Changes to Flickr Photos

[kphoger]

I'm still annoyed by losing a mere 50-60 photos from a trip to Texas 7 years ago...don't try to move files while hurriedly getting into an airplane seat.

My dad has always been into bicycles.  Once, when I was growing up in the 90s, we saw two long-distance cyclists while driving on US-36 near where we lived in Atwood, KS.  My dad offered to let them stay at our house that night.  It turned out they were Dutch, and they were on an around-the-world cycling tour.  They had even cycled across northern Africa, complete with government escorts across Libya and Algeria.  My dad took a few pictures of them at our house and then later mailed them to Holland.  After they got back home, they had all their film developed and found out that an airport X-ray machine had destroyed all their pictures (the guard at that airport had assured them that that particular machine wouldn't destroy their film, so they trusted his word).  That airport was on their return journey home, so it destroyed every picture they had taken.  The pictures my dad mailed to them were literally the only pictures they had of their entire journey.

So, hey, at least it's not that bad!

[AsphaltPlanet]

Hell, I'm still annoyed by losing a mere 50-60 photos from a trip to Texas 7 years ago...don't try to move files while hurriedly getting into an airplane seat.

Yah, I hear that, I have lost more than a few photos due to carelessness.

I once formatted a memory card that had a days worth of photos from San Antonio and Austin simply due to my own carelessness and getting the cards mixed up.

I also inadvertently ran over a memory card that had fallen out of my pocked that contained a whole bunch of beautiful night photos that I had taken from Hamilton a few years ago.

[Max Rockatansky]

Hell, I'm still annoyed by losing a mere 50-60 photos from a trip to Texas 7 years ago...don't try to move files while hurriedly getting into an airplane seat.

Yah, I hear that, I have lost more than a few photos due to carelessness.

I once formatted a memory card that had a days worth of photos from San Antonio and Austin simply due to my own carelessness and getting the cards mixed up.

I also inadvertently ran over a memory card that had fallen out of my pocked that contained a whole bunch of beautiful night photos that I had taken from Hamilton a few years ago.

Had a hard drive crash back in 2014 which wiped out my photo hard copies.  Fortunately at the time I wasn't really saving photos nor were they really up to the spec I would do today.  I was able recover almost everything but there was substantial loss of shield pics.  I ended up remastering all the older photos that were viable and started using triplicate back up...lesson learned. 

[kphoger]

Had a hard drive crash back in 2014 which wiped out my photo hard copies. 

Aren't photo hard copies made out of paper?

[Max Rockatansky]

Had a hard drive crash back in 2014 which wiped out my photo hard copies. 

Aren't photo hard copies made out of paper?

Indeed they are, meant to say hard drive copies I think. 

[formulanone]

I'm still annoyed by losing a mere 50-60 photos from a trip to Texas 7 years ago...don't try to move files while hurriedly getting into an airplane seat.

My dad has always been into bicycles.  Once, when I was growing up in the 90s, we saw two long-distance cyclists while driving on US-36 near where we lived in Atwood, KS.  My dad offered to let them stay at our house that night.  It turned out they were Dutch, and they were on an around-the-world cycling tour.  They had even cycled across northern Africa, complete with government escorts across Libya and Algeria.  My dad took a few pictures of them at our house and then later mailed them to Holland.  After they got back home, they had all their film developed and found out that an airport X-ray machine had destroyed all their pictures (the guard at that airport had assured them that that particular machine wouldn't destroy their film, so they trusted his word).  That airport was on their return journey home, so it destroyed every picture they had taken.  The pictures my dad mailed to them were literally the only pictures they had of their entire journey.

So, hey, at least it's not that bad!

I think any film with a rating over ISO 800 will be ruined by X-rays, but it probably depends on the scanner strength. I took rolls of Ektar ISO 1000 through scanners in Miami, and later Barcelona, and they were not damaged.

[AsphaltPlanet]

Just while I am thinking about it, there are some utilities out there that can recover saved files that have been inadvertently deleted from a memory card.  In my experience utilities such as this do work fairly well so long as new information hasn't been overwritten over top of the data one is trying to recover.

[hbelkins]

Ugh. I started using Flickr and quit trying to do web pages and upload to my site because it was easier. I've been paying the $24.95 for the Pro account, but $50 is just a little too much.

Guess I'll port my Flickr albums over to Facebook. At least it's still free.

[Max Rockatansky]

Ugh. I started using Flickr and quit trying to do web pages and upload to my site because it was easier. I've been paying the $24.95 for the Pro account, but $50 is just a little too much.

Guess I'll port my Flickr albums over to Facebook. At least it's still free.

Is Facebook still compressing photo file sizes?

[MNHighwayMan]

Ugh. I started using Flickr and quit trying to do web pages and upload to my site because it was easier. I've been paying the $24.95 for the Pro account, but $50 is just a little too much.

Guess I'll port my Flickr albums over to Facebook. At least it's still free.

Is Facebook still compressing photo file sizes?

Without a doubt. Facebook sucks for pictures.

[Chris]

Do Facebook photo URLs expire? I've often seen missing photos in forums that looked like Facebook URLs.

Flickr pro used to be a $ 50 / year subscription, until Yahoo thought personal data mining could cover the running cost and decided to drop nearly all limits on free accounts, so there was no real advantage for taking a paid "pro" subscription unless you were dependent on the statistics.

