Today is the June 23, 2010 the first day of the Alameda County Fair at the Alameda County Fair grounds in Pleasanton, CA. I love the County Fair. My first time to the Alameda County Fair was back in 1984. My parents had moved to the area after my dad took a job in nearby San Francisco. I had gone to the Orange County Fair many times as a kids and teenager. This was the first time I got to experience a real county fair, something like you would see in an old Hollywood movie.
The Alameda County Fair has Horse Racing on the oldest one mile horse race track in the United States. I also love to check out the livestock from the 4H clubs throughout the county. The kids in the 4H clean, feed, primp and prepare their charges for auction.
Whether you like the livestock, carnival rides, exhibits, horse racing or the fried fair food whatever the reason go to the County Fair. While you are there, take a few images. If you do take a few pictures upload them to my California’s County Fairs flickr group. It’s free and fun. Here is the link to the the flickr group California County Fairs. The group has a total of 105 members, you could be 106. Hopefully I will see you at the fair, if not there, then hopefully in the flickr group.
Yesterday while I was on flickr, I found a flickr add that linked you to the “Lay’s® Happiness Exhibit.” This web site caught my attention, not because it was part of flickr, but, because I love the way this web site looks and works. The front page is laid out so simply, but is has a lot going on. I do find it interesting that they are partnered up with flickr. If you look in the lower right corner you will notice it says “Powered by flickr.”
I have been looking at a lot of web sites lately because I would like to upgrade my personal website and make it more functional or photography. My problem is that I am very technical and have a tendency to make things more complicated then it needs to be. I am trying to teach myself how to keep it simple (stupid). It is not as easy as it sounds for someone that is not artsy, but technical. So I keep looking and making notes and adding them to my list of web sites I like. This sight has been added to my list because of it’s simplicity and that is was made with flash.
If you know how they built this site or have an expertise in this type of web design, I would be interested in hearing from you. Also, i would like any suggestions of clases I can take to learn how to make this type of site. You can place your comments and suggestions in the comment section below.
Now on with the Lay’s® Happiness Exhibit. When you look inside, you first notice that the images submitted are not by pro’s, but by the average point and shoot photographers. As you dig deeper you will find some very exceptional photos. It’s is easy to join and add photos. If you have a flickr account just go to the upper left corner of the frames, and you will see UPLOAD YOUR HAPPY PHOTOS and click on the Start Here. This will link you to your Yahoo or Flickr sign on. Sign-in and the follow the instructions to accept the API. Next when you go back to the Lay’s® Happiness Exhibit it will ask you to accept and a few other instructions to follow. When you are done you will be able to add images directly to the flickr group Lay’s® Happiness Exhibit flickr group or directly to the Lay’s® Happiness Exhibit.
If you don’t have a flickr sign-on you can follow the above instructions and create a new flickr account.
A friend of Thomas Hawk of Thomas Hawk Digital Connection has posted some great trip to increase your Flickr influence on the web and on the Flickr Social Media site. As a photographer, I have wanted to increase my exposure among Flickr circle. Since Flickr is one, if not the largest photography social media web site it should be a good place to my photography noticed.
“What is more pleasant than the benevolent notice other people take of us, what is more agreeable than their compassionate empathy? What inspires us more than addressing ears flushed with excitement, what captivates us more than exercising our own power of fascination? What is more thrilling than an entire hall of expectant eyes, what more overwhelming than applause surging up to us? What, lastly, equals the enchantment sparked off by the delighted attention we receive from those who profoundly delight ourselves? – Attention by other people is the most irresistible of drugs. To receive it outshines receiving any other kind of income. This is why glory surpasses power and why wealth is overshadowed by prominence.”
Over the course of the past 4 years, about every 2 years or so I’ve written a blog post that has been one of my most popular entitled “Top 10 Ways to Get Attention on Flickr.” It’s been a few years, Flickr’s changed a bit, and so I thought I’d take a bit of time today to outline some of the techniques that active power users use on Flickr to get more attention for themselves and their photos.
Fundamentally it comes down to a pretty simple equation:
quality photos + reciprocation² = attention.
