Comments on: Flickr’s Interestingness and Images of Katrina

By: Anna Oberlaner

Anna Oberlaner — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:48:46 +0000

This is a great piece…
Anna

By: mantas

mantas — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 13:34:38 +0000

very good article i liked it a lot.
i guess i would be one of these flicker users who are aiming for those sweet, pop commercial looking pictures. i am quite new user, don’t have pictures in explore page, but i didn’t even thought that pictures which i like personally ,and in my mind has more artistic or personal meaning could potentially be interesting for anybody, thats the reason i am putting only sweet ones….
i agree on postmodern photography trends, but, again
the main stream user, i would argue would be more interested in sweet pop stuff, or?

By: cobalt

cobalt — Sat, 08 Oct 2005 18:28:34 +0000

Looking through BlogPulse, happened upon this interesting essay. Since one of mine is pictured here (“The Next Katrina” montage) I was quite surprised to see it. I’ve had my images featured about 10 times now in “Interestingness” and I must say that I’ve been surprised to “be there” in that selection most of the time. I’m a beginner to photography so my work is quite limited. And with the deep and steep learning curve on Photoshop for graphics editing, yes my first attempt at a montage was very crude.
Your statement “they struggle, often not wholly successfully, to transform powerfully felt private imagery into universal expressions” is curious. I made this image solely because I was so outraged about the poor response to a natural disaster and at that same time, one of our Supreme Court justices dies, leaving a terrible feeling of yet more doom to come, given the politics of it all.
I felt driven to create this art because I needed the process to work through all my horror that daily racked up more and more incredulity at the incompetence of the world’s only “superpower”. That’s it, that is the back story.
Now, after I learned that I had developed quite a following on flickr(for it is true I am active as a poster and in groups) I was surprised to see that my eclectic pieces of life documented there were of interest to other people. Thus, when I posted a documentary image of a small protest of 3 (HONK Are You Embarrassed by Bush) it was to simply express what is important in my own life. It shot right up to #1 in “Interestingness”.
Imagine my surprise again, when it was REMOVED from flickr temporarily, and replaced with another image from a widely-seen photo of the WTC Towers being hit by a plane. This was directly on 9/11/2005. I titled mine “Memorial to 9-11 and Katrina” and outlined my thoughts on that sad anniversary. This situation lead to a critical overhaul of “Interestingness” on flickr.com, which had been brewing for a while. I also documented the removal of my image and the replacement image and questioned “Why?”
Stewart Butterfield (CEO of flickr) came to post in my comments on this documentation and then reported back that my images had now been restored to public view. They had been removed from public view by anonymous members who marked them “may offend”. Little did they know that their temporary sabotage did the most possible to insure my “fame” and following within flickr.
This week I posted a self-portrait, a macro shot of me wearing a protest button. Very simple and mild statement visually. But I posted my commentary and concerns with the image. Within 16 hours it was again in the top 10 of “Interestingness”. All of this I’ve recounted may be “uninteresting” to you and your readers, but I thought it good to at least post a direct response to your essay here.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 20:48:56 +0000

What I think is interesting is what I see when I look at my own photos on flickr. When ranked by interestingness, many that have never been viewed or commented upon rank above those that have. They also rank above newer ones, so I don’t think it’s because they’re the most recent.
They are, however the most, uhh… interesting.
They are the most asymmetrical compositions, the ones with the most contrast between large dark and light areas, the ones with the most dramatic lighting, etc. Could it be that flickr has a feature which “looks” at photos and automatically ranks them? Might such a system favor the most formalist compostitions?
Interesting.

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 03:26:57 +0000

Thanks to everyone for all the kind comments.
Andrew — I totally identify with your feeling about the power of these professional (what I’m calling formalist) photographs at thumbnail size. It’s easy to make a visual impact there not as easy to tell a personal story. Always important and fascinating to pay attention to how seemingly irrelevant or minor techincal and design decisions can shape the aesthetic of a community or institution.

By: Mr. Petereson

Mr. Petereson — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 22:10:36 +0000

Excellent analysis, Greg. I have also wondered if the heightened "interestingness" rating of these "professional" (conventional) photographs is a result of their eye-catching ability--we have all seen the "Everyone's photos" bar at the lower right of our Flickr homepage, and these pictures in particular strike me as ones that look a lot more "interesting" when they are thumbnails. Also, I really enjoyed reading about screen captures/TV captures in response to Katrina. Very interesting take on the trend, and I agree with you--the most interesting photos are still the everyday. Thanks for this. --Andrew

By: hason

hason — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 17:24:41 +0000

yeah I really like this post, you are taking facets of modern media (flicker + contemp. trends in photography) and synthesizing new theses about it. Good work! Dig it!

By: Mikey

Mikey — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 13:52:49 +0000

I’ve wondered about “interestingness” for a while, but I hadn’t had a chance to dig into it yet. I agree with Steve, great post!

By: Steve Schroeder

Steve Schroeder — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 18:22:27 +0000

very good piece