Unblocking my Flickr Scout's Chi

Some of you are asking what Flickr is, what 'Scout' is, and (for those who know both of those things) why it's Chi is blocked in the first place!

Flickr is an online forum for sharing photography. Photos that are popular on Flicker get chosen to be highlighted in Flickr Explore. Kind of an index web page for folks who just stumbled onto Flickr. Needles to say, having a photo in Explore is a boon to that photo's view count; so it is understandable that Flickrites (members who post photos) covet the number of shots they have on Explore. They brag about their Explore stats and there are even web tools that will scour Flickr to show you which of your shots made it to Explore. That's what 'Scout' is. A web tool that shows which of my photos are on Explore.

Now that you're up to speed, I'll tell you something that I recently learned. Scout can become constipated. Or put another way. It's Chi can be stopped-up. Here's what happens: When I upload a new photo to Flickr, I can add it to different 'groups' based on subject. People browse these groups, so it can be considered as advertising my photo. More groups = more publicity = more hits. Got it? The problem that I just discovered is that when a photo is joined to more than 10 or so groups, it may still make it to Explore, but Scout won't identify it as having 'made it', so I'll never know!

I have over 2000 photos on my Flickr account and was thinking that I have only 2 of them on Explore! So I've been painstakingly going through my collection and reducing the number of groups that each photo is in, to 10 or less. As if my magic, my Explore count is now up to 13 and rising!

Progress

This is just a quick note to tell you that I now have a 2nd show booked for September at my favorite coffee hangout, Kaladi Brothers at Title Wave books. I've always enjoyed viewing work there by other artists and am grateful for the opportunity to show my photos there.

I think my curiosity killed a bird today :(

Or at least hastened it's death. Okay, I'll start at the beginning.

My family and I went to Snow City Cafe for breakfast today. Parking sucked as usual, so we had to walk about a block. My daughter noticed a magpie 'fighting over some food' with a waxwing. We had seen huge flocks of waxwings in the neighborhood, flying in formation from berry-tree to tree. I had my cam, so snapped a few shots of the two birds standing in a parking lot. I walked a bit closer and the magpie took off. The waxwing did not. I got closer. Still no flight. Finally, I hunkered down a couple feet from it and took some closeups of the waxwing. It still didn't budge. I noticed that it's left wing looked, if not broken, at least injured. The magpie wasn't fighting it for food. It was pecking at it because it was injured!



Now I'll admit that this was a mistake, but I reached out and gently petted it a couple times. Then, with a half-formed idea about the bird rescue center in my head, reached to carefully cup it in my hand an pick it up. I had it an inch off the ground and it took flight. Huh, I thought. Not so injured after all. While I was pondering this, my daughter was watching the waxwing. Following it's path. "Dad! It just bounced off that building's window and fell!"



The window was 100yds away, and the building had an underground garage that formed a mote or pit, below the 1st story windows. My daughter pointed at a smudge on the mirrored glass. "See!". My gaze drifted downward. I could see the waxwing splayed on the concrete below. In the nook next to a big green electric transformer. It was not moving. Two magpies had just landed nearby in the garage. We went to breakfast.

On the way back to the car, we peeked back into the pit. The waxwing and magpies were gone. The only evidence was a few small gray feathers and some scuff marks in the snow.

I'm trying to console myself that bludgeoning was a more merciful death for the waxwing than being pecked alive by a magpie. But I certainly didn't choose the best option.

Please VOTE for me!

Anchorage is a small town.

I told you that yesterday I toted my camera everywhere to chronicle my daily life. I took plenty of commute photos while driving. Well, a funny thing happened with one of those photos.

When I was returning home from work last night, I would snap the occasional shot for the project. I passed by a fender-bender where a pickup truck was high-centered on the snowbank between the oncoming lanes and mine. The truck was sticking out from the oncoming side. A couple of people were talking outside the truck and everyone looked okay. I continued on to get dinner and head home.

In the evening I checked my Myspace account and read a blog entry from a longtime Myspace contact. It was about her munched pickup! Yep. I passed a Myspace friend that I have never met in person. We exchanged some email about the incident and I sent her the shot.

Anchorage feels like a big city, only because it is one... relative to the other towns and villages in Alaska. But it's really a small town.

Today's Project

Today I have been working on a photography project that I've meant to do for awhile. A diary-in-photos of a typical weekday.

