Discovering lost treasures!

I began the series when I was in London, being a tourist myself and snapping away, when I suddenly noticed that I was standing in the background of a couple who's picture was taken. I thought to myself that I am probably on quite a few strangers' pics and that that is quite an interesting thought...do you know on how many pictures you actually are, and that you might be gazed upon subconsciously by a Japanese family after their visit to the Lost City? In that moment my focus was redirected, away from Westminster Abbey, to the actual tourist, taking pictures of them documenting their surroundings.

Additionally I edited the pics allowing the original colour only to stay with the actual photographer, symbolically representing the background as the picture taken by the photographer.

Labels: candit camera, F80, flickr, nikon, Photography

By: Gregor | Wednesday, December 20 at Wednesday, December 20, 2006 | |

Flickr-ing away!

So I used to have a flickr account for my social development project here. Then there was the Blogging Indaba for which I was taking the official pics, and they where hosted here. For over a year now I have been a dedicated flickr pro member and have finally transferred all my images onto my main pro account. A little frustrating since the images had collected some commentary on the other accounts, but now they are at least all together, under one roof and much easier to manage.

So if you wondering why the latest pics are dated back to mid year it's because they where taken then :)

Labels: flickr, Photography, pro account

By: Gregor | Tuesday, December 19 at Tuesday, December 19, 2006 | |

What cameras do flickr users use?

This might interest all the photographers and mobloggers who use flickr. Flickr Camera Finder shows graphs which present the number of Flickr members who have uploaded at least one photo with a particular camera on a given day over the last year.

According to flickr, “the graphs are ‘normalized’, which is a fancy way of saying that they automatically correct for the fact that more people join Flickr each day: the graph moving up or down indicates a change in the camera's popularity relative to all other cameras used by Flickr members.”

This information is quite interesting as it represents various trends, firstly: what type of camera is being predominantly used, secondly: how popular certain models are, and thirdly: how unpopular they become with the introduction of new models.

Another great feature is that of choosing a particular camera model, analysing its specific usage on flickr, seeing an up-to-date price comparison, user’s reviews, camera specs and then even exploring photos that have been taken by that specific model.

Cellphone models are also represented, however are under-represented, as flickr cannot always auto detect the mobile camera used.

The most popular mobile camera used is the Sony Ericsson K750i, where as the most popular camera in the flickr community is the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, also known as the Canon EOS 350D.

For camera enthusiasts, or potential buyers, this could prove itself as a very useful tool, since it is the quality of the image that we strive for when purchasing such equipment. And lets face it, the images presented on product pages are all taken by professionals in highly controlled environments and do not represent the quality of use by the average user.

I think this is very clever and interesting information to add into a social networking platform such as flickr - since it is a network of photography enthusiasts.

Labels: camera finder, examples, flickr, Photography, review, specs

By: Gregor | Wednesday, November 22 at Wednesday, November 22, 2006 | |

A goat on the parking lot

When one has to describe Grahamstown one can name various distinctive scenarios, such as the donkey carts that every so often cause traffic jams on our way to lectures, the vast amount of religious structures, the numerous street kids and parking meters lingering on High Street, the persistently varying weather patterns, or the herds of drunk students stumbling across News Street towards Mr Burger or Friar Tucks at night.

So I started my little mission today, which is to document the town, its places and people (pics can be found on my flickr account). I'm going out daily and capturing a few images which I can relate to from my experience here.

And when I came back this morning I felt like I had not really captured a typical Grahamstown scenario, when I suddenly discovered a bakkie parked outside my place, with a man in a suit getting out of the vehicle, which was loaded with a goat. I have no idea where the man went, but for a good 15 minutes, I was sitting in front of my computer, starring out my window, at a goat on my parking lot. Could not have chosen a more typical scenario: random, very random, that = Grahamstown!

Watch my Grahamstown flickr set for new pics throughout the week, enjoy!

Labels: flickr, goat, Grahamstown

By: Gregor | Friday, November 10 at Friday, November 10, 2006 | |

Any Flickr color you want!

A very useful tool which I stumbled upon. It is called Flickr Color Selectr and allows the user to find photos by their colour schemes. All images that flickr finds for your specifically chosen colour are licensed under Creative Commons, making them (mostly) freely available for re-use. Further, one can rate the image. This tool can be very handy for web designers or any kind of creative work and the colour search results are astoundingly accurate.

Pic by RobbieTV

Labels: colour, Creative Commons, design, flickr

By: Gregor | Wednesday, October 18 at Wednesday, October 18, 2006 | |