Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

I thought today would be a good day to post a photo of New York City. I took this photo in the dead of winter while it was raining/snowing in Central Park.

Tonight’s Episode of Photo Talk Plus with my cohost Lotus Carroll will include five New Yorkers talking about photography — our special guest, New York Professional Photographer Daniel Krieger, along with our New Yorker panelists Alan Shapiro Leanne Staples Vivienne Gucwa (this is her first public hangout) and Google’s Titus Winters.

The New York G+ Photo Crew have hosted many photowalks there in NYC now and promise to give us some great tips about shooting in one of the most urban environments in the United States. Don’t miss this great episode tonight at 8PM PST right here in my G+ stream and on Keith Barrett’s Vidcast Network at http://vidcastnetwork.com at 8PM PST.

Over the years I’ve had many people ask me about purchasing prints of my work. With the rare exception I’ve turned down all of these requests. I’m not sure why. It’s probably mostly been that I’ve been too busy shooting and processing to get around to figuring out a good way to handle fulfillment.

Today I’ve begun offering prints of my work for sale for the first time ever. This is a work in progress and it may take me some time to get it right, but SmugMug (disclosure: who sponsor our Photo Talk Plus show on Wed nights) makes it super easy for me to sell my prints and they give the photographer a very generous payout of 85% of the photo markup. It seems like a lot of the photographers that I admire most like Trey Ratcliff and Scott Jarvie and Colby Brown are all using SmugMug to sell their prints. Its something that I should have done a long time ago and I’m glad that I’ve taken the time this past week to finally get this done.

To start with I’m offering about 5,000 of my images for sale for people interested in buying them. We’ll see how this goes and I’d be interested in any input from people about selling prints online. If you have any questions feel free to ask and I’ll try to answer them.

You can find the prints that I’m selling here at:

http://thomashawk.smugmug.com

Thanks to Markham Bennett and Katherine Cheng and their excellent team at +SmugMug for helping me get set up with this.

Earlier today I shared 1,500 kick ass photographers that I follow on G+ and that post got a lot of response. Ken Zuk posted a comment asking how I find the photographers to follow on Google Plus and what my criteria is for following other photographers. I started writing out a long comment as a response, but it felt more like a blog post so I thought I’d write one up here and then share it as a link response to Ken’s question.

The Google+ Photography Community is absolutely the most active, engaged, positive group of photographers I’ve ever seen anywhere on the web. It is rich and vibrant and active and full of amazing art. Over the past 7 months or so I’ve added tons of great photographers who I get to enjoy work by every single day.

So… where do I find these people?

1.) Probably the number one place I find photographers from on Google+ is reshares. Usually when someone reshares a photo it’s a pretty high quality photo. When I see these (if i like the work) I’ll click through to the photographer who was shared and explore more of their work. If I like it and they meet my criteria (see below) I’ll start following them.

2.) Comments — and not just comments on my photos. I’m frequently reading the comments on Google+ — on my photos, but even more on other people’s photos. If I see two active photographers who seem interesting and engaging and who are chatting with each other, I just might check them out. I like following active, engaged photographers and so if I like their stuff I’ll usually add them. Go Wolfpack.

3.) Outside resources. Jarek Klimek’s Photo Extract is AWESOME! Each day he puts up some of the best photographs on Google+ in huge full sized glory. Definitely check out his site and you will be blown away by some of the quality of photos showing up on Google+. GROUP/AS is another fantastic resource to find tons and tons of photographers currently posting to Google+.

4.) Contact diving. I love diving into other people’s contacts. Both who they are circling as well as who are circling them. It’s nice because if you click on that window it already shows you all the people you are already following. So if you are not following someone you can cmd-click on a link to their posting page and check them out to see if you like what they are doing.

5.) #hashtags. There are a lot of special hashtags that people use on Google+. There are different themed photography projects that are curated — #TuesDecay, #MacroMonday, #WeAreParents, #GrassTuesday, the list goes on and on. Frequently I’ll click on these hashtags that Google+ hyperlinks and explore the work of other photographers there. If I like them, then I’ll add them.

6.) Real life contacts. I’ve hosted hundreds of photowalks over the past decade. I’ve also participated in a number of group photography trips. Alot of times through photowalks and trips you end up getting to know people super well.

