Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with photos

How to send phone pics to a spartan web site via Flickr?

ehamiter — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:16:59 -0800

What's a minimal self-hosted "blog" that hooks into Flickr's API so I can send photos from my camera directly to my web site? Ideally, I want a blog that is not a blog. I don't want tags, or articles, or categories, or spam filters, or any of that stuff. A perfect solution workflow would be this:

I take a picture with my phone
I send it to Flickr via e-mail
Flickr then posts it to my website with no interaction

The ideal layout would be a main site title, and each time I send a photo it appears as the newest one, using the title I typed. There would be maybe 10 photos on the main page. You could access earlier photos by clicking "older" or something like that which would serve as the archives.

I can do this with wordpress, movable type, typepad, etc., but they are all way too huge feature-wise and not what I want. I can also do this with blogger or tumblr, but they are not self-hosted. I tried this recently with textpattern, but the templates and general admin are much too complicated for my needs.

It should be very simple, aesthetics-wise. You could maybe change the color scheme / typography via CSS, but that's about it.

Does something like this exist? For the Flickr hook-in it needs to be a MetaWeblogAPI Enabled Blog or other Flickr-approved application.

Thanks for any suggestions.

keeping my life off of Facebook while refusing to be a part of it?

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:38:27 -0800

As a Facebook refuser (I've never signed up, never will) is there a best way to monitor any photos or writings that may be linked to my (quite rare) real name? I have a very unique last name, and my combination of $firstname $lastname is shared by fewer than a dozen people in the US, and I'm the only one in my State with this combination.

I don't have any mortal enemies or more/worse skeletons in the closet than the average person my age, but I like to control what is tied to my name, and I'd be pretty pissed off if there was something floating in facebook that I was unaware of that I don't want anyone with a keyboard seeing. At least with Flickr I can search public photos and tags.

I'm not losing any sleep over this, but *other than* signing up for an account, is there anything else I can do? I have a few friends that I guess I could ask to look for me, but does that seem weird? Can photos on FaceBook only be tagged with names that are linked to other FB accounts?

Out of the Flickr group loop

Mael Oui — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:01:02 -0800

Flickr filter: I'm looking for an easy way to keep up with all the photo additions to my 30+ groups on Flickr. It seems that the only way to be notified of additions to groups' pools on Flickr is to manually go to each group (takes up too much time) or to subscribe to RSS feeds. Some of the groups I'm in have a huge amount of posts every day, so I don't want to clutter my RSS reader any more than it already is. Those two options are out, as far as I'm concerned.

You know how you can see (for instance) five new pictures from each of your contacts since your last log-in (Contacts > Most recent uploads)? I want this, but for the groups that I'm in. Activity > In Your Groups (aka 'Recent Updates in your Groups') doesn't do what I want it to do. That seems to be 'topics or replies', which I'm not interested in. I figured I was overlooking this feature, so I did ask on the official Flickr forums. I was told such a feature didn't exist on the site, and it looks like they haven't added it recently.

I had been using a non-Flickr affiliated site called Groupr that did EXACTLY what I wanted. I adored Groupr. You'd put in a user name, and it would show all their public groups. It would show the latest, say, six pictures from each group's photo pool (and each picture linked back to the photo on Flickr). It was a nice minimal way to keep up with the new additions to groups. Unfortunately, the site is gone (seemingly forever), and I've tried fruitlessly to find a replacement. Does anyone know of another site/service that works like Groupr did? Barring that, do you have any good tips or tricks for staying up-to-date in the helter-skelter world of Flickr groups? TIA!

Dorian Gray and a guest

cjorgensen — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:00:36 -0800

My girlfriend and I are planning to give photos we had taken of us to our families (and some friends) for Christmas. We have a few questions. The most important—in my mind—is frames. We need at least 4 (probably more) frames for these photos. We'd like them to be innocuous and uniform without being too generic (no crystal). We'd like to order them all from the same place. The cheaper the better (since this will not be the main present) but we're willing to spend $20 each if we have to (we won't quibble on an extra buck or two, but $10 is the actual target). The pictures are 8x10. We're hoping for answers that are more creative than "Walmart/Target have good cheap frames." We also have way too little time for the "This kit is cool." We're not making any frames.

Secondarily, should we give them all the same photo? If we decide to give each person different pictures should we provide them with access to the pool of available options and offer to swap? Would asking something like, "If you like one of these better let us know, and we'd be happy to swap yours for it. Or, if you want them all, we can order you a set at the cost of X."

