Flickr As the Anti-Instagram

The Air That I Can't Breathe

John Carey writes about Flickr nostalgia

I have been thinking lately about how much I have missed the sense of community and open conversation found in the “good old days” of Flickr before modern social media platforms took off and changed everything. Instagram snuck in as more and more cameras attached to mobile phones started to muddy the photography waters and eventually even those shooting on DSLRs and film cameras started to jump ship to “where the audience was”.

Jumping ship to “where the audience is” always comes with a trade-off in our modern social media world. There’s always a “next thing” to jump to, every few years.

Instagram was a lot of fun for a few years. I felt dedicated to it, and the audience there. It was an every-day kind of sharing site, right there with Flickr, but I kept it strictly mobile-photos-only. Flickr was for everything, Instagram just for mobile – but both were a daily habit.

Now? Instagram is Facebook, through and through. As John writes, it’s all about hype and personality. I used it to follow photography that I liked, not to see baby photos and life streaming. That’s what Facebook was for, but more and more it’s what Instagram became.

John mentions using Flickr as the anti-Instagram:

I am, perhaps, also hopeful that as Instagram gets weirder as Facebook continues to subtly manipulate it, those wanting to engage, share, and collaborate with other photographers will give Flickr a try either again or for the fist time.

What’s nice about Flickr is that it’s kind of always been there, chugging along. It had its early growth period, and its Yahoo! period, and now its SmugMug period. But I’ve always felt like I’ve gotten what I’ve paid for: a site for and about photography, by photographers.

Maybe it’s that “paying for” part that makes the difference. Maybe by paying for a yearly subscription, us Flickr users keep the site free of ads, posers, and junk. Free is open to everyone, but paid keeps the user base dedicated and smaller.

Flickr not changing all that much is probably the best part about it.

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From Notes to Story

Johnny Baird

As a trained journalist, I taught myself to take good notes. Get the quote just right, especially the good ones, even if it means missing some other point.

Take good enough notes that a story comes out easily. Organize the notes by question, or by topic, and let the conversation go where it goes.

All this is to say that my notes have helped me tell good stories, even when – in the case of my musicians projects – I’m reading over my notes a year or two later. I can’t remember the details of a conversation that happened months ago, but with good notes, I can recreate it.

My portrait projects are part art statement, and part storytelling exercise, where the story part – what a person says, and the tales they tell – is as important as the pictures that come out. It’s a total package. I can’t seem to do one without the other.

Blame the journalism. Blame the need to get the full story, the background, and the good quotes on my schooling and my past experiences. It never really leaves me.

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Bio Dome II

The light can fool you in winter. Sure, it looks sunny and bright, but step outside this artificial atmosphere and you’ll pay the price.

The midwest, in all its January glory.

We’ll watch from inside the terrariums, taking our time in both the arid and humid man-made climates.

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Bio Dome

How better to beat the mid winter blues in Michigan than to travel to a jungle and a desert?

That’s what we did when the big snow storm came: a day for sledding in the driveway, and a day for heading out to Hidden Lake Gardens and enjoying the bio domes.

Hidden Lake is truly a hidden gem – out in the middle of nowhere, winding paths and lake trails, plants and trees of all kinds. The bio domes offer a desert environment, a lush tropical environment, and a simple greenhouse. Walk inside, and you’re somewhere else.

It didn’t feel like January in here.

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Shoot for the Moon

“If you adopt that notion of linear progress, if you expect that your life will just be one straight rocketship to the moon, you will be so disappointed and disoriented when you fall off course, when a tank explodes, when the moon moves and it turns out to not be where you plotted.” – Austin Kleon, in a great Twitter thread.

Amen. I think about how, as we settle into winter, I take fewer photos this time of year. It happens every January, and I know this slow, quiet season is coming.

The thing is: do you accept the season, or try to rebel? Often I’ll pick up a different creative project in the winter – photographer interviews, say – and when spring blooms, I get started on photography projects in earnest. Summer, with it’s light and long days, provides more opportunities to make actual photographs. Toward autumn, I fall in love with the weather and the landscape and the light, and create some of my favorite work.

What am I up to? Depends on the time of year.

