Flickr Adds Pinterest Restrictions to Better Reflect Users Sharing Preferences (See Update)
UPDATE: When I wrote this story I tested Flickr’s behavior on how a default account is set up. In my test image it appeared that this image was coded by default as “all rights reserved” with sharing disabled and I could not pin it. Based on this behavior by Flickr, I assumed that all default photos (the majority on Flickr) could not be pinned. In actuality the fact that this account was set up with the “all rights reserved” “no sharing” options default may have been an error in the default settings on flickr. I’m now told by Flickr that the default setting actually *should* be all rights reserved sharing enabled.
What this means is that the only photos that are being restricted from Pinterest are a very small number of photos where users have consciously chosen to restrict their sharing elsewhere on the web. This is actually a pretty smart thing to do to give these users more control over their flickr photos. The vast majority of all rights reserved images on flickr then are still very much able to be shared to Pinterest. Aaron Hockley has a good rundown on the situation here.
Original article corrected:
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Flickr apparently disabled the ability to post Flickr photos to Pinterest when the photo is uploaded using the all rights reserved license that Flickr defaults to when a user has opted not to share their images outside of flickr in their flickr settings.
1. This limitation is super easy to get around. Just install Dan Pupius’ mega-excellent FitrFlickr extension. Now on a flickr images’ main photo page under every photo will be direct links to the various sized copies of the images that flickr stores. Here you can easily just go to where the photo is stored directly and share that version of the image circumventing flickr’s code that has been put in place.
2. If you’ve disabled sharing in the past but now want people to be able to share them on Pinterest, just go to your sharing options and turn the default no to “yes, that would be lovely.”
3. One of the biggest things that this does is helps to make sure that flickr’s underground porn world stays underground. The “no pin” tag has been put on all non-safe, non-public photos on Flickr non matter what settings you’ve put on your photostream.
You can of course still post non-safe, non-public photos with the hack that I described in item 1. For example. Flickr has coded this photo that I took of a painting at the Chicago Art Institute as naughty (rolls eyes) — so if you try to pin it you can’t. But if you go to where flickr actually stores the image you can pin it from there just fine. And here it is, a super naughty non-safe flickr photo live living and breathing on Pinterest. ๐
4. Flickr Help Forum thread on the topic here.
As far as Pinterest goes generally speaking, I like it. I blogged about it the other day here. My friend Trey Ratcliff blogged about it the other day as well here. Alot of photographers are pretty wound up about it though. The most recent bugaboo is that Pinterest strips your metadata when a photo is uploaded there. This upsets alot of people because they embed things like their copyright in the metadata on their photos. Thanks for the heads up on the metadata thing Gary!
My view in general on Pinterest is that many photographers are overreacting about it. Pinterest is not going to steal your photos and sell them as stock photography no matter what mumbo jumbo you might come up with on their TOU. Pinterest users are really not even the type to buy your photos. They’re basically a bunch girls/women who like to scrapbook stuff (and Trey Ratcliff). It’s no different than back in the olden days when bored housewives would cut pictures out of Good Housekeeping magazine and put them in shoe boxes to show them to their girlfriends later — or some girl printing up a photo of Justin Bieber from the internet to hang up in her locker at school. [no chauvinism meant or intended by describing Pinterest as a largely female user base with my flowery language in this part. It’s a cool site for men and women both]
Oh, and if you want to follow me on Pinterst, you can find me here.
Update: I’d like to emphasize that this change only affects the *Default* all rights reserved photos uploaded to flickr. I put default in my headline specifically to try to emphasize that this applied to default all rights reserved photos, not every all rights reserved photo on Flickr. In point #2 I show users who are using all rights reserved licenses with the original default how they can actually use the settings on flickr to change the default no share option and control how their photos are shared or not with that setting.
Lytro Powered Eric Cheng
BAMMMMM!!!!!! Photo Talk Plus, Episode 12
In this episode cohost +Lotus Carroll and myself interview the amazing G+ photographer +Teresa Stover
Teresa talks about shooting in West Virginia and shows us some of her beautiful self portrait work as well stunning landscapes and poignant underground photos of West Virginia coal miners. She talks about her history as a photographer, and both her in camera and processing techniques.
?+Keith Barrett +Chris Chabot (from Google), +Niki Aguirre and +Ricardo Williams (BAMMMM!!) join as guest panelists for this great episode.
Other topics include, an update to Google+’s photo lightbox, the new +Ron Clifford +Jan Kabili Photoshop hangout show (every other Tuesday at 6pm PST), an interesting advert by Canon courtesy of your main man +Scott Jarvie an update on a massive photowalk taking place this Sunday in Los Angeles with +Trey Ratcliff and +Tom Anderson the new +Lytro camera, +Vivienne Gucwa’s new +SmugMug gallery page of prints for sale and much, much more.
