My Mountain Trail

A Flickr Banner

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

A new addition this evening.  I added the two rows of thumbnail photos to the header of my blog.  It’s not quite perfect yet, but it is okay for now. 

Flickr provides an extensive programming interface for accessing the photos and data stored on their site.  Here’s an interesting article about Flickr and the impact the photos there are having on the professional photography world.  As much as I love photography and appreciate the concept of making money from good photographs, the world is changing. 

When I work at the lookout, every 5th person that hikes to the top of Mt. Tamalpais is carrying a DSLR.  Many have a bag-load of lenses too.  Once that equipment investment is made, the cost of phototography is all about time and location.  I don’t think taking 100 pictures in the hopes that one will turn out is efficient or even realistic, but what is realistic is that when there is a database of 3.5 billion+ photos to search, and most of  them are culled to the top 5 of the 100, there are going to be good photographs available in the database.  Some are even excellent… or even great.  Though we have to wonder how we will ever find the great ones among all the noise. 

Ahh, I digress.  I have been working to understand the Flickr database interface so I can include my photos on this website (using my own code).  There are tools available to do this, but I wanted to write my own.  So, this is the first pass with updates to come in the future.  The top line of photos are the most recent Flickr uploads that have a tag referencing Mt. Tamalpais, and the next line of photos are my most recent uploads. 

Okay, one quick photo not on Flickr (Ah, never mind.  I decided to load it to Flickr too — make that 3.5 billion+1).  Cookie and I saw two rattlesnakes (about 100 yards apart) on our run a couple of evenings ago.  They were both about 18″-24″ long.  Here’s a diptych of them:

Cookie is way too smart than to approach these very interesting, but very dangerous creatures.  She scooted in close to me and, after our quick pics, moved along…

Oh, and back to the pro-photographer issue.  There will always be a place for those that can produce “the picture” without taking 100.  There may be a larger pool of folks that can do that — even amateurs, but the demand will always be there.  And, those pros that carry the risk of surviving in that market will do just fine.  The rest will just be amateurs like the rest of us.