Thanks.

I need a gallery script that isn't retarded.

borkingchikapa — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:23:45 -0800

I have a lot of photos on my blog that I want to put into a gallery, but there are so many that I don't want to deal with reuploading them somewhere or installing a feature-creepy (I just made that up!) gallery script and putting them all into it. They're all in a big messy directory on my server, so is there a very simple script that will look in the directory for anything that's a JPG and spit it out in gallery format? Or, if you know PHP: I could probably write the thing myself, but what would the code for "look in /directoryx/, put all filenames into this array" look like?

iPhone not syncing calendars, photos, and triplicated my notes. Help?

scazza — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:02:40 -0800

iPhone not syncing calendars, photos, and triplicated my notes. Help? I am looking for help with this issue AND/OR great resources to help. There are tons of forums, its difficult to find my answer.

It started with my photos. First iTunes would not sync my selected album. I would sync over and over, and it would say it synced but on my phone it would say "no photos or videos." Then it stopped showing any options or albums under "Selected albums."

Then I noticed that it triplicated my notes.

Most importantly, since I really only got this phone years ago for the calendar and never had problems until now, it has stopped syning my calendar. Like iPhoto it has stopped showing any options under "Selected calendars." I am afraid to restore because I don't want to lose the information on my phone. It says it's backed it up, but obviously it's lied to me in the past.

It looks like there's a communication breakdown between iTunes & these other programs; like iTunes can't see my calendars, photo albums, & notes. Do I downgrade my software? I never had problems before. I upgraded to the latest Mac OS as well and that has made a lot of programs crash that never crashed before, my computer crashed 3x yesterday. My calendar is the most important, vital part of having this phone at all. I am starting to panic. My phone is 3G and I'm wondering if Apple is just dropping the ball on supporting not the latest model of their products.

3D effect with 2 animated photos

bru — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:05:02 -0800

Looking for a site aggregating a series of "2 slightly different pictures of the same subject animated in a loop". I have visited a few weeks ago a site showing examples of "2 slightly different pictures of the same subject animated in a loop", a very simple way of obtaining a 3D effect. I had probably found it in a Twitter link, and I thought it would be easy to find again. Wrong: Twitter search, Google, flickr: nothing.

Best practices for photo metadata?

DevilsAdvocate — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:14:09 -0800

Best practices for recording photo metadata? What I'd like to be able to do inside, plus many questions about what's possible today or likely to be possible in the future. Let's start with my ideal vision: I'd like to be able to record various metadata within image files, and have them automatically and correctly transferred to photo-sharing websites, apps, etc., that I might upload/import said images to. The basic idea is that I'd like to associate the metadata with each photo once, so if I upload them to Flickr today, and to Smugmug in six months, and a website or app which doesn't exist today two years from now, I only have to enter all the metadata once and don't have to re-enter it for each new website/app I'm using.

The particular information I'd like to be able to record includes:
*Time/Date, ideally including time zone, although the EXIF specification doesn't record time zone
*Location, from GPS data (lat./long./alt.)
*Title
*Caption (or call these two "short caption" and "long caption" or whatever you want; the point is that in some places a description of a few words is appropriate, for some several sentences may be; I'd like to be able to record both)
*Keywords, a.k.a. tags (but subject tags, a la Flickr, not to be confused with the metadata fields in general which are also sometimes called tags)
*Copyright statement
*License statement (e.g., a Creative Commons license)

I've seen this website and these guidelines. From the latter I gather there's three standards in at least moderate use, EXIF, IPTC-IIM, and XMP. I know websites such as Flickr and Smugmug currently read EXIF data and make use of some of the fields; are there any that read IPTC-IIM or XMP? Is this likely in the future? Is it worth even bothering to try to record metadata in IPTC-IIM or XMP? If so, any suggestions for tools to use (under Windows XP and/or Vista)? I have an EXIF editor, so I don't need recommendations for one of those, but if there are tools which allow one to edit EXIF plus one or both of the others, I'd be interested

Date/time and GPS data are already pretty well in place. Date/time is recorded in EXIF by the camera when I take the picture (except for not encoding a time zone), and I've managed to figure out how to geotag them in bulk in the EXIF data if I have a GPS log. And date/time and lat./long. are already used by Flickr and Smugmug. What about other fields (where the fields even exist)? Are titles, captions, license, etc., appropriately made use of, or do they just sit there, visible in the EXIF data but not applied further? What's the status in other websites or apps? Any ideas about what it's likely to be in the near future?