As always thanks to our sponsors +SmugMug and +Drobo Be sure to check them out at http://smugmug.com and http://drobo.com
Also don’t miss this next week’s show on February 29th when we interview +Robert Scoble.
Join Us Tonight Live at 8PM for Photo Talk Plus, Episode 12 With Teresa Stover
photo by Teresa Stover.
YES YES YES YES!!! Be sure to tune in tonight and join us at 8PM PST. LIVE at http://vidcastnetwork.com
We’re going to be interviewing the one and only +Teresa Stover on +Photo Talk Plus tonight.
Joining +Lotus Carroll and I will be panelists +Chris Chabot (from Google), +Keith Barrett from +Vidcast Network, +Niki Aguirre and +Ricardo Williams.
Lots of good topics tonight including an update on +Jan Kabili and +Ron Clifford’s new Photoshop Hangout show. Thoughts on this week’s new Lightbox updates. An inspiring sunset post by +Scott Jarvie. An update on the upcoming Los Angeles Photowalk on Sunday with +Trey Ratcliff and +Tom Anderson which will probably be the biggerst G+ photowalk we’ve seen thus far. I had coffee with Trey, Tom and +Lytro’s +Eric Cheng this morning where we got to see the new Lytro camera live in action and much more. Don’t miss this great show tonight.
As usual tonight’s show is brought to you by our great friends over at +SmugMug and +Drobo. Have you seen +Vivienne Gucwa’s new SmugMug page where she is selling prints yet? It’s AWESOME! Be sure to check our great sponsors out at http://smugmug.com and http://drobo.com.
Photo Talk Plus, Episode 11, With Special Guest Ivan Makarov!
What a great episode of Photo Talk Plus. In this episode cohost Lotus Carroll and myself interview photographer and curator of the new Plus One Collection Book, Ivan Makarov.
Ivan gives all of the background on how this great book came into being and also shares with us some of his own work from here in the United States and also his home country of the Soviet Union.
Keith Barrett, Ricardo Lagos, Nick Gatens and Kerry Murphy join as guest panelists.
In addition to Ivan’s work and the Plus One Collection book, show topics include, Exposed, The G+ Photography Journal, Tom Anderson’s HDR work in Hawaii, the hot new photo bookmarking site Pinterest, and Google’s advertisement at the Grammy’s about using Google as a backup for your cellphone photos.
As always thanks to our sponsors SmugMug and Drobo. Be sure to check them out at http://smugmug.com and http://drobo.com
Also be sure and join us tomorrow night here again at 8PM PST Live when we interview Teresa Stover in Photo Talk Plus Episode 12!!!
Flickr Freshening Up the Look for 2012
Adrianne Jeffries over at Betabeat has a nice scoop on the fresh new page design that Flickr is apparently rolling out next Tuesday for their photos from your contacts page. In her post titled “Flickr is Getting a Major Makeover” she reports on her meeting with Flickr Head of Product Markus Spiering and includes at least one screen shot of what the new page is going to look like.
I haven’t played around with the new page yet, but I’m liking what I see so far from the screenshot. The photos from your contacts’ page is of one of the most popular and visited pages on Flickr.
The old layout for this page was sort of a clunky screen that hadn’t changed much for many years at flickr. It was criticized last year by Flickr Designer Timoni West when she still worked at Flickr in a post titled “The Most Important Page on Flickr.”
The new design looks much more interactive with a focus on larger photos, hover over pop out magnification, and a jigsaw sort of layout that allows the photos on the page to take the maximum space possible with very little white space. It looks quite a bit more like what Google+’s photo pages look like actually and feels like a much more elegant design. Now how cool would it be if this new page also had infinite scrolling as well. ๐
According to Jefferies, the new page is scheduled to roll out next Tuesday, February 28th along with a revamp of Flickr’s upload page as well.
I have to say that I like seeing this sort of fresh new look come out of Flickr — and I think it’s a good sign that Chief Markus Spiering is looking to make good on his promise last month of a renewed focus on Flickr this year.
I don’t know anything about how the functionality of the page might change yet, but hopefully we see some improvement there as well — either with this roll out or subsequent roll outs. At present the current page offers you four ways to view your contacts’ photos.
1. The last 1 photo by all of your “friends.”
2. The last 1 photo by all of your “contacts” (contacts include “friends” and “contacts”).
3. The last 5 photos by all of your “friends.”
4. The last 5 photos by all of your “contacts.”
Personally I’d like to see more ways that flickr users can group their contacts. Having only two buckets contacts vs. friends/family is not enough. Flickr needs circles like Google+ has where we can filter this page view by more than just these two buckets.
