My life in Flickr world

its very funny sometimes when one realises how his life has changed in the past few months. Like my life did after I joined flickr approximately an year back.

I was looking for photographer on orkut and I got in touch with Mohith last year and asked him few questions on capturing photos during rainy seasons as I loved one of his photos very much. He encouraged me to get logged in to flick and then started my journey in Flickr. Initial days was just ok as I used flickr to share my photos. Slowly realised there were some groups and I could share my photos there too and get some feedbacks. Then started the saga for waiting for comments. Trust me.. I just love it when somebody gives me a comment.

Through orkut itself I got in touch with a wonderful person. Her name is Rathika, and shes known in orkut world as Radzzz and I call her with the same name. I was zapped when I saw the photographs she had captured. She seemed to be completely into wildlife photography. Again, I asked her some tips on photography and she responded with some really good help. from that day she became my guru with some amazing tips on photography. The best thing in her is the amazing human being that every one who knows her would adore. Then started the saga of some good shots.. or rather improved photos from my side.

Slowly after some time I thought of going digital. after a lot of consultation and research I finally rounded on the Nikon D200. Armed with a 18-70mm IF ED DX lens started shooting whatever I get to see around followed by posting them on flickr. Initially it was not comments that mattered but building a big album. Slowly getting into the world of flickr made me realise that there are better photographs in the huge pool some of them excellent!!!
Search started for identifying what makes a photograph what it is and a journey started through the streams of some of the best photographers uploading their work. The first thing I would do when I visit any photograph is to check its EXIF. this shows a lot of details about the photograph. I generally don't look at photos that doesn't have the EXIF displayed.

Then comes the second phase of life in flickr world -- Views
Daily checks and then frequent refreshing the page to check how many views did the photo make. Started sharing it on some potential groups for more views. The point was to make as many people see my photos as possible. getting 5 views a day for any of my photos was good enough for me at that time. But forgot the fact that photos should be worth enough to catch the attention of parsers in flickr world. At times got to see some photographs that has 5000+ views. Then I got over with the excitement of getting more views and then moved on to the third phase.. - comments

When someone gave some comment like "Wow" or "Excellent" would give me goose bumps and this became addictive very soon. Or at least a "Good shot" comment made me feel good. Somewhere this made me increase my standards and slowly I looked for making photos that would look good in others' eyes, thereby triggering a transition from shooting from "my" point of view to "other's" point of view. This phase also pushed me to learn the aesthetics of photography like compositions, rules etc. I realised that I was no where near the good photographer and had to do some good homework before I get any "WOW" comments. Joining some groups in flickr and regular visits to technical discussion sites helped me a lot in learning the basic stuffs more than just pressing the shutter. Around this time, being through a lot of discussion and photos, I realised that the word PP or Post-Processing was getting popular with the photographers and in discussions. Words like "Photoshop", "Adobe" etc were too much talked about. As related to photography, these were kind of new to me, but seeing the results of the treatment done to the photographs made me think seriously about this part. You know... the comments factor, the "wow" factor........

I got my hands on Photoshop CS3 and installed it. started going through tutorials and spent some good time learning it only to realise that it was a mammoth task to use this stuff. It was like using an elephant(PS) to move a match stick(my photographs). That was too much hard work to get a "wow" comment, so not worth it. I had to look for some simple and easy to use tool that can get me the result in just a couple of clicks. Being a fan of google I had installed google pack that included Picasa. Gave a try with some options and it gave me the "wow" effect according to my standards. Mostly used features were the glow, gradient, contrast and brightness. Then I started using it even for basic activities like cropping too. I felt good about my photographs but when I looked back at what I had really gained, I found that I had got nothing much by manipulating my photographs. Rather I started getting a feel that what I am doing was not photography but digital art... i.e making compromises that I hate doing the most. But by this time some of my photographs made into the new world called "Explore" in flickr. Now whats that????

That takes me to the third phase in the flickr world "Explore".
Now what is it??? What I could make out from some text I went through is that flickr selects 500 good photographs on a daily basis that are considered to be good ones out of all the lot. I am sure its not manually selected considering the volume but picked up based on the parameters like numbers of visits, comments(probably) and more importantly the number of favorites. There is some algorithm being talked about but I was as usual very bad in mathematics hence never bothered much about it. Again search started for more information, just to make my photos being put into the "Explore zone" Tried some stunts here and there but would get no favourites or eligible number of views either. And contrary to what I had expected some photos simply made it to "Explore" and I was left wondering what had put it into that zone. All these only increased the confusion. That leads me to the last phase as of now.. or the current phase. Just shoot, but with quality and calculations.

Actually, one year down the line, I realised what I read in the initial stages. Compose your photographs and then shoot. look for what is it that you want to shoot. A flower is just a flower, anyone can shoot that but what matters is what would make it special. And I started restricting my shots. Now I keep my eyes open and always look what is it that I can bring out or "communicate" from the scene that I am looking at through my frame.

What is it now? Well, I guess I have matured over the time and now what matters me is a good shot and not a good one in terms of comments, favourites or views. A bad photo is a bad photo and theres no excuse to it. So its better to shoot a good photo and leave it as it is. If its good then the comments follow else improve the next one. What do I do if I see a good photo? I give a comment/feedback. And if I want to get back to it sometime later then I mark it as my favourite.. Very Simple!!!