Chris

On Truth and Interesting in Photography

I recently had a photo on Flickr go “viral”¹ Maybe not viral in the 2024 understanding of the world, but popular for a few days. For me, and for as little presence that I have on the internet, it felt big. Fun and exciting. It made me happy.

It was also entirely by accident with little effort on my part. It has me having feelings.

This picture, which I took in 2014 and shared on Flickr at the time was not the photo that was popular for a day.² At least, not exactly.

You see, Flickr has this feature called Explore. Here’s how Flickr themselves explain what Explore is:

Flickr’s Explore page is one of the most beloved features for photographers in the Flickr community. Powered by an algorithm we continue to fine-tune, the page displays a rotating array of about 500 images from Flickr members every day. Explore is a great way to seek inspiration, discover fantastic talent from the community, and connect with photographers who share your interests.

So as you use Flickr – uploading photos, tagging them with keywords, and adding them to community groups – the algorithm picks up on nascent activity and highlights photos on a special page at https://www.flickr.com/explore

If you just upload a photo and don’t engage with others on social/sharing side of things it’s unlikely you’d get a photo picked by the algorithm. That’s one thing I like about Flickr. You get out of it as much as you put into it. Looking at other photos, in Explore, in tag archives, and in groups, and engaging with other folks with likes, comments, and follows is what the site is all about.

An aside on Apple Photos

I’ve been getting back into photography with more gusto in the last few months. It’s a solid creative outlet and a way of dealing with my grief. I bought a new camera for travel and have been taking more opportunities to get away from the screen to take more photos.

I have hit one small snag. The new camera is so new that the RAW files from it are not supported by any of my Apple devices! I have to download the images to my desktop, run them through a converter, and then import them to my Apple Photo library for organizing and editing.³

Every Fall Apple releases new updates to their operating systems with new features. Curious if the new OSes would support more RAW formats, including the format from my new camera, I downloaded the beta version of the upcoming OS for my iPad, iPadOS 18.

Unfortunately as of this writing, iPadOS 18 does not have support for my camera. But, it does have an updated Photos app. So I was playing around with it one evening. There’s a new feature – new to me or new in this upcoming release – where the Photos app will suggest photos from your library that might make a good wallpaper image for your devices.

Screenshot of the Wallpaper Suggestions screen in Apple Photos

I thought one of the photos it suggested was rather stunning. I literally scrunched my face at the screen and thought, “Who took that photo? It’s really nice!”.

Oh wait, it was me.

Through some sort of algorithm, Apple Photos picked this photo from my library of over 63,000 images, applied a black-and-white filter, and said, “How about this one?”

I have to fully disclose that while I saw this photo and recognized it as an aesthetically pleasing photo, I didn’t pick it out and make these edits of my own skill. I didn’t spend hours in a photo editor tweaking settings to get just the right contrast in the black and white rendition.

Apple’s algorithm did that work and that made me feel both excited – that technology can do that – and a little sad. I thought to myself, “Why didn’t I see that‽”. Why didn’t I take the time to be selective and edit my photos with more attention?

Back to Flickr

I tweaked the settings a little bit from what the Photos app suggested and uploaded the black and white rendition to Flickr. I shared it in a few groups. Then I went to bed.

The next morning my phone was lit up with notifications. Flickr, through the Explore algorithm, selected my photo for the day. People liked it! Over a hundred and twenty likes. Nearly 4,600 views. The photo is now my second most popular photo by both views and likes. After nearly twenty years uploading and sharing photos. My first Explore.

More thoughts came to my mind. Why wasn’t the original photo interesting enough for Explore? Did I not put as much effort into things in 2014? Why I don’t edit my photos to be more dramatic and interesting and instead very lightly touch them?

I don’t do a lot of color adjustments, gradation or saturation, modifications or spot patching or anything like that. This event has me thinking about the kind of photography I do and how I edit the photos I share.

I seek out the truth in what I saw when out shooting. More so than taking a photo and trying to make it interesting. Maybe that makes me a weaker photographer or a boring photographer, but that’s what I like to do.

This whole ordeal has me asking more questions. Maybe I’m too technical and focused on the wrong things? Maybe I’m a better photographer cause I’m happy with what I take without editing? This is making me feel a little conflicted. Should I spend more time editing to get more emotion out of my photos?