I’d also like to see new ways to sort photos on this page beyond just recency. It would be super cool if flickr let us sort this page also by interestingness within time periods (last hour, 12 hours, day, week month). I suspect this sort of functionality enhancement would involve a bit more coding than flickr may have done for next week’s refresh, but the important thing is that Flickr is improving this page and that’s a huge step in the right direction and a positive sign coming from Flickr. G+’s equivalent photo page could use some of this sort of functionality as well.
Also in her article, Jefferies comments about the recent round of layoffs that took place in the customer service area at Flickr. Former Flickr engineer Nolan Caudill wrote a pretty scathing blog post about the layoffs and cited it as evidence that the suits at Yahoo were out of touch with Flickr. Former Yahoo Andy Baio circulated a rumor on twitter that Flickr management was actually blindsided by the layoffs. In Jeffries’ article though she quotes Spiering that the layoffs were done to centralize Flickr’s support with other Yahoo customer support, making it available 24 hours a day.
Initially I wondered about those layoffs myself and blogged on them here — but the more I think about them I’m now starting to wonder if those layoffs actually aren’t a positive step forward by Flickr. I’m not going to name names and I mean no disrespect to anyone who lost their job, but at least one of the individuals who reportedly lost their job in the layoffs really was seen as one of the most hated customer service reps on the site and had taken a lot of criticism over the years for what many users felt were bad account and content deletion decisions. Perhaps clearing out some of the dead wood so to speak is actually a step forward and not backwards.
Anyways, a very solid article on change at Flickr by Jeffries, who is covering flickr better than just about anyone out there these days — and exciting that we’ll likely be able to play with a cooler new version of Flickr next Tuesday. Revamping the contacts photo page and making it easier/faster/bigger/better to see your contacts’ photos should create more interactivity on Flickr which is a super positive thing.
Update: Apparently Flickr has been testing this new layout for almost 6 weeks now. Here’s a link to the group of people who have been testing the new layout if you want to try to get into it deeper. Comments in this group would seem to confirm that continuous scrolling is also coming to flickr.
Hey “Emerging Arts Professionals” Thanks for Stealing My Photo
Alot of my photos get ripped off. There are thousands of them all over the internet. I personally am a big believer in sort of letting the small stuff go you know. I’m about making art and as an artist the more people that see my work the better — you’ll hear this alot from me. I mean people *should* ask and if they do ask I say yes most of the time — unless it’s a commercial situation and then I’ll ask to get paid, but I’m a reasonable guy who likes to share.
But every so often someone steals your work and they just hit all the right hot spots for you. So I was bummed to find out the other day that one of my all rights reserved photographs (and I don’t have alot of these, almost all of my work is licensed Creative Commons non-commercial which still requires attribution though) was pilfered by Emerging Arts Professionals. Even lamer was their excuse posted above for why they posted my photo without permission, attribution or compensation as required by a license.
“Hi Mike & Thomas: If this photo belongs to one of you, I do apologize on behalf of EAP. We found it, unattributed, on this site. It’s also available in other places online, also without attribution.”
So let me get this straight. The excuse for why an Arts Professionals organization steals my image and thinks it is ok is because they found my image somewhere on the web? These are supposed to be Professionals working in the Arts industry and they think it’s ok to steal images?
Now you might ask why I care as I’ve got a pretty liberal attitude towards the use of my work. In this case though I care because my work is being pilfered to promote a talk given by three representatives of the SF MOMA — (Megan Brian, Education and Public Programs Coordinator SFMOMA, Melanie Hwang, Membership Manager SFMOMA, and Louise Yokoi, Development Associate, Individual Giving SFMOMA).
The very same SF MOMA that threw me out on my ass a few years back for the crime of photography. The same SF MOMA that had their Director of Visitor Relations and two security guards personally escort me out of the museum and boot me right out the door to the curb along with a nice lewd hand gesture towards me. This, when I was a paying and sustaining member in good standing at the Museum which allows photography.
The museum accused me of voyeurism at the time (I was shooting the interior architecture of the museum with a 14mm lens when I was booted, you can see my “voyeuristic” shot I took here). Since ejecting me from the museum, the museum has never once apologized. They’ve never once tried to reach out to me to express regret over the situation. They even had the balls after accusing me of voyeurism of running a specific show at their museum dedicated to of all things *voyeurism*! — you know the sorts of shots that they accused me of taking with my 14mm lens before kicking me out without even giving me a chance to show them my ultra wide angle photos or explain. SF MOMA’s press release for their voyeurism show comes complete with a photo of some woman’s ass by the way — but hey, I guess that’s “art,” unlike my crappy photography which is only good enough for using to promote talks by their executives.
