The Chicago Photography Groups on Flickr, DeviantArt and Elsewhere / Updates: 2019

Saturday, September 14, 2019

Beach closure.

bkkay1 has added a photo to the pool:

The end of summer swimming season is marked by turning over the lifeguard towers.

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Wintrust Arena DePaul Development

nitram242 has added a photo to the pool:

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Chicagoans lining up at Genesis Growers with their organic produce

Renee Rendler-Kaplan has added a photo to the pool:

Logan Square Farmers Market

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2109 Heart Walk (I).

bkkay1 has added a photo to the pool:

Along the lake front.

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Tuesday, September 3, 2019

This is Boss. He sniffs for explosive devices. Today he’s protecting visitors to Wrigley Field

Laurence's Pictures has added a photo to the pool:

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Chicago's Bean

Alan Amati has added a photo to the pool:

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Fireworks.

bkkay1 has added a photo to the pool:

See from the lakeshore.

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Hello Chicago.

bkkay1 has added a photo to the pool:

Large mural by Mosher on the side of The Brew Yards in the west loop.

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Sunday, August 4, 2019

Shadow

mysbah has added a photo to the pool:

Family

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Crowds along the river.

bkkay1 has added a photo to the pool:

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1st Sox game!

kgilbertsen has added a photo to the pool:

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Red

Phil Roeder has added a photo to the pool:

A young woman in a red dress - I believe it's a Quinceañera dress - walks through Millenium Park in Chicago with her friends.

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Summer in Chicago

Renee Rendler-Kaplan has added a photo to the pool:

The Harding Tavern - Logan Square

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Community love.

bkkay1 has added a photo to the pool:

Giant mural on St. Pius School by Jeff Zimmermann.

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UP Steam Locomotive Big Boy on Display West Chicago Illinois 7-29-19_2074

www.cemillerphotography.com has added a photo to the pool:

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Monday, February 25, 2019

Policy change: Watermarks are fine

The Brutal Regime / Joseph Dunphy posted a new topic:

Some of you were right, and I was wrong.

For years, I've had a policy of not allowing photos with obtrusive watermarks into the pool, because the watermarks look terrible - and they do. They do look terrible, BUT until very recently, I did not appreciate how much of a problem pirating really was.

Especially on Twitter.

Somebody might ask how I could not know that, when I and this group have been on Twitter for years - for so many years that a reference to Twitter is written right into the rules for the group - but until relatively recently, I wasn't actively engaged on Twitter. The feeds for my groups would go through Feedburner, Dlvr.it and IFTTT, causing thumbnails for photos in the pool to automatically appear over on the update twitter for this group. I'd sometimes go over to respond to queries about tweets and get people in touch with each other when interest was expressed in a photo, basically acting as an agent who wasn't collecting a commission, but I would hardly ever be logged into Twitter.

Until very recently, and wow, was that eye opening. I had no idea that there were that many Nazis alive, much less present on one website and had I known, I most certainly wouldn't have been using that website, especially after finding out that the staff seems to be pro-Nazi. If any of you got hate comments on your photos, I'm sorry about that, I just never imagined that something like this could even happen. Until I went into my own personal account, and started noticing the death threats I was getting from people who had an issue with the fact of my Jewishness and Support's habit of locking my account while leaving the Nazis free to go on posting.

Is this really 2019? It feels more like 1939.

Among the other scummy things taking place on Twitter, I noticed something very bad about the accounts of a lot of the "photographers" posting to that site. On doing a random selection of photos supposedly taken by the holders of the accounts to which they were posted, in a clear majority of the cases, a reverse image search would reveal that the "photographer" was engaging in plagiarism, claiming credit for a photo which he or she had not taken. I was able to prove this to Twitter, providing links to the original photos (most of which were on Flickr) and Twitter responded by doing nothing.

I mean, absolutely nothing. They didn't even respond. They didn't care. They were completely OK with the idea of their site being used to pirate content.

So that raises the question - what do we do, now?

