If one thing doesn't matter, does anything?

[imomus]

For a while I've been meaning to revive my Flickr page, because at the moment one particular person's Flickr page is just about the only thing that really excites me on the internet. Annoyingly for you -- sorry! -- I'm not going to say whose page it is. Unspoiled Beach Syndrome! But I will tell you that my favourite syndrome this week is Euphemism Treadmill Syndrome, and link to that.

I feel like I still haven't got my Flickr page right. I keep wanting to start again from zero and just upload truly magnificent pictures. Somehow, when I do grids of pictures for Click Opera, it works. The juxtapositions and thematic groupings make something aesthetically pleasing. The Flickr page, like most photo-hosting web pages, is not pleasant to look at. The slide show is too low-res, the descriptions make words too prominent, the comments make it seem like a country fair with each "pumpkin" being judged (especially my bulgy tight trousers, sigh). I also feel like the photos are dull when I'm not in them (low ratings, according to Flickr's view stats) but narcissistic when I am. And my page doesn't inspire me the way my friend's page -- the one I love right now -- does. I think only flow -- a big influx of new photos each day -- could possibly save this Flickr page from neglect.

Could it be that my anxiety is all wrapped up with the nature of image-making itself? It's to do with the idea that you can only photograph one thing at a time, and with Wolfgang Tillmans' idea that "if one thing matters, everything matters". A good photo should feel like it's part of a photographic flow, and yet it should also feel exemplary. The subject matter is something real and random, and yet it has to stand for something bigger than itself. Each photograph has to be a metonym. If it's only showing the banality of what was in front of you at any given moment, it fails, unless it's part of some flow, some massive plethora, some kind of indiscriminate cinema, like Erkki Kurenniemi's pathetic attempts to commemorate everything in his life in Mika Tanilla's film Future is not what it used to be.

I think what I love with photos is the moment when I'm just beginning to twig what someone's style is about, what their eye is seeing. That happened, for me, with Wolfgang Tillmans in 1996. I still remember what it felt like to "get" what his pictures were about. Then it happened again with Gursky in about 2000. And it happens, in smaller ways, with amateur image-makers on photo-sharing sites. They've got to have a unifying style for everything to click. I don't see that on my own page, although maybe others do. Sometimes I think I need to make my Flickr page strictly conceptual. Just upload one picture a day of what I'm wearing or something.

Anyway, on the subject of photo websites, and following on from my entry on the hiddenness of the online Japanese face, I've been casting around for the sites Japanese people are using to host the trillions of photographs they take annually. So far I've come up with Fotologue, Picasa and Photozou. But -- especially in this time of cherry blossom -- the pictures on there are incredibly generic. Well, if one picture of cherry blossom matters, they all do, I suppose.

Comments

[akabe.livejournal.com]

for a long time i havn't believed in singular images so everything was series , now stuff i'm working on involves kind of series of series.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The photos on your blog actually rank up there with the "unspoiled beach" Flickr page as far as being "the best thing I've seen on the internet", visually.

I see you've done the obligatory sakura pictures too -- but yours are meta-sakura; people taking the pictures, rather than just the pictures themselves, which are all, always, the same picture of the same sakura branch.

Let's take it one step more meta!

[akabe.livejournal.com]

haha,

seeing that i'm inclined to suggest you guys should spend a few days using only a small part of the appartment to get acclimatized to the space.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Here's my response to your Nakagin Capsule building photos (http://akabe.livejournal.com/31504.html); a Nakagin capsule pizza box tower I saw yesterday!

Nagakin

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

If the modules are attached to a central core or mast, that structure will withstand strong displacements as well as double for a luv hotel.

I think http://www.hideyukinakayama.com/ has taken the concept and made it chic.

[fusis.livejournal.com]

With your photos, I see you as a kind of tourist in your own city. I enjoy them. I always respond in the same way-- How could so many things exist that just look like Momus should be visiting them with Hisae (or friends)?

Just on your flickr page...

[(Anonymous)]

this morning. You know following the links leads to your homepage. Then on your homepage the link to Click Opera doesn't seem to work. You might want to check that out. perhaps you could link this blog to Flickr too?

I've been using Flickr for the past few months to help teach digital photography classes. I think it's a wonderful tool for that.

I'm curious why you only have two friends listed on Flickr...and why mention a flickr account as a thing that excites you, but not link to it? Anyway....conceptual Flickr page seems like a good proposition.