Some of my best friends today have come through real life photography meetups. I met my good Pal Robert Scoble almost 10 years ago at a meetup that he hosted at Barney’s Burgers in Noe Valley in San Francisco. Other times though the photowalks are short and big and hard to get to know everyone — but I always do try to go back after these walks and trips and check out people’s work (again through hashtags). #Yosemite2011, #DV2011, #FordNAIAS, #SJPhoto2011, etc.

I find alot of the people that I end up following through these walks/trips/walk tags/etc.

7.) Hangouts. I’m pretty active with hangouts — both mine and other people. Hangouts are a great way to meet people and how I’ve gotten to know alot of people better. So many of my great photographer contacts have come from hanging out.

8.) Popular Posts on Google+. It’s harder to find new talent here, but I’ll frequently check out the most popular posts on Google+ in the past hour over at SocialStatistics. Inevitably alot of the most popular posts are great photographs. I’m already following a lot of the people posted there, but every now and again I find someone new who I am not following yet.

9.) Other people’s shared circles. I’m constantly checking out other people’s shared circles. Here is how I manage that process and do it most efficiently. Usually if I trust someone’s opinion I’ll add the entire circle that they shared — but… I *WON’T* mix it in with my other contacts — instead I just keep it labeled as “their” circle.

After I’ve added their circle, I’ll browse through that stream and cherry pick people out of to integrate into *my* other circles that I like. I might do this for an hour. I might just let the circle set there for a week and get to it over time. After I feel like I’ve adequately examined the circle, I’ll just delete it. The best photographers I found in it I’ve integrated into my own and the rest of those who I’m not as crazy about from there get dropped.

10.) Other social networks. I like to spread the good word about G+ so I’ll frequently post about it on other sites — on Flickr, on Twitter, on Facebook. The other day I posted on Flickr asking which of my flickr contacts were on Google+. Alot of people responded with links to their G+ page. When they did I went and checked them out on G+. If I liked their stuff I added them there too.

So… as you can see I find people to follow on Google+ from a lot of different places.

Now… as far the criteria for what I’m looking for when I follow someone on Google+

1) Non-watermarker/signature photographers. I hate watermarks and signatures. They drive me bonkers. Nothing personal, it’s just a pet peeve of mine. My eye is drawn to the watermark almost every time. I can’t enjoy the photo. I get agitated. They usually look big and ugly and like something a low rent cheap hack wedding photographer would use. The bigger the signature/watermark the worse. Some people hide them so well that I don’t see them. I’m ok with that — but… if I see them…. GAWD! AWK!

Unless I know you really well and am willing to overlook it because I’m in love with you, then I’m probably not going to follow someone that is using watermarks.

2) Photographers who mostly post their own photographs. I want photographers in my circle who mostly post photos. It’s ok if they post other things sparingly — a post here or there about a photographic subject, a shared photo of someone else’s, a circle, a rant about whatever they had for breakfast (sparingly is the key here) — but… if a photographer is mostly posting what I consider noise (bad gifs, too much resharing of texty sort of articles, too much stupid stuff, etc.) then it’s hard for me to want to follow them — at least in my photographers circle. I may follow them in a different circle (like the stupid gif circle) that I never check, but I don’t really want super noisy people in my photographers circle.

Again, there are exceptions to all of these rules if I love you enough.

3) Photographers who are active. If the last time you posted a photograph on Google+ was last November, I probably am not following you. I want to see work by current, active photographers who post every week.

4) Good photography. It sort of goes without saying, but I want to see work that is aesthetically pleasing to me — interesting, creative, inspiring work.

5) Someone who is positive and not a hater/stalker/harasser/etc. Nothing turns me off more than seeing someone who tears apart others. I’m not just talking about my own work here. If I see someone say something awful to someone else, especially someone else that I respect, I’ll probably drop them. If it’s bad enough I might even block them. The online photosharing world unfortunately has a very small minority who are petty, jealous haters — fortunately for us on Google+ there is a very robust block tool which can keep them away from us most of the time.

You can follow me on Google+ here.

Over the last three days I’ve posted three circles of 500 each of all of the photographers that I’m currently following on Google+. For the most part these are active, engaged photographes on Google+ and represent some of the people that you may want to get to know if you want to participate more in the Photo Community that has emerged on Google+.

