Flickr and the future of photography - new exhibition

I'm just back from a great trip to Berlin (more of that in later posts!) and took lots of photos whilst I was there.  I was uploading them all to Flickr and it made me think about the nature of photographs and how much it has changed in the digital age.  So when I read about a new exhibition in Amsterdam 'What's next?' exploring the future of photography it caught my interest.

There's such a proliferation of photographs - from people we know and people we don't know.  I quite happily share my photos via Twitter and Flickr, and now on Instagram.  I guess most people are nosy anyway and digital photos have just made it a lot easier to indulge in the habit of peeking into people's lives.  I'm certainly not complaining as I love seeing where my friend's have been, catching up on what friend's who don't live nearby are doing, and also seeing new places through the photos I see from people I don't know on Twitter and blogs.

It made me think about the value of photographs.  Does the huge number of photographs mean that we value them less? does the fact that we only develop a small percentage of what we take, if any at all, automatically mean we value them less? or is that just me being retro and old-fashioned?

The exhibition features four 'guest curators' and the one that jumped out at me was Erik Kessels with his investigation in to 'Photography in abundance'

installation by Erik Kessells at Foam, Amsterdam image courtesy of Creative Review

"We're exposed to an overload of images nowadays," says Kessels. "This glut is in large part the result of image-sharing sites like Flickr, networking sites like Facebook, and picture-based search engines. Their content mingles public and private, with the very personal being openly and un-selfconsciously displayed. By printing all the images uploaded in a 24-hour period, I visualise the feeling of drowning in representations of other peoples' experiences." taken from the Creative Review website, 15/11/2011
There's no way I'd ever develop all the photos I've stuck up on Flickr, because to be honest I don't think a lot of them are good enough.  However when I used to use a film camera I'd take loads of poor quality photographs and they'd be developed without me knowing how they'd turned out until I went to pick the film up.  Although my lack of skill as a photographer did mean I never hold out any great expectations of what my photographs will be like - digital or film!  Just looking at these images of the vast quantity of photos taken and uploaded in one day has made me think that I should maybe try and exercise a bit more control, or 'curation' as the buzzword is, over which images I put up.  I already do this when I get digital photos developed, select my favourites or the ones that are most representative of the holiday.

Foam is the acronym for 'The Future of Photography Museum' and going by this exhibition it sounds like an interesting place to visit.

Today was the first day of my last week at Wessex Film and Sound Archive(WFSA) before I move on to pastures new (more of that in a later post once I start the new job!).  My post at WFSA was only a six month post and I'll be leaving it four weeks early but having completed all the work I was scheduled to do, in addition to all the extra work me and Zoe Viney have done on promoting and project and the Archive.

What have I learned?

• Cataloguing films isn't different from cataloguing paper documents in terms of the description of the material i.e. keep it descriptive, don't use words the general public couldn't understand (unless you also provide a glossary), include as much contextual information as possible given time and availability of information constraints, include all the ISAD(G) elements
• Knowledge of the variety of film and audio formats and knowledge of how to identify and differentiate between them
• I've learned more of the quirks and functions of CALM as I've continued using that at WFSA
• The wonders of Excel! - it is fantastic for keeping and managing timetables and deadlines. I can now use an Excel spreadsheet, and create one, with a lot more confidence - thanks Zoe!
• I have been working on a Mac so have greatly increased my knowledge of using that, including simple things like learning how to take screenshots
• I've installed and used DROID - Digital Record Object IDentification
• I've learned how to edit film clips using Quicktime
• Experience of using an 8mm projector
• Plenty of experience now of using a Steenbeck - which I love!
• Splicing film, adding leader tape
• An awareness of the various ways and places in which archive film can be utilised, such as the Little Black Dress exhibition in Portsmouth
• More experience of carrying out research - into film locations and film makers.
• I now have knowledge of Hampshire, Dorset, Isle of Wight - and lots of places which I would now like to visit in person, as opposed to just seeing on film
• Increased experience of the ways in which Twitter and Flickr can be used by Archives to promote specific projects and Archives in general.

Fun with statistics

Now, if you'd asked me any time up until this if I could have fun with statistics the answer would have been a very quick and very clear No!  However I've since rediscovered the StatCounter account I set up when I started Archives and Auteurs and I am amazed to find myself idly browsing my blog's statistics.   The reason I remembered about the account was thinking about the work Flickr I recently set up with Zoe Viney for the Wessex Film and Sound Archive.  We couldn't find any way for collecting statistical information through Flickr beyond the basic page views information.  I remembered about StatCounter and surprised myself by remembering my user name and password as well.  It had still been running even though I haven't been logging in but as I hadn't added my new IP addresses (work and home) to the list of addresses not to count then I think my results might be slightly skewed.  So, if anyone else is setting up StatCounter or any similar statistical service then it is always best to block your own computer's IP address so your figures are more accurate, unless your memory is really bad and you want to keep count of your own views of course.


The images I've included below show the breakdown by country of visitors to my blog over the course of last week, then the second one lists in more detail every country that views have come from.  you can narrow this down to city as well.  Other useful things you can check are which pages are the most popular, which websites people are directed to your site from, how long they stay (this can sometimes be a bit painful), and lots of other useful, or useless, information depending on your point of view/general inclination to nosiness.

What I found most useful was information on how people had found my blog - what terms they had searched for or what website they had come from.  This made me think more about the tagging I use on my posts and I have resolved to try and be a bit more thorough in my tagging - treating it more like my actual cataloguing work than I have done in the past.  