If there currently isn't a good/useful way to record some of this metadata in the image file itself, any recommendations for recording it elsewhere (in a separate file or files) so it would be relatively easy to add it to the image files if it became possible/useful in the future?

If it makes a difference, I only need to do this for JPG files. That's how they come off my point-and-shoot, so I don't have RAW files.

Any comments on the "big-picture" (heh) issues I've implicitly brought up here, or recommended reading on the topic, are welcome too even if I didn't specifically ask about them.

What tools are there for synchronizing photos to audio by time in a slideshow?

friedapplepie — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:59:15 -0800

What tools are there for synchronizing photos to audio by time in a slideshow? I have a set of digital photos taken manually, at about a photo each second but not quite. I have audio recorded at the same time, and I'd like to be able to match the photos up to the audio by time. What's the best way to do this? Mac tools are preferred, but I'd love to hear all suggestions. Thanks!

Where can I find photos of NYCHA housing developments?

Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:42:38 -0800

I'm looking for photos of NYCHA public housing - particularly, the interior of apartments and communal areas. Where can I find photos like this online? I have no idea where to begin looking - I've found photos of building exteriors quite easily, but I'm having remarkable difficulty finding photos of the interior.

Photos of public housing in NYC is a priority, but if those are too difficult to find, I'd be interested in photos of similar public housing developments in Chicago, or other large cities. Floorplans would also be of interest, but again, no idea where to begin looking.

What can you see in satellite photos?

k. — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:33:01 -0800

Satellite photos: what interesting features can be seen or measured in them (or other aerial photos), and where can I get a supply of images? Examples I have already seen, from some crude Google-searching:
Roads
Buildings
Degree of development (urban/suburban/rural)
Oil spills (apparently these are usually hard to see)
Blooms of algae (cyanobacteria) in the Baltic Sea
Damage to buildings from earthquakes

More would be appreciated--the more specific, the better. These will be used in a computer vision system, so I'd especially like to know where I can find a supply of images containing whatever feature I'm looking for (including the above)--easy for buildings or roads, but hard for rare events like oil spills. Natural disasters seem interesting, if there are pictures available.

I would also consider some other kind of non-photographic data as well, if it could be combined with maps or photos. Don't worry whether you think it's suitable; any idea you have will help!

Preventing mold transfer.

sapphirebbw — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 10:31:25 -0800

Help me prevent transferring mold to new photo albums. I've just discoverd that some of my old photo albums have mold on the inside of the covers. There doesn't seem to be any on the pictures themselves. We no longer live in the house that promoted the mold growth, and I am going to transfer all the photos into new albums.

How can I make sure that the pictures will be ok? Is there a danger of transferring the mold to the new albums? If so, how can I help to prevent it?

Why can't I move photos onto my desktop?

Postroad — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 05:58:16 -0800

As of yesterday, my IMac will not move photos from sites I go to onto my desktop. I had for years been moving pictures onto the desktop, then putting them on my server and giving link from which they were taken. Now, suddenly, no matter which sites I go to, photos do not move away from original place. I am able to get properties of the photos, but I do not want to hotlink.

I have no tech background so I can not begin to imagine why this is happening.

A webcam as a means for recording changes in facial appearance over time?

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:05:47 -0800

Using a webcam (instead of a camera) for recording changes in facial appearance over time - good or bad idea? I'm thinking about experimenting with various topical cosmetic applications and keeping a photographic record to judge what works (as well as tracking the skin effects of various food allergies, etc). I don't have a webcam; I do have a 6 mp camera which I don't use much (not a camera person).

Anyway; I'm considering spending 50-70$ for a logitech webcam to take daily facial pics - because of the relative ease in creating a daily routine, because the lighting would be consistent (as would the angle), and so on. I've never had a webcam, and it's unlikely that I'd use it much, if at all, except for this function.

Is this a foolish idea and waste of money? Should I just use the camera and approximate? Would a webcam in this price range provide good enough still photos for this purpose (ie, focus on changes in skin texture, pores, wrinkles, etc).

