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A question for photographers

I've been thinking (yes, always a dangerous thing) about photos here on Universal Hub.

First, I'm grateful to folks who mark their Flickr photos as "universalhub" or who e-mail me photos. There are some very talented photographers out there, and I'm glad I can highlight your work here. But that gets me to the next point:

I've noticed that when I post somebody's photo here, even in the smallish area up on the right side of the home page, relatively few people click through to the photo. This is unlike with links to blog posts, which do typically generate clicks. Also, the smallish size on the right often means the photos I post there lose something - there's only so much detail that can come out in a 260-pixel box.

So, finally, the real point:

Since I can't reward folks with clicks and since I'd like to give cool photos more space, by posting them in the center column, what would you think if I paid $1 for each "full-size" photo (500 pixels wide, say), I post here? And just for posting something here; I'm not looking for any re-use permissions or anything like that (and should I add a copyright notice or Creative Commons tag to photo posts?).

Thoughts?

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Comments

Pay for photos? A buck's a buck and that's nice - how on earth will you pay for it?

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I don't know about everyone else here, but I read UH through a blog reader and never end up seeing the photo up there.

Maybe integrate the new photo into the RSS feed, or even post the photo into the blog area instead...?

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Adam,

First, I love the site but since I visit it usually from Twitter or your RSS feed, I rarely get to see the "picture of the day" but rather an ad in that place.

Not complaining, in fact my only complaint is trying to figure out your "second word in CAPTCHA." I must have missed something in grammar school english class.

Paul

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The reward for me is seeing the pic up there. I'm not exactly a big click counter, but there's always a corresponding increase whenever Adam posts one of my Flickr photos -- and that's good enough for me.

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I've had a few photos featured on UH, and it's a nice way to be recognized. I agree that the small right-column photos aren't quite sufficient; as you say, they lose a lot but are just big enough that I rarely click through (although I do enjoy them).

I like the idea of featuring more photos -- there are definitely some talented folks in the area. There is the question of whether you think it's worth taking up a fair amount of real estate on UH with a large photo every day (or whenever); that's your call, but I think it's probably a nice idea. In fact, if I thought that UH was picking a photo a day to feature large, I might put a little more effort into it instead of just adding a tag here and there on a whim.

Clickthroughs to flickr don't really gain me anything except a warm fuzzy feeling, so I don't think you need to worry too much about replacing those. A buck is a nice idea, but too much hassle to be worth it for either of us. You might just include a prominent (top?) link to the photographer's page, and maybe also to their other "universalhub" photos, which will be more relevant to UH readers. Personally, I'd be happy with fewer people clicking through to a single featured photo, if just a handful of people looked at other stuff on my photostream. Currently, the spillover from the featured photo to other photos in my photostream is quite low, as far as I can tell.

Finally, I do think you should reproduce the copyright/copyleft info with the photo (even if in tiny grey text).

Of course, for those of us posting CC-licensed photos, all of this is moot -- you can do pretty much whatever you like with them. But I appreciate your thinking about it!

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I agree that a small cash amount is a nice gesture to offer but wouldn't be worth the administrative hassle.

I like the idea of giving a small name photo credit like a paper/magazine, and linking the image to some page of the author where a higher-resolution one can be seen. The page might be Flickr, or it might be a site of theirs, which may or may not have ads, but they get Googlejuice in any case.

One tangential comment, possibly relevant to UH at some point in the future... I no longer do photography, but when I was learning news shooting, I submitted to papers maybe a dozen times. After the first time, I started asking for whatever the standard fee. I did that not because it was enough money to make a living on, but because I didn't want to be undercutting professionals. It was bad enough that I was contributing to any non-professional source of photos, when I'd already decided I couldn't afford to be a professional myself. This was an issue a couple years ago, as the stock royalties business on which many photographers planned their retirement imploded, and it's even more true now, as papers are freaking out. I'll also add that I've met staff photogs from several papers, and they all were gracious and encouraging. If some publisher is thinking "Why have real photojournalists when we can get passable-quality citizen photos for free?" count me out.

Incidentally, I also learned that my first 8 years of amateur photography, when I seemed to be a natural at composition and a quick study at some other technical aspects, I was actually totally missing much of the essence of (one school of thought of) photojournalism. Most everything I'd shot was poor by those standards. I got a little bit better after that for a year or two, and I was better able to appreciate many of the professional images. I'd hate to see photojournalism reduced to my quality level. Perhaps we need lots of people to learn to appreciate the great news image, so as to keep up the demand for something that still only a small number of dedicated professionals can do.