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In Case of Fire

In Case of Fire

I heard a story on NPR about the victims of the Camp Fire out in California returning to their unburned homes, finding everything they own still in its place – just as it was they day they left in early November.

That story made me think of what I would do in case our home ever caught fire. There’s the old trope about grabbing the photo albums. Photo albums, the thinking goes, are the only irreplaceable items.

For me, I’d grab the kids, my diabetes kit, and my backup hard drive. That’s where all my photos live.

Yes, I still have photo albums. I cherish them. But a few years ago I scanned all my old childhood photos and backed them up in several locations: Aperture, a backup drive, and Flickr. I would only the grab the backup hard drive by my desk to grab the few photos I don’t have backed up somewhere else.

This may be a good time for an annual reminder: back up your photos, keep them in a safe spot, and keep multiple copies.

I set a reminder to backup my iPhone photos, too, at least once a month. Just in case.

In case of a fire, I’d still be worried about all my photographs – but maybe not as worried as I used to be.

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Lost Kitten

Usually we don’t get out to the Christmas tree farm until much later – sometimes right at dark. But the last few years we’ve made it a point to get there before the sun sets.

All that sunshine didn’t stop Madelyn from losing her stuffed kitten somewhere on the lot. We made a trip back to look for it, but no luck. That little orange Beanie Baby was lost in a forest of evergreens.

Then we got a call from the tree farm: they found the kitten.

Guess what will appear in Madelyn’s stocking this Christmas?

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Contrary

I’m always rooting for the contrarian. If you have an idea or system that goes against the norm, I’m almost already on board.

That’s why Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson’s book, It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy At Work, was an instant buy for me. The founders of Basecamp, Jason and David run a successful software company and keep sane about it. No “sprints,” no 60 hour work weeks, no demanding work from their employees on weekends. The key word is calm.

It flies in the face of most of what you hear about the tech world. Everyone from startups to video game companies are working their staff to literal death. But it’s not just tech – plenty of businesses demand too much time and attention from their team members. I see it all the time.

In my younger days, I could handle a 50 or 60 hour week, easily. In fact, when my first company held a lot of community events, I gladly signed up for the overtime, since all that money ended up in my pocket. Now, though, it’s different: I have a family, obligations, and a house to maintain. That’s not to mention hobbies, some leisure time, maintaining friendships, and making progress on projects around the house.

I’m protective of my time. That’s why the ideas behind It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy At Work were so appealing: making projects manageable, not constantly chasing after profit and growth, giving people time to consider big ideas and projects, valuing sleep and self care.

I lived one idea – four day work weeks during the summer – first hand at my first higher education job. There were two summers where we took Fridays off, and what a benefit. Time with my family, long weekends to take little vacations, opportunities to rest up before the craziness of the fall, when the students returned. Taking Fridays off didn’t bankrupt the business, or turn everyone into lazy slobs. It simply was, until August, and then it wasn’t. In most business environments, if you suggested taking Fridays off in the summer, you’d get laughed out of the office.

Like CJ Chilver’s A Lesser Photographer, the book offers some sanity in all the craziness. Where CJ’s book said don’t buy into the photography hype, Jason and David’s book says don’t buy into overworking. Buy, instead, into calm.

It’s contrarian, for good reason. It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy At Work says there’s another way, a different way, worth trying.

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Autumn Out Back

My co-workers thought I was crazy.

“I’m heading to the woods,” I said after lunch. “If I’m not back in a while, it’s been nice working with you all.”

The woods, they asked? Why?

Because. It’s right out back. At work, our headquarters sits in the middle of a beautiful, hilly forest, with little ponds and lakes all around us. I’ve been dying to get into those woods and explore – dying to get out and shoot, period.

No, the weather wasn’t nice, and no, the light wasn’t perfect. But if felt good to get out and tromp through the fallen leaves on a cool autumn day.

Then my Canon battery died, so I had to rely on my iPhone. Not that that matters.

I made it back by lunch hour’s end, a little wet and a lot refreshed.

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Only What You Need

Among the Birch

“Take only what you need to survive.” – Captain Lone Starr, Spaceballs

How much photography technique is too much?

Is it good enough to learn the techniques to be able to do what you want to do? To be able to say what you need to say?