I haven't started using it yet for the WFSA Flickr account for two reasons, the first being I thought I would try it first with my Flickr account to see if it worked.  With StatCounter, and I assume it is similar whatever software you use, you have to input the HTML code in to your profile on Flickr then add the web pages to your statistic software account.  I'm find doing this with my own account but I was a bit unsure with the work one - does this give them access to other information on your Flickr account, do they have rights over the statistical data as it is displayed on their account?  These questions are things I would rather investigate more fully before using it for workplace statistics - but for now I'll keep enjoying using it for my own web pages.

Thoughts on using Flickr for Archives

Since last Friday me and fellow cataloguer Zoe Viney have been avidly following our Flickr statistics (really not as boring as it sounds!) and the publicity we did has had a huge impact on viewing figures.  Just using mailing lists such as the Archives NRA list, Hampshire County Council lists, and our Twitter we had over 300 views by the end of the first day (last Friday, 18th February 2011) and as of five minutes ago we have 495 views - pretty good going for five days I would say!  Even though I use Twitter every day, check my mailing lists every day and so on, I was still surprised by the high response rate to our postings.  I think this illustrates the high value which such social networking tools as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr can have for an archive, especially in these difficult times of cuts and closures.

Our original aim was to create an online exhibition which would promote the project we are working on specifically and the Wessex Film and Sound Archive more generally.  This was an additional outcome to the project rather than a core part of it so we had to do it for free, and without using up our cataloguing time.  I had used Flickr before when I worked at Stirling University (see their Flickr here) so I knew how easy it was to set up and to upload images to.  I had never used it to upload videos before but this isn't any different to uploading photos so doesn't take long at all.  What I had thought would take longer was actually making clips from the digital copies of the films.  However this was surprisingly straightforward using Quicktime to select then extract a short section of a film.  The quality of the images varied hugely depending on whether we were doing screenshots from Quicktime files, DVD copies, or taking photographs of a screen showing a VHS copy with the Quicktime files giving the best quality still shots.

The exhibition is 'A Sense of Place' - let me know what you think of it and feel free to add any additional information or comments to the Flickr site.  It is very easy to use Flickr and by using some free publicity, very easy to direct people to your site.  However what seems to be a lot harder, well at least I've found it harder, is encouraging people to interact and communicate with the archives through Flickr.  Our aim now should be to try to generate more user interaction, maybe by posting stills of places or people we can't identify - that's the next project to get started on!

Another thing - trying to set up an exhibition within Flickr, (we don't have Flickr Pro so can't use Collections, only Sets)  was tricky.  It was only due to Zoe's persistence with sorting out the links that it works (well, we think it works, let us know what you think).  it took a lot of tweaking to get it so that we could create themes then link to a set of images from a particular film.  Flickr Pro would help with this as you could create Collections, then Sets within the Collections - if the exhibition and our general use of Flickr proves to be a success then we hope that Flickr Pro is something the Record Office would consider investing in (not that it's a huge investment really, just $25).

I think this clip below shows just how much you can get out of a 1 minute 30 second clip - there is just so much going on at this market and fair!  The film is titled 1939 - 1963 Then and Now as the filmmaker Eda Moore spliced together footage of Salisbury (her hometown) across this date range to show what had changed, and what had stayed the same.



AV509/3 - Eda Moore 1939 - 1963 Then and Now

Just launched - Stirling University Archives Flickr page

Lindsay Anderson, seated in front of part of his large collection of VHS tapes
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

Along with Karl Magee, the University Archivist, we have started a Flickr site for Stirling University Archives. This meant I got to spend some very enjoyable time scanning the pages of photo albums that are part of the Lindsay Anderson Collection here at Stirling.

We decided to take a Flickr pro account as it meant we could organise the photos in 'Collections' and 'Sets'. There are two Collections - the University Archives and The Lindsay Anderson Collection'. Within each of the Collections there are Sets. In the University Archives we have a set for the 40th anniversary exhibition of the University of Stirling, a set for student prospectuses and one for student handbooks. In the Lindsay Anderson Collection, in addition to the individual photo albums, there is also a set of photographs which give a general introduction to the Lindsay Anderson Collection. We will continue to add to these collections and sets. Once the CALM catalogue I'm creating for the Lindsay Anderson Collection is online then the plan is to link each photo directly to its catalogue entry.

Photograph featured in University of Stirling 40th anniversary exhibition.
The newly-opened Pathfoot Building, c1968 © University of Stirling Archives

The photo albums I've scanned are all part of the series of LA/6/2 - Photographs, in the Lindsay Anderson Collection. The albums on Flickr all date from the late 1940s through the 1950s and cover topics such as: the filming of O Dreamland; the filming of Wakefield Express; visit to Cannes International Film Festival 1949; the making of Thorold Dickinson's film Secret People (1952); the making of James Broughton's film The Pleasure Garden (1952) (which Lindsay Anderson starred in); visit to France; and a visit to Moscow in 1957 with the Royal Court Theatre (the front page of this album is pictured below).

Cover of photo album, LA/6/2/1/8
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

We've started putting some names to the faces and places in the photographs but we thought it would be better to put them all up and then leave it open to other people to help us identify people and places. So far we've had some invaluable help so if anyone else wants to help, or indeed just leave any comments, then that would be very welcome!