The Google+ Photography Community is the most active, engaged, positive group of photographers I’ve ever seen anywhere on the web. I’m constantly blown away and humbled by the quality of the work that people post there day in and day out. More than just the work, the photographers that I’ve met on there, that I’ve hung out with on there, that I’ve hung out in real life with on there (HIRL), are such amazing people that I’ve been so fortunate to have gotten to know.

Alot of people ask me how they might get more involved with Google+. I’d say that you can start with checking out these folks and I think you’ll find most of them are pretty easy to get along with and interact with. You can check out these circles here:

1,500 Kick Ass Photographers on Google+ (A-G, Part 1 of 3)
1,500 Kick Ass Photographers on Google+ (G-O, Part 2 of 3)
1,500 Kick Ass Photographers on Google+ (P-Z, Part 3 of 3)

Thanks to each and every photographer that I’ve gotten to know at Google+!

Back at the end of September I wrote a post critical of Flickr’s latest new feature “Photo Session.” The new feature seemed laughable to me and indicative of a more general trend of flickr just not really getting it when it came to innovation.

The feature allowed you to chat (old skool AOL style) with other users while looking at a photo together. You could also draw little doodles on the photos one at a time. Well apparently nobody is using the thing and as such they are taking it out back behind the barn (with the donkey in it) and putting it down.

Flickr Chief Markus Spiering blogs from the Flickr Blog: “Photo Session is a feature that offered a real-time way to share photos with other people in a browser, with no additional apps to install. The feature had been developed as a technology showcase, but has not seen the user adoption we were hoping for. The feature will be turned-off by March 20…”

In today’s world where we can get on Google+ live with audio and video and use screen share, Photo Session seemed like such an archaic outdated thing to even be launching. I could see a possible application with flickr porn, but because flickr didn’t allow you to share adult oriented content this way it didn’t even have an application there.

Flickr also announced today that they will be ending Picnik as well (which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone now that Google — a Yahoo competitor — acquired the Picnik company).

They are also cleaning house in a few other areas, discontinuing support for old browser versions, etc.

Now, on the plus side Spiering blogs that Flickr is starting out 2012 with a “renewed focus,” and promises that this year is going to be “big” and that we will see “significant updates to Flickr’s user experience, new features and offerings across devices.” This is the first time in years that I remember anyone actually talking about improving flickr’s game, let alone the guy in charge of flickr.

Of course, as they say, talk is cheap, so we’ll see how quickly Flickr begins rolling out these new features for us. For what it’s worth, I absolutely agree with their decision to kill Photo Session. Nobody was using it and it was embarrassingly bad. It’s good to see Flickr recognizing this and cutting that loss early.

So how could Flickr impress me in 2012?

Well, there are lots of things they could do. These are some of the top ways that I think they could improve Flickr for users.

1. More robust blocking and filtering tools. When I block somebody on Flickr they should totally be wiped off the planet of my flickr experience. Why let horrible people continue to harass me when I want nothing to do with them. Make them completely invisible. Do it like Google+ does. When I block someone anything they type anywhere on Flickr should disappear for me. Any comment on any photo. Any comment in any group thread. Anywhere. Nuke them entirely as far as I’m concerned. Make the bad crazy psycho people go away.

Also let me filter out things I don’t want to see. This is especially true with group threads. Let me choose to hide a group thread and never have to see it again. Also let me be able to choose to hide all photos by a certain user. Make these photos now disappear from search and everywhere on the site for me. I hate it when I do a search for “Austin” and have to see the same photographer come up over and over and over again with photos of Utah simply because he’s tagged his photos with Austin.

2. Create a basic group thread reader for mobile. Group threads are the lifeblood of social on Flickr. Make it as easy as possible for people to track their group threads. A simple text reader for group threads should be easy enough to implement.

3. Give me circles for my contacts. Right now Flickr only has two ways I can categorize my contacts friends/family and contacts. I need more buckets. Let me create circles of San Francisco photographers and neon photographers and Super close friends, and people I’ve photowalked with, and all kinds of other ways of organizing these contacts.

4. Let me browse a version of Explore by circle. Why force me to have to look at all of those crappy watermarked photos in Explore today by strangers. I don’t want to see those. Instead what I want to see is the most interesting photos from the past hour/day/week/month by whatever circle I want to browse. I want to interact with photos from my friends more than I want to interact with photos by strangers. Sure, give me an option to browse the section by “everyone,” but also give me the ability to filter it by whatever circle I want.