Justin Lincoln http://www.flickr.com/photos/justinlincoln/

[(Anonymous)]

Thought you might find the following link of interest, with reference to your search for online Japanese photo communities:

http://www.polastyle.com/index.html

Admittedly, it's all watched over by the careful eye of Polaroid themselves, but I've had great fun peering through the gallery section in many a free minute. Lots of the photographers link to their personal sites as well. It's also made me buy a polaroid camera, so well done polaroid marketing men!

Adam

[(Anonymous)]

Far more pleasing to the eye than flickr:

http://fotologue.jp/

But haven't much played with it yet...

[(Anonymous)]

I really should read the entire post before commenting shouldn't I...

Sorry

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I find the interface at Fotologue is too slow to load. You end up watching the spinning wheel most of the time.

[(Anonymous)]

Aren't all those cherry blossoms preventing World War III or destroying rockism or something? No-one said peace was interesting..

image hosts

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

I bought a paid flickr account about a year ago, but stopped using it because there was something I didn't like about it, that I can't remember now

I use google's picasa for my public images, but what I don't like about picasa is they don't let you right click, view image, and copy the image link. The only way you can direct link to an image in a picasa album is with the image embedded in the picasa page, if that makes sense. You can't url the image itself when it is housed in picasa. Which really pisses me off. Wish I had realized that before I spent so much time putting my images up there. But I like the way picasa looks, and arranging/playing with sets of images there is really easy. In fact, picasa on the web is a better interface for managing images than iPhoto, for me (though of course with iPhoto you're not just managing your images, you can edit them too)

I really like this image:

Re: image hosts

[imomus.livejournal.com]

What drives me mad is when image hosts decide to resize your images. I use Photobucket for Click Opera images, and it recently got better (progress bar for image uploading, etc) but one thing that infuriates me is that over a certain size, I think it's 250k, the images are scaled down. I use a 550 pixel width column in Click Opera, and PhotoBucket resizes the longer images down to about 350 pixels, which is completely useless. I then have to host the image somewhere else.

Re: image hosts

[reflejos.livejournal.com]

Somethin happens lately with your blog, the images don't appear (most of them). I dont know if it is problem of my internet service. For example, your canvas, from months ago I cannot see it.

Re: image hosts

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Really? No-one else has mentioned that, and the images get lots of comments, so they seem to be there. What country are you in?

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

What do you think of this?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It could almost be a Boards of Canada sleeve, if the people looked slightly more evil.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

I took it with an analogue one-time use camera... I sort of like them better than digital cameras as catching the moments are easier.

[djempirical.livejournal.com]

initially, i used my flickr account (http://flickr.com/photos/dj_empirical/) to just get the zillions of digital pics off of my hard drive in some sort of useful way. most of those pics were similar to how i used to use film cameras, in a sort of "hey here's a pic of my friends" kind of way.

now that i have a better camera i've been using sets (http://flickr.com/photos/dj_empirical/sets/) to sort of document my days. it maybe hints at a "flow" of an evening, but then i wonder whether a set documenting a particular gig (http://flickr.com/photos/dj_empirical/sets/72157600048417621/) should inlcude not only pics of the gig,

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/dj_empirical/446747797/)

but various "aesthetic" pics

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/dj_empirical/446748078/)

and also portraits

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/dj_empirical/446751156/)

even though all were taken at the same event. am i attempting to document the night, or the event, or some combination? i suppose i could make *two* sets for each event/night/whatever, but that would just be tedious. so yeah, even we heavy users of flickr have philosophical questions on how to use it. i keep taking pictures, though, so i can't dwell too much on it....

[deadbatteries.livejournal.com]

I use flickr just as a way of documenting my life. I am one of those people who tends to throw nostalgic items away or under my bed forever, so flickr is useful in that I can present my life to myself to remember and reflect back on later - especially mundane details that seem too much trouble documenting on a real film photograph. of course, flickr is perhaps not for forever, and the way it is presented is rather unexciting, but I think the very process of wanting to remember makes me remember more.

I also use it to keep in touch with friends I've made (not on the Internet), since if people don't use facebook or livejournal, then they usually use something, and that something may be flickr. It is interesting when a friendship turns from a real life/watching movies kind of friendship into, "Hey, I like the way you framed this photograph."

I personally enjoy flickr users who are not like me -- those who update regularly but not often and in small quantities and who post their own art and photographs as well as images from outside sources.

I like the way that "Hobrechtstrasse, Neukolln" looks on your livejournal, but I probably wouldn't have clicked on it in flickr. If I like an image (but am not thrilled at it), but I can see pretty much everything I need to know in the smaller format, so I tend not to click on those kinds of images.

[(Anonymous)]

I want to delete everything I put on the internet and start over.

post-momentum

[eightyoldwomen.livejournal.com]

I've walked down that street at least a hundred times.