Archives for June 2006
23 - De-construction on Grand Parade
The construction site that is the Grand Parade right now but it will soon look like Patrick’s Street with broad pavements, paving and those flag bearing poles that are so prominent on our main thoroughfare.
No Fred photos today, I haven’t had time to work on any. Expect more next week!
22 - Fred The Band in the Spiegeltent
Fred played in the Spiegeltent on Tuesday night and as usual put on a great show! Their show is energetic and wild and brilliant!
More photos tomorrow!
Edit: Donal has great photos of the night. Go look!
21 - GIMP Tutorial VideosJakub ‘jimmac’ Steiner has published several demos of the GIMP in action.
Subjects such as defining shortcuts, image templates, transformations and paths and more are covered. Use the mirrors, because I haven’t downloaded the videos myself yet!
Irish comedian Brendan O’Carroll, also known as Mrs. Brown, enjoys his break during yesterday evening’s performance of Good Mourning Mrs Brown.
We were on our way to see Fred play in the Spiegeltent which is situated in front of the Opera House when we noticed a group of people outside the back entrance of the same building. After we passed, Jacinta realised who it was and we hurried back and made our introductions.
Brendan was very nice to us, he introduced his lovely wife, and posed for a photo with Jacinta and this shot. Hopefully he’ll remember the address of this blog, I really have to get cards printed!
A new Noise Ninja release candidate is out now for Linux, Mac and Windows!
I tried the Linux version, and despite having a strange file selector it worked really well! You can try it for yourself, but the unregistered version saves images with a watermark. I’m going to test it on a few more images and may purchase it myslf.
Make sure you download a camera profile for your camera. The 20D one works well!
We took Oscar and ourselves for a walk in Drake’s Pool last Sunday. We arranged to meet Donal and Celine there.
While the girls enjoyed a leisurely walk, us guys trailed after them making photos of everything!
Drake’s Pool is just outside Crosshaven, and is named for Sir Francis Drake.
19 - Luigi Malones
A long exposure shot in Luigi Malones Restaurant in Cork catches some of the hectic activity during lunch hour.
18 - The Commodore Hotel
The Commodore Hotel in Cobh, built in 1854, is an attractive hotel sitting on the main road of the town. Inside, the old world decoration of the lobby, restaurant and bar are inviting.
17 - Making the top ten of Interestingness
The Swan Gang, a photo I posted three days ago, became the 4th most interesting photo on Flickr two days ago.
How?
Nuggets of Gold
Flickr Interestingness uses a secret algorithm to decide what is interesting, but is biased against users who consistently get a lot of attention. Up until last month I would add my photos to many groups in the hope of attracting attention and eyeballs and yes, a number of my photos are in the interesting list but it was getting harder for me to get high results.
Last month I got married, took the month off and hardly touched a computer. Most of the photos published that month haven’t been added to any group so I think that helped me when it came to publishing this photo.
Groups
There are a number of photo groups on Flickr where members are encouraged to leave comments on the photographs of other users. If you look at my Swan photo again some of them are listed down the right hand side. That’s a good way of getting attention. Don’t even consider posting to these groups if you haven’t got time to participate yourself. For every photo you post, you may have to leave comments on up to 5 other photos. It’s extra work, but viewing other people’s work is inspiring and always a good way to improve your own technique.
Thumbnail
The thumbnail looks good. The swans have these bright orange beaks and are looking into the camera. It screams “Click Me!”
Time
I uploaded the photo to Flickr around 10:30am Irish time but I didn’t add it to any groups until much later in the day when the US is awake. I have consistently noticed that photos I add to Flickr groups early in the morning don’t build up the same number of views as quickly as when they’re posted later on in the day.
Links
One other factor that interestingness is judged upon is where traffic comes from. If someone links to your photos from outside Flickr like happened here that will help a lot. I have seen this a few times and each time it made a noticeable difference to how high a particular photo went.
Magic
And then add some Flickr magic to finish off!
Further Reading:
17 - Please Recycle
Empty beer can on the rocky beach at Church Bay, Co. Cork.