Author, science educator, and YouTuber, Hank Green shared this thought in reflecting upon his work that his company Complexly does in creating educational materials on YouTube. It resonated with my thinking at the time.

“What makes something “interesting” is very different from what makes something true, which is a really powerful force that pulls us away from the truth in society. And I just want to say, that isn’t something that’s evil about people. I think it makes perfect sense, but it is a problem, which is why it’s so cool to get to work on teams that have developed a ton of expertise in how to make true things feel interesting. Trying to make interesting things feel true is a lot easier and a lot worse”

I know I can spend more time, editing my photos and dialing it into very interesting but for some reason that isn’t appealing to me, I’m more interested in trying to take a good photo with the camera. Even if that means it’s unlikely that a future upload will be “Explore-ed”. Does that make my photos more true? Less interesting?

But I’d rather do some light touch up before sharing what I think is closer to the truth – even realizing that all photos are edited and manipulate reality in some fashion. Either by viewpoint, or lens used, or framing, or so on and so forth.

I mean, look there’s tons of great, visually interesting, photos out there. In taking an OK photo and making it really impressive through lots of detailed work. That’s impressive.

I don’t begrudge anybody who does this. In fact, I wish I did more of it because obviously this resonates with people. That’s one thing I try to do through my own work.

As an aside, here’s a recent tutorial that I thought was really great and very helpful in thinking about this from a aesthetic and technical perspective.

I know this is how people edit photos professionally, but as a hobbyist, I don’t know. For me it is more about framing and taking the photos and seeing how they came out than it is trying to take a good or great photo and making it interesting.

Or maybe I’m lazy‽ :p

I haven’t decided what I’ll do. Maybe I’ll try editing a few photos before uploading more than I usually do. Maybe I won’t. But I will keep thinking about this.

A short story about a drawer slider bracket, 3D printing, and the internet

Among my numerous hobbies is 3-D printing. My wife bought me my first “put-it-together-yourself” kit back in 2016. Since then I’ve upgraded to a Bambu Lab X1, which is as close to a home appliance as 3D printing has ever been. It literally has never failed me short of my own errors.

Recently, my mom called me up to tell me that multiple drawers in her kitchen cabinets were broken. The rails the drawer slides along had fallen down, and the drawers were no longer horizontally level. Her husband took one apart and found that the bracket that holds the rail to the back of the cabinet had broken.

She looked online to see if she could find a replacement part, but was unsuccessful. Knowing I have a 3D printer, she asked if I could print a replacement. Always eager for a fun challenge (and because I’m a good son), I said sure.

Before I started measuring and modeling the part, I took a look online myself to see if I could find replacement parts. Sure enough, there were other people were having the same difficulty sourcing a replacement part.

So I started measuring and preparing a model.

A few minutes into doing this I thought, “Wait a second, I wonder if someone else has come up with the same solution and already made a model?”. Guess what? Someone had!

In 2017 bmonnin created and uploaded their model for others to use. They had the same problem my mom had!

“I had several brackets that support the drawer slider on my kitchen cabinet drawers break. After looking around at several different big boxes and online I couldn’t find the same bracket anywhere.

So I got to printing.

A few minutes later, a solid replacement for the part was born.

I printed it in red because red makes it go faster

There is a slight, almost imperceptible, difference between the original and the model. The lip that holds the rail in place is on both the top and bottom in the original. Assumedly so the manufacturer could print one mold and flip it for either side of the drawer. bmonnin’s model only has the lip on one side. They provided a mirrored version though, so all is well!

Since my mom needed more than one, I set up the X1 to print enough for all her drawers.

A few hours later, and less than half a spool of filament, I was done.

The next time I saw my mom, I handed a box of brackets off to her and Ken. A few days later she shared these photos.

Huzzah! A resounding success. I hope they last as long as the old ones (26 years, since the house was built).

This is one of those mundane, but also incredibly interconnected, stories where technology – combined with the social aspects of being able to share information easily and freely – come together to create a tangible solution to a problem. A small problem in this instance, but I think an example of how even larger problems can be solved when we think and work together.

As popular as ham radio

Photography as a hobby is a shrinking circle. It won’t ever go away, but it is much smaller than it ever was. I was reading this post from Mike Johnston, The Online Photographer and a few bits stood out to me from the post and comments.