5. Get rid of the secret Explore blacklist. I was on it for over 2 years before they took me off it. It’s unfair. it makes Flickr feel hostile. I was talking with a user the other day who said that he thought he’d been blacklisted because his stuff was too Christian. Whether that’s true or not, knowing that users can be secretly blacklisted is harmful for community. Not knowing why you were blacklisted or even if you are blacklisted raises all kinds of suspicious worrying and concern.

6. Integrate SuprSetr into Flickr. Building albums by hand is so last decade. Let me build albums by keywords. Have them automatically update. Flickr says they are looking to hire engineers. Hire Jeremy Brooks, the creator of SuprSetr and have him build this tech out for you.

7. Refresh the most recent photos by my contacts page. Flickr’s former designer Timoni West last year called this the most important page on Flickr and it’s in desperate need of an overhaul. Let me customize this page way more. Right now I can view photos 4 ways in this section: the last single photo by my friends and family, the last single photo by my contacts, the last 5 photos by my friends and family or the last 5 photos by my contacts.

This is wayyyy too limiting. Why such arbitrary numbers? Let me decide how many I want to see, the last 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, 100, unlimted, whatever. Let me set any number I want here. Also let me filter it not just by my friends/family/contacts. Let me filter it by any flickr circle I want to. “Super Close Friends” “San Francisco Photogs” “Great Google+ Friends Also on Flickr” “Flickr Employees” “Bad ass HDR Shooters” “People Going on my Death Valley Trip” whatever. You get the idea. Let me filter this section by the most recent photos of whatever group of people I want.

Markus, I admire your resolve on making Flickr a better place in 2012. It’s refreshing hearing something like that from the top dog on Flickr. Now let’s see if team flickr can deliver.

Lotus Carroll and I had a GREAT time Wednesday night talking with and interviewing photographer Alan Shapiro for Episode 6 of Photo Talk Plus

If you missed the live broadcast you can catch the YouTube recording above now. We were joined by panelists Dave Cohen from Google Photos, Profesional Landscape Photographer Jeffrey Sullivan, G+ Scavenger Hunt Curator Chrysta Rae and Vidcast Network’s Keith Barrett.

During the show we talked about the new Adobe Lightroom 4 Beta, Lotus and my recent trip to photograph the North American International Auto Show with Ford Motor Company (check out my photos from the NAIAS show here) Mike Shaw’s write up on long exposure photography and the Lee Big Stopper filter, +Jeremy Cowart’s post on a new type of camera from CES, Leodor Selenier’s post on the photography of Kim Keever, and more.

This was a GREAT episode that you won’t want to miss. Sponsored by Drobo and SmugMug. Don’t forget to check them out at http://smugmug.com and http://drobo.com.

Personalized Google Search Results

Unpersonalized Google Search Results

The top story on Techmeme right now is Steven Levy’s “Is Too Much Plus a Minus for Google?”. Alot of people are talking about how including personalized Google+ search results is somehow bad or wrong. Earlier this week Twitter put out a statement saying that they thought this new search integration was “bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”

I disagree.

Sure, it may be be bad for *Twitter*, but to say it’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users is wrong. I have been hoping for the integration of social search into image search for years now. Back in 2006 I wrote a blog post when Yahoo first started showcasing Flickr images into their image search results. I was a fan. I’m not sure why everybody didn’t get all wound up when Yahoo started adding Flickr photos to their search but they now seem to be wound up that Google is essentially doing the same thing.

As a person, publisher, personal news organization (aka blogger) and Twitter user I *absolutely* want Google+ integrated into my search results.

Why?

Well look at the two images above. Both are searches for New York. The top one represents the results when I’m logged into Google. The bottom one represents when I’m logged out. Why is the top one so much better for me? Well, as a photographer, if I’m going to New York there’s a big chance that I’m going to want to be photographing in New York.

The unpersonalized results are pretty photos of New York but they provide me no additional information about the locations. The first result goes to a wikipedia page, lots go to travel oriented pages — they are nice postcardly type photos of New York but really do me no good.

Now the personalized results are *far* more useful. Google+ knows that I like shooting urban exploration photography. They also know that my friend Amy Heiden has a kick ass photo of urbex photography from New York. Now *that* image jumps to page one. This is great because I *know* Amy. We’re friends. So now I can check in with Amy and say, “wow! love that shot, would you mind telling me more about it and how you got in, etc.). This is far, far, far, more helpful and useful to me than the bland postcardly photos without Google+.