I'm usually hindered by bleary-eyed tiredness first thing in the morning, embarrassment of using an SLR for selfies in public places, or just plain laziness. Not today.

I started shooting just past 5am, starting with my first cup of coffee. Then shot everything major throughout my day. AM commute. My desk first thing in the morning. Driving to lunch. More work. Break. Evening commute and the family 'dinner run'. Even the screen as I compose this! The evening's not over yet, and I feel a Barnes & Noble run coming on.

After I do some severe editorial selecting, I'll have to decide how to present the images. One idea is to create a large storyboard image with only the times of day on each frame. We'll see. If this works, maybe I'll try telling other stories in pictures.

Watch my Flickr account for this project!

I didn't take the picture, so words will have to do.

Live in Alaska for long enough and the once wondrous starts losing it's color. Becomes commonplace. Things that would make the tourists gawk, we take in stride. But sometimes we see things that rip away our jaded sourdough facade.

I only had one thing planned for this evening and it was not the State of the Union address. It was a photographer's group meeting and I was running late. Having snowed again today, the roads sucked. And the two driving surfaces were boggy snow or slick smooth ice. I'm on a main road with three lanes on my side of the snowy divider. in a curvy section that is not well lit, my car is climbing a gentle slope and I spot three lit road flares on the icy middle lane. They make kind of a V shape to guide drivers around the blockage. My first thought was a fender-bender and I automatically start looking for munched cars. Nada. But as I'm nearing the flares, I can see that they are definitely marking something. A dark mass. Part of a wreck that hasn't been towed? The shape starts to resolve itself. It's a moose on it's side. Young adult. Dead (I'm pretty sure). I can't take my eyes off of it as I drive past. It's still snowing lightly and a fine layer has gathered on it's fur.

Dark icy roadway. Red flares. Dead moose. Falling snowflakes.

It would have made an excellent photo. It only took me a couple seconds to realize that. But I decided to drive on. In part because of the meeting; partially due to the danger of standing in the middle of an unlit busy road to get the shot that I would not have been satisfied to take from the curb.

Later, sitting in my plastic and chrome stackable chair downtown, listening to a guy talk about infrared cameras used for oil pipeline diagnostics on the North Slope, all I could think about was the stiffening snow-covered limbs of that moose.

And the road flares.

Utata

Jul and I spent the weekend shooting for a Utata project entitled "Step Right Up". This weekend's project was all about stairs! And our daughter had a wonderful idea for a shooting location. The University of Alaska Anchorage campus. Lots of stairs!

I'm finding that amongst other benefits, Utata is a great resource to get the creative juices flowing. And it's free.

It's Happening

I'll just come out and say it. I've been offered my first gallery show! Well, it's not technically a gallery. It's a restaurant that shows art.

I recently signed up with JPG Magazine to be an online contributor (see last post). How it works is I upload photos to my account. I can also add my photos to groups on certain topic themes. These themes are topics that will appear in an upcoming print issue of JPG. After adding a photo to a theme, then others can vote (thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons) on the image. Photos that have a high positive vote count have a better chance of being published. I had posted a myspace bulletin asking my friends to come to JPG and vote for my shots. I did get some votes, so I guess it's working. But more importantly, I got an email via myspace asking if I would like my own First Friday show!

Anchorage galleries have open house on the first Friday of each month. I will be showing at Noble's Diner in Anchorage on Friday July 6th! WooHoooo!!

I'm excited and a bit scared. This is my first showing and marks my transition to professional photographer. There's a lot of work to be done between now and then. I do have enough material to do a show, but need to choose the pieces. I may add some as yet un-taken photos too. And of course printing and framing needs to be done.

But... this is so cool!

Winter Update

It's been a c-c-c-cold and snowy winter this year in Anchorage. I've been busy shooting photos as much as possible and am moving closer to being a true professional. I've bought a domain and will announce the address when the site is ready. I've joined some new photog organizations online and have tried the gamut of Anchorage photo clubs. In addition to my Flickr links to the right, you can also find me at the photographer's salon, Utata, and at the contributor-oriented magazine, "JPG".

I hope Santa was good to you. He expanded my lens collection with the addition of a Lensbaby. Much of my recent work is practice on this challenging new lens.

Lastly, I was approached this week with an offer to do my own show! This will be a big first-step for me and I have a lot of work to do in the coming weeks. The show is not until summer (they're booked through June), so at least I have some time. More to follow.