Even if times really are changing, and people just aren’t interested in new cameras and better specs as much as they used to be, it doesn’t really matter that much. Here’s the thing: dedicated photographers are outsiders. I’ve always looked at us that way. We’re not attached to the industry; we’re not affected by fashions. We’re not driven by mass taste. We go our own way. We do our own thing.

As many middle-aged hipsters will attest, I love not doing mainstream hobbies. Even while I also love doing many other mainstream things. Photography is not mainstream and you can consider it outsider-ish, but at the same time more people have cameras – in their phones – than they have ever had stand-alone cameras! It’s the most mainstream thing you can think of!

It’s mainstream and outsider at the same time. To be human is to contain multitudes.

Another quote:

It’s clear to me that we’re in the sad twilight of the era of photography as a serious hobby. It’s rapidly heading for the same category as ham radio or model railroading: a quirky, shrinking tiny niche, regarded (if at all) with a flicker of tolerant amusement by the masses. I derived immense satisfaction and not a little joy from several decades spent honing my technical skills, learning how to use finicky gear, and teasing the best possible result from large format inkjets, all in service to a goal. That goal was creating the best possible photographic print. I still love a beautiful print, but it has become a niche skill. To the broader culture, photography now means billions of technically competent snapshots captured by increasingly sophisticated smart-phone cameras flooding the Internet every single day, each with the impact and lifespan of a just-hatched Mayfly or cicada.

Kind of a negative outlook, but I think I can still enjoy taking purposeful photos with my big camera while allowing others to enjoy snapshots with their smart phone – or even really good solid photos taken with a phone!

Another comment:

Strangely enough, I think it is the internet that lets those “tiny niches” survive. It is a “force multiplier” that allows a much smaller number of practitioners keep the niche alive and thriving to some extent.

When you were the editor of the model railroading magazine, magazines and clubs were the way these niches survived. As time went on and the number of practitioners shrank, magazines folded and clubs have withered and the practitioners moved to a community online where you can have a global community and draw from the whole connected world.

I “belong” to three of those niches: Photography, Garden Scale Model Railroading and HP calculators. I keep current in all three by belonging to a small but active online community. What is interesting, is that while you get your share of trolls, in general, the internet experience is much different than what you hear about in the wide world of the internet.

I don’t use popular social media and prefer the smaller corners of the web. Like dedicated forums, Flickr, community Slacks, and my personal blog. So this resonates with me.

But then again, maybe there’s hope for photography,

Another thing that’s interesting is that photography is unlikely to prove to be a generational phenomenon. Younger people aren’t showing any diminished interest in photography—quite the opposite in fact—they just won’t be practicing it in the way us older enthusiasts accepted as normal when we were young.

Hey, I just said the same thing! Ah, the joys of non-linear writing.

How to fix sync issues with Apple Photos on macOS

Notice that a selection of photos on one Mac are not syncing to the rest of your devices.
Restart Photos.
That didn’t work.
Restart the Mac.
Nope.
Open Activity Monitor and kill all processes with the word “photo”.
Hmm. No change.
Kill “bird”. You’re not sure what it does, but the internet says it’s part of the problem.
Nothing.
Delete the Syndication.photoslibrary deep in ~/Library/Photos.
Wait and be patient. Maybe days?
Ok, turn off iCloud in Photos preferences. Get nervous because that sounds dangerous. Wait, wasn’t all of this kinda risky?
Turn on iCloud in Photos preferences. Wait while you waste bandwidth and time.
The photos are syncing. Well some of them. Not ones that are edited. For some reason.
Wait, again.
Those dozen or so photos are still not syncing.
Rotate those few images to see if that helps.
It says it’s syncing! Yay
It does not sync all of them.
Quit Photos and then back to Activity Monitor again. Kill all process with the word “photo”.
Restart Photos. Wait.
Nothing at all.
Repair the library.
That was not it. Wait more than 24 hours.
Create an album with photos that won’t sync.
Share that album.
That almost works, except for any photos from the recent import that were edited.
So then you turn off (and on again) iCloud in Photos preferences.
Wait two days and it’s all fixed. ಠ_ಠ

When we fight, we win

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