But there are lots of other little tricks and tips, so let’s get right into them.
1. The order that you publish your photos in matters — alot. A lot of people will take 50 snapshots of that killer sunset on their vacation and then upload them at random to flickr. Some are better, some are worse. At Flickr, those that call you contact predominantly only see your last photo uploaded or your last 5 photos uploaded (depending on their settings) from the popular “your contact’s most recent uploads” page. The other 45 are effectively buried. Always upload what you feel are your best, strongest, etc. photographs as the last five and save the very last spot for the photo you want to pimp the most.
2. Explore, you whore. Explore is a section of Flickr where Flickr highlights what they feel are 500 interesting photos every day.
I used to have photos show up in Explore pretty much every week. Then Flickr staff blacklisted me from Explore (and their help forum) about 7 months or so ago after I wrote a blog post criticizing Flickr staff for nuking a popular group on Flickr that I administered. Payback’s a bitch, right?
After having photos regularly appear in Explore every week since it started, they capped my ass in there at 666 photos (cute, because I’m the devil, get it?). That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t consider Explore though. It’s probably the fastest way to get a lot of views on any of your photos. Whilst everyone bitches about how full of crappy photos Explore is, secretly you know you all love it when your photos show up there.
Flickr claims to have a “magic donkey” formula which picks the photos for Explore. This “magic donkey” is really just an excuse though to avoid transparency/accountability about Explore. In general, the more activity a photo has (activity = faves, comments, notes, blogged, etc.) the more likely it is to show up in Explore. By putting your best foot forward (see item 1) and by focusing on promoting a popular photo of yours on a given day, (see below) it just might get there.
3. Promote your photos outside of Flickr. What are you doing to promote your photos outside of Flickr? Some things are super, super easy and involve no active participation on your part other than setting something up. Popular content aggregators on the web allow you to publish your Flickr photos out of Flickr, with valuable links back to your photos on Flickr.
Have you configured Flickr Tab on your Facebookery page yet? Why not? It’s free and easy.
As you can imagine from the title I was using the wrong White Balance (WB). I kinda liked the look of the extreme blue in the sky and in the ocean. I was distracted with talking to a photographer and his wife that were shooting with a Fuji 617 or a 6×17 film camera.
At one point during the day I remember saying to myself that my images looked really blue and washed out? Duh! One of the big rules of thumb, before you take your ist shot, check your camera settings and reset your settings in the camera.
I shoot RAW so it’s that that big of a deal to correct my Oh $#!t moments, and I have alot of those… Shooting RAW is so forgiving that it helps when making a mistake like this. Plus you should always shot it right in the camera first so you don’t have to spend a ton of time in post processing.
I think they should have that warning message in your camera that says “You sure you want to take this image with these setting Dummy?” Ahhhh no, but I’m just a dork fish…
My wife teaches third and forth grade combo class. Every year they do Life Science, so they hatch chicken. This is some one of the first baby chicks from this years hatchlings. The kids in the class named this one after me, since I played chicken herder this year and got all the fertilized eggs for them to hatch. 102 or 9 dozen eggs for six third grade classes.
Every year I go into the my wife’s class and do a chick fashion shoot. I do a different theme. The first year was KFC Box theme. Last year was a KFC Bucket theme, this years theme is Easter.
The eggs in the basket are real. They came from the same hens that laid the eggs that these baby chicks were hatched from.
The Spring Chicks are here and arriving a day early. Every year in my wife’s third grade class they hatch chicken eggs for life science. This year my wife ha 22 eggs to hatch. Not all will hatch, but they have a unusually good yield of 75% hatchlings.
Every year they day they start to hatch I arrive with my travel studio equipment and set up a little studio. Over the years a I learned a few tricks.
Take paper towels to clean up the poop.
Use a seamless background (paper) so you can throw away fouled paper
Take images within the first day of hatching. Chicks are easier to manage when the are a day old. Any older and they are hard to keep in the same spot.
Don’t drop them off the table, they break.
Here is a slide show of some of the images I took in the past. Yes, I have a warped sense of humor.
