May 2010 – Page 2 – Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

May 22, 2010May 22, 2010

Another Day, Another Site Ripping Off Your Flickr Images, This Time It’s Wapfever.com

Wapfever.com, seems to be an image downloading site similiar to imagelogr that was shut down yesterday. This time they are hosting your images without attribution or links back and allowing people to download your images directly from the site under their wallpaper section.

Check your flickr name here to see which images of yours they are ripping off.

Thanks to Burnt Umber again for the heads up.

There’s a thread on this in the Flickr Help Forum (where I’ve been permanently banned it would appear) here.

May 21, 2010May 22, 2010

Is Imagelogr.com Trying to Be the Largest Copyright Infringer of All Time?

My friends ZeeAnna! and Burnt Umber tipped me off today to a new search engine operating out there called Imagelogr. Only it’s not like your traditional image search engine. Most image search engines like Google or Bing include a link back to the images that they search from the web.

Not so with Imagelogr.

Imagelogr claims to be scraping the entire “free web” and seems to have hit Flickr especially hard, copying full-sized images of yours and mine to their own servers where they are hosting them without any attribution or links back to the original image in violation of all available licenses on Flickr. If people on Imagelogr want to they can manipulate your images, rotate them, see them at different sizes up to 300% and even download the images with a download button directly from the site.

Want to know if they’ve stolen some of your flickr Images? Just go here and type in your flickr name in the search box and see if any come back.

I don’t know much about the new search engine. There is not much information to identify who is actually behind it. According to their masked domain registation, the site, currently registered with godaddy, was set up there in April of 2010. The site currently boasts to be tracking over 24 *billion* (yes, billion with a B) images. If their numbers are true, this may in fact be the largest image grab in the history of Flickr.

At the site under a “legal” link there is a Terms of Service page that reads “coming soon.” Under their contact link they provide you the email address: imagelogr [at] gmail [dot] com. I emailed them to ask what is up with their view of image licensing and will report back if I get an answer back from them.

Under their main page of the site they have a site description that reads as follows: “Imagelogr.com is an image & picture search engine. We try to index pretty much every picture & image currently available on the free internet. With our powerful search engine finding these images should be fairly easy. We also offer a few image manipulation tools to stand out from the competition.”

I think it’s a bit misleading for them to try and tie their search engine with the “free” internet. It might give people the impression that any images that are on their site can be used for free, which is definitely not the case. People who erroneously assume that they can use the images on this site may end up being liable for copyright infringement if they do.

Interestingly enough, it looks like they are even indexing a bunch of Getty Images photographs, which I guarantee you won’t last long. In fact it appears that while the thumbnail images for Getty are still there, if you click through to the larger sized images many are already showing as not available on the site.

Some users at Flickr started complaining about this in a thread in the Flickr Help Forum, but in usual Flickr fashion they censored the thread by locking it down. Wouldn’t want it getting out there now that there was a wholesale rip off of flickr images going on. Thanks alot Flickr!

Update: It looks like Imagelogr is rapidly trying to do damage control. Since I wrote this post they have added a disclaimer on images that they may be copyrighted as well as added a source link to images and a link to their site for “image removal” which reads as follows:

“If you are the owner of copyrighted content that is displayed on Imagelogr.com, we will gladly remove those images.

Please email us the exact links of the image pages where your content is being displayed.

Make sure you send us the links to the image page, NOT the search pages.

GOOD EXAMPLE: http://www.imagelogr.com/image/nUE0pQbiY2Mupz00YaA0LKEcLl5zoTywn3VhL29gYmZjZwNiZmN4Zmp1BGp5AS9xATSwLwSwLwN0YzcjMj==/5+PM+New+York+City/jpeg
BAD EXAMPLE: http://www.imagelogr.com/images.php?q=new+york

Email your removal URL’s to imagelogr [at] gmail [dot] com and we will remove them within 48 hours.”

I’m not sure why they’d think that giving people a way to have their images removed absolves them from image theft, but we’ll see what happens. They seem to be adapting quickly.

Update #2: Imagelogr is now offline, if you go to their url it is replaced with the following message: “Imagelogr.com is currently offline as we are improving the website. Due to copyright issues we are now changing some stuff around to make people happy. Please check back soon.”

Update #3: On Slashdot here.

Update #4: A site called domainlogr.com is claiming responsibility for imagelogr with the following explanation:

“What Happened To Imagelogr.com?

If you are wondering why you are being redirected to domainlogr.com instead of landing on imagelogr.com, this page is for you.

We recently launched a little site called imagelogr.com using the Yahoo! BOSS api. It was a little image search engine that was far from finished. The site was just online, didn’t have any traffic, and we didn’t actually host any images. The whole site was maybe 50kb of php files 🙂

Because the ‘back-to-source’ links were still missing, someone started a post on Flickr claiming we stole billions of images. The counter on our frontpage stating (We are now indexing 25.000.000.00 images) was just a number made up by us, and actually didn’t mean much. It was a guess number of how many images Yahoo! would have in its database approximately.

When the news started to spread that we posted full size images without a ‘back-to-source’ link, we quickly took action and added 2 source links on each page and added a copyright notice stating that he image shown might be copyrighted. After the news was posted on Slashdot and countless other blog and news sites, the emails with complains were coming in rapidly.

In the end we just decided to take the website offline.

This whole Imagelogr project was a non-profit website, we did not display a single ad on the site. We simply tried to make a better images search engine than the currently available ones.

For now the website will remain offline, and it is our plan to turn it into a Google Images like website (with frames linking to the original source) over the next couple of days. Until that time, we are forwarding all traffic to this domain.”