This move didn't really surprise me and I doubt if a similar "unlimited" storage plan would be much cheaper elsewhere outside of the Facebook / Instagram / Google ecosystems.

[MNHighwayMan]

Do Facebook photo URLs expire? I've often seen missing photos in forums that looked like Facebook URLs.

I know at least some of them do. I've seen posts here that linked to Facebook images, but they no longer displayed.

[SSOWorld]

Ugh. I started using Flickr and quit trying to do web pages and upload to my site because it was easier. I've been paying the $24.95 for the Pro account, but $50 is just a little too much.

Guess I'll port my Flickr albums over to Facebook. At least it's still free.

Is Facebook still compressing photo file sizes?

Free for Facebook to use as they please... (Automatically public per TOS)

[froggie]

^ Hence why I wouldn't consider Facebook a viable location.

[AsphaltPlanet]

There is also the question of how many photos a person needs to upload.

The average person only really has the time to scroll through a few photos every few days.  That's true for even the best photographers.

If an up-loader was selective at what they uploaded, even the 1000 photo limit within the new Flickr really still is plenty.

[MNHighwayMan]

Even if you upload and post only one picture a day, in less than three years you'll be out of room. That is, unless you're willing to kill links in your old posts (sucks to be anyone who finds an old thread pictureless!)

[AsphaltPlanet]

How many of us actually create a really remarkable image every day?

[Max Rockatansky]

Even if you upload and post only one picture a day, in less than three years you'll be out of room. That is, unless you're willing to kill links in your old posts (sucks to be anyone who finds an old thread pictureless!)

Really it depends on what you want to do with the photos.  If you're skilled at taking photos and that's what you're looking to convey a high quality image then I can see how 1,000 would be plenty

In my case I use my photos on blog posts (which aren't high end) to convey what is along the roadway which usually results in a solid 100-350 depending on the roadway.  I try to capture the typical things you'd expect in a road photos album in terms of signage but I also try to capture the context behind the road itself.  To that end I end up usually talking about a lot of things on and around a road which I find photos easier way to illustrate; case and point would be CA 49.  On it's own CA 49 is a scenic drive but you're missing a ton of context if all you focus on is the road itself.   In my blog series I touched on the Gold Rush towns along the route, state parks, and former communities which added a lot of context why CA 49 was special.  I want to say that I'm up to 912 photos for CA 49 alone and likely will be just over 1,000 once I'm able to take photos of the last segment between CA 70 and CA 89.  That's all stuff I want backed up, to that end Flickr is one of my three methods of photos retention...plus it doesn't hurt I can link specific images over to message boards like this.

To that end that's why I never really never been interested in making a video series akin the Interstate Kyle.  I feel they work well on freeways but outside of that I feel like you're missing way too much if you're on a two-lane highway or doing something referencing historic alignments.  Granted it probably helps that I'm also into things like; hiking, ghost towns, railing fanning, and other things of the like.

[MNHighwayMan]

How many of us actually create a really remarkable image every day?

Sure, not daily, but every time I do go on a trip I end up taking 100+ pictures.

My point was that even if you post slowly, eventually you'll still run out of room, and it's shitty (IMO) to have to delete old images (and reduce the usefulness of old posts) to make room for new ones.

Really it depends on what you want to do with the photos.  If you're skilled at taking photos and that's what you're looking to convey a high quality image then I can see how 1,000 would be plenty

If you're skilled enough to be taking quality photographer shots, you're probably paying for hosting anyway.

[AsphaltPlanet]

I guess that's kind of my point.  If you take hundreds of photos per day, how many photos do you expect the average person to actually look at?  Even the most hardcore user isn't going to do much more than scroll through the gallery and look at maybe three or four of them with any amount of detail.

*edited to add*
Think about how you yourself look at other people's Flickr accounts.  That's how everyone else looks at your Flickr account.  I think when you consider Flickr in that perspective, to me 1000 photos seems like more leg room than you think it is.

[MNHighwayMan]

Think about how you yourself look at other people's Flickr accounts.  That's how everyone else looks at your Flickr account.  I think when you consider Flickr in that perspective, to me 1000 photos seems like more leg room than you think it is.

Personally, I don't really do that, though. I only look at the pictures that get posted here (or in other fora, if talking about non-road subjects).

[Chris]

For me, Flickr is my personal catalogue of road photos. I have uploaded over 43,000 photos to Flickr over the past 10 years. I post only a portion of those on internet forums, the rest is for reference and perhaps future usage.

I used to make massive road reports, coming home with 2,000 or 3,000 photos, but I switched to more roadside / project updates / scenery photos (that is, photos not taken while driving). They require more effort and time to make than a typical drive-and-shoot photo.

[AsphaltPlanet]

You have a nice collection of photos Chris.

I take both photos from behind the wheel as well as construction / roadside photos as well.  Photos from behind the wheel are way easier, but almost inevitably I prefer the roadside style photos (particularly ones taken from high vantage points) to anything you can see behind the wheel.

[MNHighwayMan]

Photos from behind the wheel are way easier, but almost inevitably I prefer the roadside style photos (particularly ones taken from high vantage points) to anything you can see behind the wheel.

Agreed. I always stop when I can.

[Max Rockatansky]

Photos from behind the wheel are way easier, but almost inevitably I prefer the roadside style photos (particularly ones taken from high vantage points) to anything you can see behind the wheel.

Agreed. I always stop when I can.

I'll concur with that as well, almost all my favorite road photos are usually the shoulder or some overlook.