What I'd like to do is turn off Twitter notification for all of my groups, permanently, but I can't. As some of you might know, my father lost our family home a few years ago, being unable to afford the rising taxes that were seen after the yuppies "discovered" the town he was living in, moved in, and got the local government to go on a spending spree. A lot of my possessions, including a stack of papers with my passwords on it, got shoved into storage with all of the other possessions we were able to save on short notice, and I haven't seen them since. At present, I am locked out of the accounts I have online, including the Twitter, IFTTT and Dlvr.it accounts for this group.

I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that my idea in this case was a bad one and turn off those notices, but without those passwords, I physically can't do it at the moment, and I don't know that I'll ever get the passwords back. The movers turned out to be a little dodgy and some of our stuff might be gone. Again, the move had to be done on short notice.

The best I can do at the moment is to pass along a warning, and offer a few options:

1. Really, aggressively watermark your photos. Doesn't look good, but people can imagine what the un-watermarked work would look like. Basically, you're self-promoting without saying that you're doing it.

Those who wish they could see your photos without the watermarks can come see one of your shows in the real world. This represents a diminished experience for the cheeto-munching online viewer who never steps outside his door, but who cares? Look at how content creators have been treated online. Certainly not with any kind of gratitude, not even with a modicum of decency.

2. Remove your pending photos from the queue. I'll hold off on approving photos for a few weeks, to give you some chance to do this.

I'm not happy about the idea of recommending this option and I'm not pushing it. If you've submitted a good photo and you still want it approved (and probably tweeted), I'll be happy to approve it. But when I set up that twitter, I wanted to bring you guys more traffic and give your work more attention, not get it pirated. I was trying to help you, not "love" you over, and just didn't know what a pack of lowlifes I had put you in contact with.

3. We could start a new companion group without Twitter update notification, and just start using that.

4. We could say "this group has been around for a decade, we had a good run, and now it's time to close up shop and turn this group into an archive."

Who was it that said "your first thousand photos are always your worst"? We all know about the new plan to throw out all but 1000 photos from each free account, which comes to us thanks to the buyout by Smugmug. Trying to grow as a photographer on the new Twitter is going to be like trying to grow as a writer by doing business with a vanity press. The "fellow creators" you'll find yourself getting into touch with won't be a good influence.

Also, let's be honest. While there's been a lot of great work on Flickr, there has been a lot more terrible work for a long time, and the great work seen happened in spite of the increasingly drama-loving community, not because of it. Sometimes, the wisest decision one can make is to not be afraid to admit that something has become unwinnable, and to give up.

Even before the Smugmug takeover, I had a commercial spammer drop by and post an advertisement for his adult party planning service. After I reported the advertisement as spam, I got a stern warning from an anonymous employee of Flickr, telling me that if I spammed again, I'd lose my account. I sent a message back reminding the staff that I had been the mod reporting the spam, not the person posting it, got stonewalled and then, when I went to the Help forum to try to find out what to do next, discovered that my ability to post to the Help forum had been disabled, apparently either by the incompetent employee who decided to cover his own backside or (more likely) by one of his friends at work.

There's this continuing pattern of sleaze, of people winking and laughing at the very suggestion that they might be expected to deal at least somewhat honorably with others, and it is a reflection of a deep cultural dysfunctionality which I can't fix, and which seems to be growing deeper, not going away.

Sometimes, it's time to give up and retreat. There's that temptation to stay and try to win the good fight, but when sleaze turns into the norm, how does one win? Also, what would we be trying to win? In the end, wouldn't we be left fighting for the freedom to entertain an audience that has shown itself to be pleased with the idea of treating us like dirt? When you go out and say something about piracy or arbitrary censorship, how much backup do you ever see from the people around you?

Do you want your work seen, and maybe even purchased? Living on $15/day, as I currently do, I'm not sure that my business advice will be (or even should be) taken seriously, but I can think of one possibility: coffeehouses. There are still a lot of independents in Chicago, their walls are usually bare, and they tend to like the idea of using those walls as gallery space. Gives them the chance to squeeze out a little extra revenue.

Maybe that's something to explore - sharing your photography in the real world.