May 18, 2010May 18, 2010

Ghosts Go First

May 18, 2010May 18, 2010

“No, Don’t Take My Picture, I Always Look Bad in Photos”

I hear this alot.

I’ve shot literally thousands of people over the years. I love shooting people. Every so often though someone will tell me not to take their picture, because “they always look bad in photos.

Of course I almost always comply if someone really truly doesn’t want to be photographed, but usually not before first trying to clarify things with them a little more.

Most of the time actually people who don’t want to be photographed really don’t mind. They are just shy and after talking a bit more agree to be photographed. Sometimes people though really do feel strongly about not being photographed and if this is the case I won’t shoot them — well unless it’s some sort of an altercation with a cop or security guard or something and they drew First Blood.

But.

Here’s the thing. The reason why some people “always look bad in photos,” is *exactly* because they object and complain about always looking bad in photos in the first place. It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. When I shoot someone, I might take 5 photos, or 10 photos, or 500 photos. But I don’t publish all 500 of course. I only process and publish the ones that I think are the absolute best. I want whomever I’m shooting to look their best and I want my work to reflect positively on them.

When I have 500 photos to choose from, the chances of my getting a good picture are *much* greater than when I only get three.

So the more comfortable you are with the photographer, the more you relax and let them do their job and even encourage them instead of objecting, the more likely that they will get a good shot of you. If the photographer senses that you are resistent, or even worse if you stop them after only taking a few shots, you almost assure that the resulting photo won’t be good.

My advice to people that want to look good in photographs? The key to getting a great photo taken is to make the photographer as comfortable shooting you as possible. Never object to being photographed or say that you look bad in photos. Never stop them while they are shooting. Relax, engage with them while they are shooting. Pose a little, but also be natural. Ask them about their camera, make *them* feel relaxed and unrushed. Ask them if you are in the best light or if you should move somewhere else. Because the more time they spend shooting you, the more total frames they end up making, the more likely that they will get a good one.

So if you don’t like how photos of you turn out, consider the interaction with the photographer. If your goal is to get the best photo possible of you, your job should be to encourage them and have them make as many frames with you as possible. Give them 50 frames to work with and they’ll get a better final photo of you than if you only let them have 3.

Most of the time that I’ve taken photos of relaxed people they end up liking them. I’ve had several people use my photo of them for their avatar online or link to the photos or republish them. But I think the key to taking a good photograph is how well you communicate to the photographer that you are comfortable with them shooting you.

This post inspired by Rob’s question on Buzz here.

May 18, 2010

Grace Cathedral

May 17, 2010May 17, 2010

My 40,000th Upload to Flickr

May 16, 2010May 17, 2010

Victoria Kolakowski, The Unethical Choice for Alameda Superior Court Judge, Vote No on Kolakowski

Just had my son’s baseball game interrupted due to plea for help by Victoria Kolakowski, apparently she’s running for Judge in Alameda County and she just lost my vote for sure.

1. I expect that when I put my phone number on the do not call list that politicians respect that. (Yes, I know that those crafty bastard politicians are legally exempt from the do not call list, but it doesn’t mean that they can’t abide by it voluntarily).

2. To show so little respect for me, my time, my wishes tells me that a candidate has no interest in the things that are important to me. They have no interest in representing me.

3. It’s even worse when they don’t even have the decency to have a real person call you, instead using a robo dialer and recorded message.

4. On my cell phone.

5. On a Sunday during my son’s baseball game (while he was batting actually).

Join me and thousands of other Alameda County residents in voting “No” on Victoria Kolakowski. Together we can take back our right to not have intrusive unwanted phone spam.

Update: Vicky Kowlakowski responds on Facebook:

“I am sorry that you were inconvenienced. I was told that the phone numbers were obtained from the voter files from the county. Those are public records with information provided by the voters on their voter registration forms. As you know (you mention it on your blog link), the Do Not Call list does not apply to political calls, and it appears that you listed your cell phone as your contact number with the county, which is why you were called at that number. I apologize for the interruption of your time with your family – that was never my intention, and the timing was contrary to my instructions.”

May 16, 2010

D Young V

D Young V piece on the corner of Geary and Jones. D Young V shows at White Walls.

May 16, 2010May 16, 2010

Blek le Rat & Above, White Walls Gallery

Blek le Rat & Above
May 1 – June 5, 2010
White Walls Gallery
839 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA
Open Tues – Sat 12PM – 7PM

“Every time I think I’ve painted something slightly original, I find out that Blek Le Rat has done it as well, only twenty years earlier.”
Banksy

“My stencils are a present, introducing people to the world of art, loaded with a political message. This movement is the democratisation of art: if the people cannot come to the gallery, we bring the gallery to the people!”
Blek le Rat

Back before there was Banksy, there was Blek le Rat. One of the earliest urban street artists, Blek le Rat is considered the godfather of stencil graffiti. The first artist to produce life sized stencils, Blek has been decorating the streets of Paris and the rest of the world for over two decades.

Fortunately for us here in San Francisco, Blek is currently showing his work at the White Walls Gallery on Larkin Street. I stopped by White Walls to check out his work and was impressed with a gallery full of interesting and politically provocative images.

Sharing a show with Blek is Above, a younger version of Blek, doing his own stencils in his own unique new way. Above started traditional graffiti of tagging freight trains in California in 1995 and then moved to Paris at the age of 19 where he started painting his trademark arrow (pointing above) all around the city. Since then Above has been consistently traveling around the world doing many large self-financed “tours” with each tour exploring a new medium or style of artworks.