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Hi Adam,

Love the site. I get your post through my RSS feed and Twitter so I rarely see the pictures. I like you're site because your headlines and brief text are informative enough to know whether or not I should click to see the full article you reference. I think that is tougher to do with a photo, and you're right, at the current size it's not big enough to do it justice.

But, I think the fact that people aren't clicking on the photo has less to do with how you display the photo and has more to do with the fact that people aren't coming to Universal Hub to look at photos. They're coming for headlines. You do that better than anyone. But there are other sites that do photography better. And since we no longer rely on the newspaper or any other one stop shop for information, it's not necessary for you to do it all. It might even diminish what you already do so well.

And if you do decide to explore the photos more, I don't think you need to pay for the pictures. $1 really doesn't do anything for anybody. I would just find people who don't mind sharing their work. Avoid the photographers who justifiably want a fair price for their pictures and find people who take pictures to simply share them. There's plenty of them. Most would probably just appreciate a link.

Again, I love your site and all the hard work you do.

Best,
Channing

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I think the $1 is a nice idea but its small potatoes and more accounting work than necessary ...not worth it. As other mention, its just nice to have one's photo up.

Here's an idea. Choose one "universalhub" tagged photo each day and make a post. You don't have have too write much, just a sentence or question to get readers to comment. You can post it at 500 points horizontal, nice.

Also, offer a page that displays a random "universalhub" tagged photo. Make that your photo page and you can put other photo widgets on it. flickr has a few cool widgets.

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I think most of us that tag our photos with "universalhub" definitely just want to share them There is no, at least on my end, to offer a buck. The Creative Commons is not a bad idea though... nice to protect the photog's rights...

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The Creative Commons is not a bad idea though... nice to protect the photog's rights...

#1, you can't change the license on a photo. If it's "rights reserved" and you want to use it on your website, you must ask. You can't slap the CC on it and use it...

#2, I refuse to license any of my good work under the CC, but I might want to grant Adam limited usage rights (example: right to use it on the uhub site in a post, only) in exchange for link-back, or a reasonable fee.

#3, I've seen people slapping a dozen tags, including uhub and bostonist tags on the most utter shit photography I've seen in my life- they apply the tags to everything they shoot, and they somehow missed that "edit" step between "take many photos" and "put them online." I stopped browsing it because it was 99% crap; lots of completely talentless shots of boston skylines and the like. If you're tagging more than one photo a week for inclusion by uhub or bostonist, you're Doing It Wrong, or you're a freelance full-time photographer (and you wouldn't be on flickr.)

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I don't think anybody is talking about trying to appropriate somebody's work and then slap a Creative Commons license on that. I certainly don't do that.

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I also agree that the $1 idea is a nice gesture, but may not be worth the work.

I think anyone who tags their photo with "universalhub" or sends in a photo via email is already consenting to it being used on the site. Also, even though you say there isn't much click-through with photos I think most people who submit photos are happy with any bump in traffic their site gets (it's hard to measure, but it does have value).

And I love the idea of adding "photo of the day" to the main column. I think you could possibly generate more click-through if there is the one large photo (500 pixels across as someone mentioned) with maybe the previous 3 or so right under as small thumbnails. So when you update the main photo with the new one, the recent ones are still featured and still helping to generating click-through for the photographer (as those small thumbnails link right to their Flickr page with the larger photo or their website)

The only copy with each needed would be the copyright or copyleft status of the image and maybe how many comments it received (I'd show this for the smaller thumbnails as well to keep the conversation going on those too).

Anyway, just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents as well.

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I also agree that the $1 idea is a nice gesture, but may not be worth the work.

I think anyone who tags their photo with "universalhub" or sends in a photo via email is already consenting to it being used on the site. Also, even though you say there isn't much click-through with photos I think most people who submit photos are happy with any bump in traffic their site gets (it's hard to measure, but it does have value).

And I love the idea of adding "photo of the day" to the main column. I think you could possibly generate more click-through if there is the one large photo (500 pixels across as someone mentioned) with maybe the previous 3 or so right under as small thumbnails. So when you update the main photo with the new one, the recent ones are still featured and still helping to generating click-through for the photographer (as those small thumbnails link right to their Flickr page with the larger photo or their website)

The only copy with each needed would be the copyright or copyleft status of the image and maybe how many comments it received (I'd show this for the smaller thumbnails as well to keep the conversation going on those too).

Anyway, just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents as well.

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Based on the comments so far, I think what I'll do is eliminate the small right-hand photo box and start highlighting at least one daily photo in a larger size in the center column (you guys make it tough - you take so many cool photos!). If the photographer has his or her own site, I'll link to that and include any relevant copyright/CC info.

I'll also look into why photos aren't showing up in RSS feeds; I could've sworn they were.