Arts Professionals should know better than to steal photos without asking I think — and if they are going to steal a photo, it’s probably best that they don’t steal a photo promoting a talk by an organization that treated someone so rudely and horribly in the past.
Oh, and SFMOMA? You still owe me an apology for throwing me out of your museum without just cause. I won’t be holding my breath. Emerging Arts Professionals? Shoot me an email and I’ll tell you where you can send the check to pay for the image which I would have told you you couldn’t use to promote the SFMOMA had you bothered to ask.
And just because something’s on the web unattributed, doesn’t mean you can just take it if you feel like it. It takes about two seconds most of the time to use a reverse image search on Google to see who owns a photo. Arts Professionals like you guys really should keep up with the latest technology, especially when some of you work for an organization as “prestigious” as the SF MOMA.
Update: So when I and a few other people commented on the image on Emerging Arts Professional’s blog objecting to the infringement they deleted the comments. These were respectful comments rightfully objecting to the unauthorized use. How forward thinking for a so called “Art’s” organization to employ censorship in addition to infringement and bad customer service. What a fine organization.
American Graffiti
I went out shooting with Sly and Charli and Jay yesterday. A few things about the making of this shot.
1. Charli is a kick ass model. Thanks to Charli who so generously gives of herself to make amazing art. The only models I’ve really ever shot are the ones that I know. I’m not sure why. There’s comfort and familiarity maybe that helps pull a shot off. I’ve known Charli Blake and Sly for a while now and they are two of the nicest most generous people you’ll ever know. This could have been a cool graffiti shot, but having Charli in it really throws it over the top for me. When Charli comes out shooting with us it’s not just hoping in the car and let’s go. She spends a ton of time with makeup, the right outfits, etc. She’s as good as they get when it comes to modeling and I’m lucky to have access to such a Pro at what she dos.
2. This shot is actually a collaboration effort. And thanks to Sly Vegas for much more than just being a shooting buddy. Sly got the *coolest* new flashlights. Coast Flashlights
I know what you’re thinking, $300 for a flashlight?!?!? But, yeah, $300 is an amazing deal for this flashlight. The difference between lighting Charli up with one of these flashlights and using natural light alone is like night and day. Just the right light, just the right colorcast. I’m not normally a guy who really obsesses about lighting, but after seeing what Sly could do with this thing I’m so getting one. Coast should totally sponsor Sly because he’s gonna sell alot of flashlights for them when people see what he’s doing with them.
3. Also Charli and Sly both helped me process this shot last night. Charli helped with the crop and Sly contributed with the mask to get the right exposure around the edges of the photo. We all three processed it together just before I posted it last night. After we processed it we were sitting around thinking of a title. I’m hyper focused on shooting America these days and so I was muddling around American Art, American Beauty (after the movie), and all of sudden Sly bursts out “American Graffiti” which is actually the *best* title for this shot. And a perfect description for this place we shot in Alameda yesterday.
4. We had great energy going yesterday. Four good friends, Jay, Sly, Charli and myself just had a really nice groove going. I’m not going to get into the whole bust thing earlier in the morning because some things that involve cops are probably best not blogged about, but I know I was down, and spending the rest of the day inside this magical location with good friends like these guys was the best pick me up I could have gotten. Afterwards we ate some great American Steaks at my place and I think all four of us felt like we had one of those amazing days with the camera that you never seem to get enough of.
Join Us Tonight LIVE 8PM PST for Photo Talk Plus Episode 11, With Special Guest Ivan Makarov
Photo Talk Plus, Episode 11, With Special Guest Ivan Makarov
*TONIGHT!!!! 8PM PST — http://vidcastnetwork.com*
I took this photo at a wedding that I shot a while back with my good Pal Ivan Makarov. Ivan is our special guest tonight on Photo Talk Plus. In addition to talking about the latest Plus One Collection book that he’s spearheaded, he’s also going to be sharing a lot about his own work and techniques on the show.
Join my cohost Lotus Carroll along with this week’s panelists Google’s Ricardo Lagos, Kerry Murphy, Nick Gatens, and Keith Barrett, as we talk with Ivan about the upcoming book and his own work as well as discuss some of the biggest Google+ Photography stories of the past week.
This week’s show is sponsored by our wonderful sponsors SmugMug and Drobo. Be sure to check them out at http://smugmug.com and http://drobo.com!