Photoblogging 2: Periphery, The New Photoblog (I Still Love You, Flickr)

Ice Cream Fight

Before I continue, let me point out periphery.tangentialism.com, which I finished this weekend. It's a Photoblog-with-a-capital-P that I'll be directing my daily photos at for a while, supplemented by Flickr for random shots and sharables.

I wrote Periphery because I've spent too long telling other photobloggers that "I really want to have my own photoblog". I love Flickr, and I've been posting regularly there for over a year, but while I use it to photoblog, it didn't feel like "my own photoblog". It's been very good for me, both as a photographer and as a photoblogger, and the community of sharing there is so rich that I don't see any reason to leave, but as even Eric Costello points out, in this interview with Adaptive Path, Flickr wasn't originally put together for Photobloggers-with-a-capital-P:

Flickr was really envisioned initially as an organizational tool for an individual who has this huge collection of photos. The social network was built in just so that you could restrict access to your photos. But what has really taken off with Flickr is that it’s turned out to be a great platform for sharing with the masses, and not just with your small collection of friends...

But we found that it took off when we got some excellent photographers who were interested in using Flickr as a new kind of photo blog, so that the world could see their pictures. And that, I think, is really the primary usage of Flickr now.

In fact, I've changed with Flickr. When I signed up, I only imagined I'd post photos to share for kicks--and you can see that in my early posts, of signs and vacations and cameraphone shots. In the last year, mostly because of the vibrant local community of photobloggers, I've fallen back in love with photography, and with looking at nice, big images, which isn't Flickr's strong point.

In fact, the biggest problem with using Flickr to photoblog is that everyone's first glimpse of your photo is a wallet-sized snapshot, and I'd like people to be have a larger image to gaze upon when they load the page. On Periphery, that's about 900 pixels wide versus 240 pixels wide, which amounts to a lot when I'm posting a photo I'm proud of (ideally, every shot I post). Conversely, 900 pixels make it difficult to hide shoddy work, which raises the bar--a good thing.

Though I briefly considered using Eliot's Admiral package to get around the image size issue, while still keeping my roots in Flickr, I decided against it. Frankly, I think Flickr and I need some space. I've been asking too much of Flickr lately, expecting Flickr to be all things to me at all times. I'll still call Flickr up for daily shots of friends and odd visual couplings (just like old times), but I think the new space at Periphery will make for an interesting change in how I work and edit, and I need that change.

Working on Periphery was incredibly fun, and it came together very quickly (about three weeks in my free time). It's written in Ruby on Rails (geek out!) with a couple judicious visual effect-y, AJAX-y things. I'm holding a couple features back until I have enough photos to make them interesting, but I'm already happy with the way it works. Hopefully you will be, too.

Thanks are in order to a few people: Eliot and Raul's sites both served as inspirations for the layout and features of the site. In particular, the navigation effects are the sincerest form of flattery of Eliot's (and Kottke's) work. Actually, if they're listed in the "Links" section of the photoblog, they're probably an inspiration in one form or another. Thanks to Raul, Keith, and Nick for looking it over and offering advice. And thank you, so much, to Flickr. I'm here because of you, Flickr.

flickr-ish , meta-ish , photo-ish , photoblog-ish by tangentialist at 08:08 PM on 17 Oct 05 | Perm-a-link | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Computers Are Eating My Brain and Replacing It With Flickr

Today, Kottke wrote a piece on memory and the rise of alternate digital memories to replace our gray-matter search engines. This, of course, reminded me of my unfinished post about photography as a surrogate memory, prompted by something Keith had written back in February.

It's hard to remember if I was ever great at remembering things, but I definitely don't trust my memory today as much as I once did. Always the hypochondriac, I'm inclined to find some physiological cause for not being able to remember a name ("It must be the beef! Mad cow!"), rather than my frustrating tendency to not actually listen when someone first tells me their name. But what, for example, did I do two Saturdays ago? I know that I went to Staten Island this weekend, and that I went to Chelsea, but I don't think I'd trust my recall of the weekend if you asked me. This, honestly, is because I have the irrefutable evidence of digital photography to back me up. Thus, I can tell you with confidence that (at the very least), on the 9th of July, I:

Flickr, in part, has shifted the balance of my memory towards the long-term, with sometimes brutal effects on my remaining short-term memory. And my long term memory is increasingly digital, relying on considerably less durable containers--my laptop (backed up, thank you), and paid web services like Backpack and Flickr--than my brain. Though I can now tell you where I was exactly five months ago (hello, Midtown!), that memory is subject to the whims of my hard drive and Yahoo's business practices. Should I fail to pay my hosting fee, I may someday fail to remember that I snuck into the pool last night.

