix of Grandad's xxth birthday" or "pix of Grandad standing in front of the Taj Mahal in 19xx". And I'm far more prepared to trust those stories to an online blogging service than my already-alzheimers-affected grey matter. :-)

Cheers

OzDJ - Sydney, NSW, AU
http://www.phlog.net/user/OzDJ
OzDJ@phlog.net

Less amateur works: photo.net

[jpatokal]

For more serious photography, check out photo.net, started by Philip Greenspun of ArsDigita fame. Still lots of random pictures to be found, but the quasi-moderation system of ratings does a pretty good job of sorting out the wheat from the chaff; check out the last three day's top-rated pictures for an example. The service is free to use, but people with popular pictures get more disk space -- or you can get it the old-fashioned way by paying.

Obligatory own gallery whoring: me! me! me!

And psst: since this is Slashdot, you'll want to know that there's some pretty damn good free pr0... err, I mean kinky photography out there too.

Cheers,
-j.

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.

Re:Host your photos yourself

[DJCF]

Completely agreed! (See my other post here )

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.

My experiences with Smugmug

[TheShadowHawk]

I have personally found Smugmug a good site to use.

The fact that I can just upload my originals and it does the rest with regards to resizing them to 3 different sizes (small, medium, large) plus with a nice interface with no annoying adds. Plus no size limits and good site speeds are a bonus.

Warning:LINK WHORE! Yes yes, feel free to check out my gallery if you wish. :P I recommend the airshow!

Re:It has transformed photography for many people.

[dirvish]

I agree, and it's not all "pictures of dogs' noses." There are some talented photographers on flickr (can't speak for the other sites). The majority of the users are point-and-click hacks like me, but a substantial portion of the pictures are very good.

Re:It has transformed photography for many people.

[janbjurstrom]

Apparently, the main idea behind it is the slideshow - makes perfect transitions when every "squared circle" is identically cropped.

Other than that, I don't get the 'point' either.. just something to do, probably.

What about PhotoSIG?

[PenguinOpus]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned it so far, but
by far the best moderated photo publish/review site is PhotoSIG:

http://www.photosig.com/go/main;jsessionid=aVeKn nl N5829

They get thousands of photos a day categorized and scored. Amateur and professional photographers make great effort to gain a good reputation for both their photos and their comments.

Browse the categories and then browse the "best of"... the photos there are truly amazing.

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. :)

Andy Warhol must spinning in his grave

[museumpeace]

Who knew when he said "in the future everybody will be famous for 15 minutes" we would use the internet to make his prediction come true and in the process discover that everybody is ugly and stupid looking for all but that 15 minutes.

In at least one category, this profligate posting of pictures that snare a huge share of traffic is hardly new. blogs like...ehem, this one "share" pictures as good[bad?] as Penthouse charges for and I hear lots of people like those pictures too. Of course its just a come-on to get you to click through to the paid content but seems like it will be a while before pictures of quilts and puppies take up more bandwidth than publicized private parts

Great...

[drigz]

'a million reality TV shows, only without the pain and humiliation.'

so just leaving the relentless boredom? - sounds accurate.

Gallery2

[uss_valiant]

If you're planning to create your own online gallery, I highly recommend G2, the successor of the original Gallery. It's a solution for personal galleries, for you and your friends and for community / commercial sites.

It features plenty of features and more and more modules for the end user and it's a beauty on the inside for developers.

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.

dont trust them to an online service

[DJCF]

Since I got my first digital camera two years ago (which was on my phone) I've taken over 1200 photos (do the math!) for almost the same reason. To me, life is about living (cliched, sorry!). But human memory being what it is, when we forget what we've lived, what proof do we have that we lived it - it would be like we never did these things at all. Even the monotonous day-to-day stuff should be remembered because, as you say, it makes up 95% of our life.

Photographs and cameras can't change that of course, but they can help - just like keeping a diary, even if it's just a personal log of what you did that day. So if something happens - no matter how small - I always try and snap it so I can remember it later. And of course, sharing it with friends is a good plan - especially if half your friends live a world away (I'm a TCK, grew up abroad), and the other half were there anyway and want to download the images and show them to their friends...

But don't trust these (very valuable, IMO) fragements of your life to an anonymous web service! In 20 years, flikr could be bust, absorbed by some other company (and their free service discontinued, your photos deleted). I'd bet money they wont be around to show your great-grand-children. Add to that the time it take to upload each and every one of your photos... I don't see the point, to be honest! I run my own Apache webserver on Fedora, a custom rig that also routes traffic for my network. I've even written a PhP script that generates a gallery-listing of all images in a folder, and uses GD to create thumbnails. Comments can be submitted as well, and as the filesystem is the database, adding a new image is as easy as copying it into a directory (or creating a new directory (album) to hold it in!) Anyway, my point is that I trust online services like Xanga (blog), Geocities (Website), Flikr (photo) about as far as I can throw them. And I know that no matter weather I be running Windows Server, FreeBSD, for Fedora in 50 years time, I'd far rather be responsible for me own treasures than someone I've never even met!

My point is, yes, I completely agree with you, but dont trust some free webservice!

Daniel
Somerset, UK
DJCF.Sytes.Net, DJCF.Sytes.Net/gallery

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.

Examples of projects using the flickr API

[zeman]

The flickr api is easy to use, here's a few examples of interesting projects people have come up with...

A Flickr World Map developed in php and flash by me (Mark Zeman).

The Flickr Graph which maps the social relationships between people by Marcos Weskamp.

A very playful Colrpickr that shows images by hue and luminosity by Jim Bumgardner.

There's more examples at Flickr Services