And another question: Somebody asked me in e-mail about setting up an actual UH group on Flickr, rather than just using tags. Is this something folks would be interested in, or are there already enough Boston-related Flickr groups out there?

Again, thanks!

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I'll also look into why photos aren't showing up in RSS feeds; I could've sworn they were.

This RSS feed: http://www.universalhub.com/node/feed when read with Bloglines, sees all the inline photos displayed in posts.

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Adam, plz release this: http://www.universalhub.com/node/22791 and fixup the youtube embed so it displays. thank you.

and plz release this: http://www.universalhub.com/node/22792 with no embeds to fix, thanks.

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Sorry, I've been down and out for the past few days due to some wisdom tooth problems that are now all cleared up. It's not that I've not wanted to opine on things, just that I've been feeling too foul to sit at a keyboard long enough.

So, piling on the above comments, I've had one picture highlighted (and once I get the rest of my gallery back up, maybe more in the future) and I feel like the $1 is a nice gesture, but completely unnecessary. I also agree that better attribution/album linking would be great because I have noticed in Boston-related google searches, UHub results return quite highly actually.

Also, for myself, most of the time I don't click through unless there's something about the thumbnail that really catches my eye and makes we want to view the entire picture. It happens occasionally, but not all of the time. A teaser (thumbnail) on a photo can often tell me alot more than a teaser (text excerpt) for a blog/article can tell me, so I'm sure I click more outlinks for blogs/articles proportionally.

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You should definitely have a group. Adding a photo to a group only takes minimally more effort than tagging, but comes with the added benefits of having discussion threads and searching UHub photos by tag. You should have a Facebook group too :-).

And for the record, I totally depend on this site for my Boston news and if any of my photos help you keep the site going I would be honored, extra click-throughs for me or not. I should be paying *you* a $1!

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I'm not sure if my perspective is the norm or not, but I blog for fun, and am entirely flattered when U-Hub links to me. I don't find it necessary nor expect compensation for my content.

-Jason

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Just think, if I get five photos posted, I will have earned a free five-dollar foot long sandwich at Subway...

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I agree with the others - it's nice just having a photo picked and displayed - no money necessary. The creative commons license is a nice idea though. And I like the flickr group idea as well.

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Hi Adam,
When you post a flickr photo you should link back to flickr.

That's the flickr termds of service.

So embed the photo from the flickr site with a link back to the flickr page. Do not rehost on UH. People want to see view counts.

Also, it'd be nice to credit the photographer with some like:

Photo by Steve Garfield CC BY-NC-SA

--Steve

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It would certainly be a lot easier if I just embedded the Flickr image code - just copy and paste a URL, done. The reason I don't do that is because Flickr doesn't seem to do much compression on their images. That's good for printing the photos, not so good for displaying on a Web page that might have other stuff on it. For example, the photo here is 111k, the version here is 26k (the latter does have slightly smaller dimensions, but not 85k worth).

Also, some images can't be embedded - if somebody's already uploaded an image that fits within the 500 x whatever parameters, you don't get a choice for image sizes, and the img src becomes a generic "spaceball.gif" (take a look at the properties of this cool image, for example).

But do folks want me to embed their images? If so, please let me know (and for you, Steve, I'll do that). Also, where does the Flickr ToS require this? I just clicked on the ToS link on the Flickr home page and didn't spot anything, but maybe I missed it among the ALL-CAPITAL-LETTER THOU SHALT NOT clauses.

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I agree with most people here that the dollar is a nice gesture, but not necessary. Links to my flickr pictures and blog are always appreciated.

Also having a UH group pool on flickr would make it much easier than having to tag the photos. I think that's a great idea.

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$1 is a nice idea but not necessary. More important than the $1 would be always including detailed attributions for all featured photos (including copying whatever license they use, and being nice about linkback to either the photo page {as flickr does seem to require} and if available back to the photog's own personal page).

If you don't hurry up and create groups/universalhub on flickr soon then I will. I would have (for you) already, but couldn't decide to make it public-open, or public-requires invite. Presumably, we'd invite anyone respectable who asks to join here, but the second option would help weed out random people.

And no (to a couple of commenters), simply including universalhub on someone's photo is not explicitly granting Adam rights to the picture. It's just a tag, and if the photo otherwise says all rights reserved, it still means all rights reserved.

I'm still torn between the CC by-nc and by-nc-sa licenses. Actually, what I really want is all rights reserved, unless you're someone I think is cool, and in that case you can have a free by-nc license. But still haven't figured out how to implement that yet. It'll take a while for actual copyright practice to catch up to how aggregators work (whether client feed readers, or planet- and UH - style web sites).

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