(I know this is a pretty superficial question, but it's been bouncing around in my head for a while and thought I'd just finally ask and see if anyone had any thoughts)

Tips for organizing a large iPhoto library?

scrm — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 02:23:29 -0800

I'm about to start the colossal task of organising several years' worth of photos on my Mac in iPhoto. Workflow tips, experiences, scripts or software suggestions to make this task easier are much appreciated! The photos are currently stored in three separate iPhoto 09 libraries across my internal HD and external drive, mostly in RAW format. My goal is to end up with three piles of photos:

1. 'To work on': the 'decent' photos, living on my internal HD, to be worked on later (~10% of the photos at a guess)
2. 'To keep': The rest, living on my external drive (~80% of the photos)
3. 'Trash': Poor quality photos and all duplicates, in one place, that I can easily review and delete (~10% of the photos)

I prefer to use iPhoto to organise the photos as I'm familiar with it, but I'm open to other options. The new structure needs to play nice with other software like Aperture / Photoshop as I will use these to work on the first group. For photos I've already edited, I'd also like to preserve the originals (currently stored in iPhoto) for safety.

So far the only sorting of the photos that I have is with iPhoto's events - I don't really use ratings, faces, or geotagging. I have iPhoto Library Manager, which enables copying between iPhoto libraries but is quite slow, as well as Duplicate Annihilator (which didn't catch all my duplicates after several passes and tweaking the options).

What can you guys suggest?

Naughty iPhone pix, we wants it

artisticastronaut — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:08:07 -0800

I would like to put naughty pictures on my iPhone without using iPhoto, preferably with a lock, so people can't accidently browse the porn stash. Is this possible and if so, how?

Are there more communities like Flickr's ID Please?

k7lim — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:50:43 -0800

I really love the Flickr "ID Please" group, which I originally found here. Are there other services/communities online that allow you to submit a photo (or other media item) for discussion/identification by experts? This particular group tends to focus on identifying types of flora/fauna. I have a friend who's obsessed with getting "deeper information" about his photos and other digital artifacts of travel/living for a blog.

Ask Mefi (or other, lesser, question answering sites) would be a good venue for one-off questions, but I'm interested in a place that's devoted to this kind of media request/ expert discussion.

I've found another good example on Flickr: the Translations group where people post images of non-English text for translation.

I'd love to be able to post pictures of famous people's faces, notable monuments, pieces of IKEA furniture, etc, and get comments/information from people who know these things very well.

I've thought about Amazon's Mechanical Turk for this, but that's not quite what I'm looking for, because I'm not about to teach my friend how to define Turk tasks.

Aardvark has helped me with this style of question, but it's not exactly what I'm looking for either.

Blogs about the twin cities or Minnesota

TheClonusHorror — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:08:57 -0800

I'm looking for your favorite blogs about things to do in or around the twin cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) or in Minnesota in general. In Los Angeles, I read Eating L.A., which is about restaurants around town, and Big Orange Landmarks, which is done by a guy who travels around to all the places on the National Historic Register and takes photos. It hasn't been updated in awhile but the archives are still great. This guy chronicles his walks around Los Angeles' various neighborhoods and his road trips.

So I'm looking for blogs along those lines (or loosely related), but about Minnesota. Or if you have any ideas of google terms I should search for or other jumping-off points, those would be helpful too!

Need help with mobile photo uploading to iphone wall

pearlybob — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 05:58:14 -0800

Wasting my mefi question on facebook....but it's driving me crazy!! Hi all, I'm at my wit's end so I'm turning to mefi. I got my iphone 3gs about a month ago. Had no problems switching over (from a first gen) except one. I cannot get my iphone pics to upload to my wall in facebook. They go right into the mobile album so no one gets to see them. I have lots of friends and family who use my wall to see pics of our family and I need them to just show up there like they used to, trying to direct some of these folks to the mobile uploads album has been trying. I've checked the settings, I can't find anything that would prevent the pics from popping up on my wall and in the news feeds. I've googled all about the 3gs issues and can see where some folks are having problems with their entire wall (posts and everything) but my issue is just my mobile pics. Any advice? I think the fact that I can't figure this out is the worst part! Help me friends!!

What is a camera with a good nighttime mode?

linzenoonoo — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:06:29 -0800

I'm looking for an affordable, but still good quality camera to use for nighttime shots. My current camera is a Canon SD1000, which has an incredibly good macro mode, and takes decent pictures otherwise, but the nighttime mode leaves much to be desired. Living in St.Louis, I have lots of opportunities for nighttime photos, but I don't have the camera to take good advantage of these. I'm looking for a camera with a good nighttime mode, preferably in the hundreds of dollars range, as I'm too young for a job and don't get an allowance. Thanks!

EASY secrets of taking great photos

JensR — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:31:34 -0800

What are your favourite photographer's tricks that an amateur could use to create stunning photos on a hobbyist budget? As a hobbyist DSLR photographer, I find that once in a while, I stumble across some simple little trick-of-the-trade that instantly makes my photos much better... and it is these little "Wow!" moments that keep me motivated to keep shooting and learning.