What good is any more technique?

The liberal artist in me says learn all you can – simply for learning’s sake. I’m a lifelong self-educator. Part of me can’t help but dive into technique and tools and tips just because that’s how my brain works. It’s a sponge.

But then I hit a skill ceiling. I don’t need to learn much more about Photoshop, or exposure compensation, or lighting, because I have just enough to be able to express myself properly.

From here, with what I know now, the rest is just noise.

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Textures of the Season

Out here, where the roads are named after the family farms, we slide into the quiet season.

It’s all warm colors here at Adams Farm: yellows and reds and oranges. A few greens, but mostly the rustic hue of autumn.

The textures are everywhere, from smooth pumpkins and apples to mottled squashes of every different shape and size.

We’re crazy about the foods of autumn. I could live on apples and squash, while the kids transform into sticky hornet magnets with cider and donuts. We wipe our hands of cinnamon and sugar, we feel for the rigid pumpkin stems, and we toss the bumpy buttercup from crate to wagon.

This is what we live for – the texture of the season.

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Bright Walls

It’s almost like all this is a bit too cool for Jackson.

International mural artists? Tons of people downtown? Beauty where once there was empty brick?

It all happened, thanks to the Bright Walls mural festival, this past week. But really, it started months ago with one of the best marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen. You couldn’t go anywhere in town without seeing that sunrise-and-brick logo. The campaign worked, too, because people – both Jackson natives and out-of-towners – showed up in droves, slowing down traffic in an otherwise sleepy downtown.

Maybe it’s obvious, but here, right in front of all of us, was the power of art on display. It was a spectacle, sure, but it was also a reason to celebrate.

A reason to believe.

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Hobbit Place

This is usually our springtime ritual, heading to the Hobbit Place, grabbing flowers and thinking about landscape decorations.

For this year, we went full autumn: mums, pumpkins, decorative gourds – the whole thing. As a Tolkien fan, I love the greenhouse’s name. As a person who cares about their yard, I appreciate their selection.

Tick tock goes the beat of the year. On and on we slide into fall.

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While the Gettin’s Good

Louisville, Kentucky

After our Wisconsin summer vacation, I had the thought to take the photos from the trip and make a little picture book out of them.

This week, I did just that after receiving a discount email from Snapfish. Just $12 for an 8×11″ book with 20 pages? Sold.

I rarely jump on those deals when I get them, but once in a while the opportunity and the idea come together to make something happen.

There are a ton of photo printing companies out there, just begging you to make something. These places are constantly sending out coupons and discounts. Test a few out, see what you like, and then wait for the sale emails to come in. It’s too affordable not to something.

Take them up on it, while the gettin’s good.

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Labor Day

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It was about 7:45 p.m. Saturday when I swore for the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.

That first time, it was because Michigan, early on, was looking paltry against Notre Dame, and the weatherman kept interrupting the football game to tell us a thunderstorm was heading toward Jackson.

After that, I swore because a tornado was making a mess of our neighborhood – just 15 minutes later.

The second time I swore was because I watched a giant oak limb fall into our street, snapping the power lines and cutting our electricity. I don’t remember what exactly I said, but it was enough for my wife to spring into action, grabbing the kids and heading to the basement.

After that, it was a blur: torrential rain, downed limbs, no power, giant trees snapped in two, and a little crowd of drenched birds, shivering and frightened, gathered around a spared maple.

With the power gone, we made the best of our quiet night in the house. The next morning, we woke up to a new view of the sky: those majestic oaks that shaded our house were gone, as was a hunk of the magnolia in the back yard. It covered our dining room window, making it feel like we were in the middle of a hedgerow.

We were lucky. Our neighbors got the worst of it, losing most of their front yard trees and a few others – plus it was their power line I watched get cut in two. A block down, a street fell across the street, smashing a Cutlas Sierra. Another oak fell on top of a house, the trunk teetering like a seesaw. Strangely, a block or two in either direction, it looked like no storm had come through at all. Just our luck.

So we spent the next two days cleaning up from the confirmed tornado. Much like some John Mellenkamp song, we were small town people helping our neighbors, chipping in with a rake or a chainsaw when we could.

Labor Day, indeed.

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