The Middle
At the SFlickr second anniversary meetup I got in a conversation about Flickr Rankings. The guy was talking about how we are all obsessed with explorer. That is the bit thing at Flickr. He got his father on flickr. His father is now retired and spending all his time taking photos. He father is getting more photos into explorer than he is.
I told him that I do not care about Explorer or interestingness. I do not care about these thing because I cannot predict what photos these ratings will reward. I know it has something to do with how comments an your photos and who likes them. That is not interesting to me. I am never sure what will get the good ratings. I told him that is why views are my obsession.
For a long time my obsession was with my most viewed photos. I quickly learned that my most view viewed photos were going to sort them self out. After the group laptop stickers got posted to boing boing some pretty bad pictures got over a thousand views. I realized that I had no control over my most viewed photos.
Now I am interested in the middle of my collection. Where is the 50% point for photos, the average, I think this is a real measure of a photostream. I even started a group for people to post those photos, The Middle. I think of the great things about flickr is seeing how good average is. With hundreds of average photos all together you can see how beautiful this world really is.
If your middle photo is too good, you are not posting enough photos. If your middle photo is too bad, you need to take better photos. I think there is a zen of the middle photo. This is where you learn what someone thinks of flickr.
What does your middle look like?
I told him that I do not care about Explorer or interestingness. I do not care about these thing because I cannot predict what photos these ratings will reward. I know it has something to do with how comments an your photos and who likes them. That is not interesting to me. I am never sure what will get the good ratings. I told him that is why views are my obsession.
For a long time my obsession was with my most viewed photos. I quickly learned that my most view viewed photos were going to sort them self out. After the group laptop stickers got posted to boing boing some pretty bad pictures got over a thousand views. I realized that I had no control over my most viewed photos.
Now I am interested in the middle of my collection. Where is the 50% point for photos, the average, I think this is a real measure of a photostream. I even started a group for people to post those photos, The Middle. I think of the great things about flickr is seeing how good average is. With hundreds of average photos all together you can see how beautiful this world really is.
If your middle photo is too good, you are not posting enough photos. If your middle photo is too bad, you need to take better photos. I think there is a zen of the middle photo. This is where you learn what someone thinks of flickr.
What does your middle look like?
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