I am not talking about expensive studio rigs here, or vague lifelong lessons ("learn about composition and color theory", "know your camera"). I am specifically talking about the low-hanging fruit that a low-budget amateur photographer like me could apply and see an instant difference.

If there are any photographers out there who have experienced the same kind of "Wow!" moment after trying out some new technique or equipment, please share your best suggestions in this thread.

What's a good application for organizing photos on a Mac?

The corpse in the library — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:16:15 -0800

What's a good application for organizing photos on a Mac? I gather photos from websites and repost them on my blog. I'm looking for an application that will help me organize the photos before I use them. Ideally, I'd like the process to go like this:

1. Import the downloading photo into the application.
2. Add keywords so I can find the photo ("sink" "Chair" "paint")
3. Add information about where the photo came from (a URL, the name of the person who told me about it)
4. Repeat many times
5. Browse through the photos either by keyword or by skimming through thumbnails.

I don't want to edit the photos. It's important that the keywords and notes I add not be accessible once the photo is on the website.

I have iPhoto and Adobe Bridge, but they both are more program than I need for this -- I want something I can fire up, quickly use, and shut right back down. I tried Picasa but didn't like it, and it seemed (I could be wrong) that the notes I wrote would end up being public if the photos were used on the blog. PhotoReviewer was intriguing, but it doesn't work on OS 10.5.

Any suggestions?

What are some fun, cool online alphabets as unusual and clever as the Butterfly Alphabet?

Jennifer S. — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:18:21 -0800

Where can I find a photo/art "alphabet" of found objects, science/nature stuff, or anything just really cool? Kind of like the Butterfly Alphabet, but either public domain or usable with attribution? I'm looking for some cool online illustrated/photo/found-object alphabets like the ones below that are either in the pubic domain or free to use with attribution. (I'm not really looking for novelty typefaces.)

I'd like to draw from multiple sources, so I welcome everyone's ideas. There isn't one definitive alphabet I'm looking for, but rather some fun suggestions of alphabets anyone can use with the creator's permission.

Alphabets need to be something you can share in a link.

Ideas?

Sample alphabets:

Nature's Own Alphabet

found object alphabet

Butterfly Alphabet

Nature's Alphabet

Fire Typography

Natural Letters

Help me figure age in a photo!

mccn — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:51:04 -0800

I have photos from two consecutive years, in which my brother was 6 mos - 18 mos. I can group the photos somewhat by clothing or activity - but can I separate them into the two years at all reliably? I know nothing about child development, and can't tell myself from looking at the faces. So I've been digitizing my family's photos, and the photos from 1987 and 1988 are all jumbled together. At the beginning of these photos, my brother was 6 months and at the end of 1987, he would have been about a year and half. Some of them, I can tell - especially the near-end Christmas 1987 photos - there, he looks pretty reliably older than in the Christmas 1986 photos. But for most photos, I really can't seem to tell how old he is (or isn't). I know this because I made an initial pass at sorting them out, 1986 and 1987. And then, I look at the 1987-filed shots, and think - gee, he looks younger here than in that 1986 photo.

Can you help me figure out how to sort these photos into the right year with some degree of accuracy? I've put a few up into a collected Picasa album, with some captions containing my best guesses. But I have to admit, I'm thoroughly stumped. My parents aren't really going to want to spend any time helping me, so asking them really won't get me anywhere.

I'm hoping some of you with small children will be able to tell some of the distinguishing characteristics, and maybe articulate some of them to me - or maybe someone with photo-sorting experience has other tips.
NB: I get extremely focused on accuracy on tasks like this, so "post it all as one mashup" or "who cares?" really won't be helpful - though I appreciate those sentiments.

Thanks in advance for anything you can offer!

What's the best online picture gallery you have come across?

Juggernut — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:56:57 -0800

What's the best online picture gallery you have come across? Priority is the user-interface ( ease of navigation ) than the quality of the pictures themselves. I am a full-time programmer and one of my main hobbies is Photography. I wanted to implement an online picture gallery borrowing some ideas from excellent picture galleries and portfolios photogs have put together. What are some sites in your opinion are awe-inspiring not necessarily due to the quality of the photos but due to style and presentation? Some minor positive factors are keyboard navigation support, ease of access to the large photos from the medium ones or thumbnail etc, how the exif information is presented etc.