Two of the images on the page are like some of the postcardly overhead New York sky images on the generic unpersonalized page — only there is a huge KEY difference for me. They were taken by my friends Tom Harrison and Ingo Meckmann. There’s also a kick ass shot of the Apple Store taken by my friend Trey Ratcliff. These are not just people that I sort of know. These are people that I know well and have known for years. These are friends that I can check in with and say, “whoa! where did you get that awesome photo from, which skyscraper were you in.”

Personalized results on Google+ are wayyyyyy more helpful to me than unpersonal results. And this is exactly what Google should be doing. Helping me find the information that is most helpful and most useful to me. As a photographer, this means that I *want* them to give preference to photos by people that I know. People who I can talk to. People who will share information about these photos with me. I don’t want to see some bland photo by some Associated Press photographer who I don’t know, can’t talk to, and is too busy to share information with me personally.

It pains me that Twitter and Facebook want to take this away from me. That they want to take this really useful thing and somehow rob me of it. All because they are afraid that Google+ is going to be a bigger, better social network.

So as a user this is super helpful to me. What about as a blogger or publisher? YES! It’s also super helpful to me. Now my photos will be shown to all sorts of people who have chosen to follow me and my work. I get bigger distribution. It’s the dream of long tail content. I suppose if you’re not on Google+ as a blogger/publisher this gives you a pretty powerful incentive to get your ass on there ASAP, but what’s so bad about that? Google+ is a vastly better social network than Twitter (photos look awful as little links of text) or Facebook anyways.

It seems like Twitter and Facebook don’t want Google competing in the social network space. They want to keep it all for themselves. At the same time they seem to want to force Google to pay through the nose even to have access to their realtime data and firehose. If Facebook and Twitter don’t like this integration, let them give away this data for free to Google, or better yet, they can go build their own search engines. But they shouldn’t try to pull this integration away from me. Why should users get caught as casualties in their war against Google? As a person, as a publisher and yes… even as a Twitter user. (BTW Twitter, just because something might be bad for *YOU* doesn’t mean it’s bad for your users, like *ME*).

I for one welcome these new search results and am super excited about personalized search and how it is going to help me find the things I need to find more easily in the future.

Lotus Carroll and I had an AMAZING time shooting abandoned stuff ahead of the auto show this past weekend in Detroit with Ed Serecky.

Ed Serecky, aka petparazzi on Flickr (we’re working on getting him on G+) made a super cool 1:29 video of some of the places we got into. An awesome video of urban exploration photography in action Detroit style.

Over 100 photos of the North American International Auto Show here!

Watch them as a slide show here!

I was pleased to be able to attend the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) this year as an invited social media guest for The Ford Motor Company. The show opens this weekend, but they give the press a preview day ahead of the opening and Scott Monty, Ford’s Head of Social Media, and his excellent team hosted me and about 150 other bloggers as press for the event.

In addition to covering NAIAS, Ford also hosted us at The Henry Ford Museum and at their world headquarters. Scott also gave me a personal tour inside the historic Ford Rouge River plant where photography is not usually allowed but where I was allowed to photograph (these photos coming soon). Ford really rolled out the red carpet for us and even arranged for us to have a personal interview with Ford Motor Company CEO Alan Mulally along with many other of the Ford executives. Wow!

I’ve photographed a lot of cars and car shows before but never anything as huge or comprehensive as NAIAS. NAIAS is one of the largest automobile shows in the world and I had an absolute blast shooting it. In addition to all of the major car manufacturers showing off their upcoming models, the manufacturers also showcase many concept cars and share new technology ideas that they are working on for the future.

Anyways, I’ll post more on this trip later along with more photos, but here are a little over 100 of my photos of the show. If you like the photos and are an auto enthusiast feel free to share the photos with others. All of my photos are licensed creative commons non-commercial so feel free to use them if you’d like. If you’re a commercial blog feel free to use as well.

Thank you again to Scott Monty and Ford Motor Company for putting so much effort into organizing this trip for a bunch of bloggers. It’s great to see Ford reaching out beyond the traditional press/media channels and recognizing our content and getting us involved in an event like this. It really shows that Ford is a forward thinking company and gets where media is headed in the future.

#FordNAIAS