Words to Lyrics Ben Ho's observations from the cloud

10 October 2009

Photo Processes: Flickr vs. Facebook

Filed under: Tech — Ben @ 9:27 pm

I’ve got a few posts lined up explaining my current processes for the post-production and publishing of my photos. This first post is about publishing to web, the next one will be about organization after shooting an event.

I don’t like Facebook’s photo facility. It’s optimised to serve junk. I think that there are so many bad photos there, in terms of quality. Sure, many of them tell stories about people’s musings over the weekends, but thinking about it, it is mainly junk.

Let me give you a quick rundown on how Facebook serves photos. They optimise every photo that comes in for web use, scrubbing out EXIF and other miscellaneous data. Although they claim that “your photos look their best”, for quality freaks like me, it is far from that. The photos are resized and sent out through content delivery networks (CDNs). CDNs have servers all around the world, and requests for files are directed to the servers which is geographically the closest. More info is in this Facebook blog post.

So instead, I upload all my photos to Flickr. Their system is designed for the sharing and presentation of people’s photos (and pro member’s videos). When I upload there, the photos are served their original quality, with all the EXIF and other information. Flickr also allows geotagging, descriptions, tags and the like. In my opinion, it has a far richer experience than that of Facebook.

Now you might say “Hey Ben! Not everyone is on Flickr, but everyone is on Facebook!”. This is true. I completely agree that Facebook is the fastest way to share information with friends. Flickr is great for others to explore your work. I know that when I host photos on Flickr, I don’t get the intimacy of people’s comments/thoughts/feelings of my photos. However, I do get the “rich” experience I want which includes geotags, view statistics, and soon enough, critical appreciation. I am able to link Flickr photos to Facebook, so I can still show my friends.

To me, hosting photos on Flickr makes more sense. Although it seems like I am distancing myself from the social norm (well, at least the status quo), I think this issue will present itself better in the long term.

Any other thoughts?

5 October 2009

Two More Pieces of Advice

Filed under: Forward Thinking,Reflection — Tags: , , — Ben @ 9:23 pm

After writing the last post, I remembered that I had two more things to say.

1. Everyone is saying, “Make sure you thank your teachers for all the hard work they have done for you.” Well, the best way to thank them is to gain the best possible result in the HSC exams. They’ll be happy that their hard work has paid off, and you will be happy that you have a great result.

2. It’s almost a week since that wonderful last day of school. There are probably many thank you messages that you didn’t write on people’s shirts that morning. May I suggest that you hand-write letters to these people. I know I am…

All the best for HSC 2009.

4 October 2009

Crucial Last Weeks

Filed under: Forward Thinking — Tags: , , — Ben @ 9:41 pm

At time of writing, there are 17 days until English Paper 1.

As blunt as it sounds, the celebrations are over. The last game has been played, the last hurrah called. It’s time to hit the books, one last time.

I hope everyone isn’t finding it difficult to study. These are the last set of examinations, the most crucial ones. As has been said many times, “Your performance has an effect on other peoples’ performance.” I don’t want to explain how the system works, I think that overused statement is enough.

There are so many great things that will happen after this last set of exams. 4 weeks in retrospect isn’t much effort to ask for.

On the other hand, this is a great opportunity to get back into a normal routine. Simple things life having enough sleep and three meals a day, will make you feel better over the next few weeks. There is no reason to pull an all-nighter to cram; all that’s needed is to re-organise the schedule.

All the best for HSC 2009.

2 October 2009

Last Day in Retrospect

Filed under: Reflection — Tags: , — Ben @ 1:39 pm

This thought has been niggling me for the past day, and I wanted to get this off my chest.

So yesterday was the last day of school. The day began with a meet at Wahroonga Park, then a train ride to Waitara and finally a scooter ride from the station to school.

First off, I’d like to say that it was fantastic photographing you all. There are some great pictures of the most important day this year. It felt great documenting this wonderful day.

Second, I’m rather happy that this year’s celebrations didn’t produce any police cases, lawsuits and major injuries. Thinking about it, it was probably the best type of Year 12 celebration. At least we didn’t vandalise or damage school property or steal a car or something like that.  All we did was disrupt traffic for a very short time, and that’s the best possible outcome.

It’s not often that we get an opportunity to do something like this. So as every old saying goes, “Make the most of it.”

And we did.

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