My short term memory is shot, but for those items that are worth storing digitally. Can I tell you what I have to work on this week? Maybe, if I check my to-do list and iCal. Phone numbers? Forget it; I have my girlfriend's, my parents', and work's by heart, and that's it--my cellphone has the rest. And names? Get a memorable domain name (and an RSS feed), and we're good to go.

In short, my memory is being slowly subverted by devices and web services. This realization comes just as I finish the comforting Everything Bad Is Good For You, in which we learn that games, television, and the Internet are making us all more agile thinkers. Frankly, I think the connected life is reprogramming my brain to better serve my devices, games, and the Internet, and my memories of life as I once knew it are just the first victims.

flickr-ish , memory-ish by tangentialist at 08:12 PM on 19 Jul 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)

Back, And Birthday!

I'll just say it was amazing, and we'll leave it at that. If you want some visual evidence, there's a Flickr set to help explain why readjustments to New York weather and life after a Caribbean vacation can be so hard.

And then there is my birthday. I will be roaming the city tomorrow in celebration of growing up a bit more. Should anybody wish to join up, I offer the official Tangentialism Birthday Activity Tracker, which will help you to locate my roaming birthday party as it travels through the city of New York. Please come out and make me feel sociable, take pictures, and drink along. We will be starting in Madison Square Park around 10 PM tomorrow, June 10th.

birthday-ish , flickr-ish , vacation-ish by tangentialist at 08:59 PM on 09 Jun 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)

My Dad Thought I Said "New Yorker"

New York Magazine has published a photo I took on the L train as part of their coverage of the impending ban on photography in the subway system. This is great, for two reasons:

  1. It doubles the number of publications that have printed my photographs.
  2. It's not the National Enquirer.

I went ahead and bought two copies, and encourage you to skip out and grab one yourself -- if only to support a publication with such refined aesthetic tastes as New York. When I first told my parents about this, they were really excited for about half an hour, thinking I had said "The New Yorker". Whatever -- it's a step in the right direction (hear that, Conde Nast? I'm coming for you.)

I am, as always, available to surreptitiously photograph you on the subway system, or in somewhat less crowded environs of your choice.

UPDATE: Whoa! Also, check out the flickr homepage for this same shot! You may have to reload, but the Goethe quote alone is worth it. Damn! New York, flickr, and the Enquirer! Beat that, Walker Evans!

flickr-ish , photo-ish by tangentialist at 06:44 PM on 17 Jan 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)

Dubai On Flickr: Where's The Vanity?


money
Originally uploaded by MISS ICEBERG.

One of the odd little subcultures that seems to have popped up on Flickr is the United Arab Emirates Photo Squad. I don't know where they all came from, but these flickrites (they appear to be young women, for the most part) seem to share both a keen appreciation of Starbucks coffee and conspicuously expensive tastes -- in those respects, they're not unlike their counterparts on the Upper East Side.

That said, the only thing I think is really strange about these photosets is the total absence of self-portraits. There are nice pictures of Dior, jewelry, the well-loved Baba Zayed, Mecca, and small children, but you'd never know what these people look like; none of the streams I've seen has featured any of the extended-arm self-portraiture of the average young-rich-kid-with-fancy-camera set. You rarely see their friends, either; the only faces in there belong to small children, old people, and manual laborers.

Where's the vanity? Where's the unbridled celebration of self? Dubai, you disappoint me.

The UAE group is a good place to get introduced to the young and powerful in Dubai, or at least to see their Pumas.

flickr-ish , middle east-ish by tangentialist at 01:35 AM on 27 Dec 04 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)

Flickr's Day In The Life


Impossibly Vibrant Green Shawl
Originally uploaded by tangentialism.

A whole group of Flickrites, myself included, spent December 21st documenting a A Day In The Life of Flickr.

Mostly pictures of desks and coffee cups, but the occasional standout trip through a weird museum or day in sydney were pleasant.

I was too hung over to make the 7:42 AM capture of the Winter Solstice, but you gotta be kidding me.

flickr-ish by tangentialist at 03:37 AM on 23 Dec 04 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)