Just noticed that my flickr account has gone through 20,000 views, just under 5 months since making 10,000. As with my lack of blogging, I’ve not been in a position to get the DSLR out much over the past month. What photos I have taken have been with my Nokia N80 and have appeared on Facebook. I’ve settled into a nice split between the two whereby the more creative photography goes up on Flickr where I seek peer recognition and comment. The more social/snappy stuff appears on Facebook where the majority of my social network are connected with me and where it is subject (i.e. people who can be tagged) rather than composition or other technical aspects that are interesting.

I went along to my first flickr meet today, with the folks from the Meet Dublin group, including a colleague of mine, Karim (a man who is living proof that talent rather than equipment makes a great photo) As mentioned, today marked the first anniversary of joining flickr, so it seemed as good a way as any to celebrate. It was also the first chance I’ve had to get out the camera since we’ve been here.

After meeting up outside the Gaiety Theatre, the unanimous choice was to head to Merrion Square, where the AIB Street Performance World Championships were taking place. The SPWC sees various street acts from around the globe basically doing their stuff over the weekend whilst the viewing public can vote for their favourite act. Thankfully the weather, whilst overcast, held up and there was no rain other than a few spits.

After a quick walk around the park I started to take in a few of the acts. My creative juices weren’t really running, and to be honest the acts were difficult to shoot, but I think I got a few decent ones. There was also a lot of opportunity for candid shots. It was hard not to just put the camera down and enjoy the shows, the highlight being Popeyed, an Australian acrobatic/hand balancing duo.

The best of the bunch of photos I took are up on flickr in this set (slideshow here)

I missed out on the pub meetup afterwards due to losing myself in the park, and not remembering the name of the pub. However, on my way back to the car, I did stop to take some shots of a group of skaters outside the Gaiety which I’ve yet to process.

All in all, a lovely day, and just one example of why I’m already loving living in Dublin.

This photo of a boat fire was taken by me and published in print and online by the Southern Daily Echo on 14th February 2007:

This photo was taken by Elfar Ingvarsson and appeared on the BBC News website on 21st May 2007.

My one shows a fire onboard a small yacht in a provincial marina. Elfar’s shows the destruction of a national landmark. I got paid £30 for my photo, and I am betting that Elfar didn’t.

Some statistics for you:

The Southern Daily Echo has a total circulation of 40461 for the print edition (Source: The Newspaper Society) and the web site has an Alexa traffic rank of 146,3173 (Source: Alexa 3 month average traffic rank)

BBC News is the largest and most visited web site in the UK, serving 3 million users and 24 million page impressions per day. It’s Alexa traffic rank is 33 (Source).

Naturally then, you would hope and assume that Elfar would receive reasonable compensation for his dramatic photo. However, the BBC is perhaps one of the worst exploiters of citizen journalists in this respect. If you read the lead Cutty Sark story early this morning, you’d have seen the form at the bottom of the page allowing you to send in your photos and video. You could even send it in directly from your mobile via MMS or 3G. The BBC expects you to be happy with your name on a credit (if you are lucky) for the privilege of giving them your work. Even if you missed the form (it has now been taken off) you can go to the Have Your Say page to find out how you can altruistically donate your photos and video. If you then go and read the T&Cs, the shortened version of which reads:

f you submit an image, you do so in accordance with the BBC’s Terms and Conditions.

In contributing to BBC News you agree to grant us a royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to publish and otherwise use the material in any way that we want, and in any media worldwide. This may include the transmission of the material by our overseas partners; these are all reputable foreign news broadcasters who are prohibited from altering the material in any way or making it available to other UK broadcasters or to the print media. (See the Terms and Conditions for the full terms of our rights.)

It’s important to note, however, that you still own the copyright to everything you contribute to BBC News and that if your image and/or video is accepted, we will endeavour to publish your name alongside it on the BBC News website. Please note that due to operational reasons this accreditation will probably not be possible with video. The BBC cannot guarantee that all pictures and/or video will be used and we reserve the right to edit your comments.

At no time should you endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.

So, the BBC can, for no money at all to you, use your photo or video in perpetuity across any media they wish (that means you can get international TV airtime as well, lucky you) Oh, and they can syndicate it as well. At least they let you retain copyright.

So, for being in the right place at the right time, Elfar is lucky enough to get a byline which he can screencap and show his family. Meanwhile, imagine if there happened to be a professional photojournalist hanging around Greenwich early this morning. How much has the value of his shots, which he sent up to various agencies, been devalued by the work of a few people with camera phones, and how many sales has he lost? Where would the BBC have been forced to buy a photo from is Elfar (and others) hadn’t been so generous.

I’m not going to go through the arguments for and against citizen journalism in more detail, suffice to say that it is only fair that news organizations start to treat members of the public fairly and equitably for the material we provide them. It should be their responsibility to inform contributors of the fact that by donating their photo/video they are potentially losing the ability to make money from it. I’ve added the following button to my site which links to the Editorial Photographers UK campaign for Fair Play for Citizen Journalists, and I suggest that you head over there to read about the issue in more detail.

P.S. Elfar – if you read this, maybe next time you might want to look at submitting your photo to somewhere like Scoopt, who will help you realise it’s value. The fact that have been bought up by Getty Images, about the largest picture agency/archive out there should give you confidence.

A few months ago, I got an nice email from a Michael Pumphrey, who saw the above photo on my flickr stream. It turned out he was helping to run the steam engine powered carousel at Borough Market over Christmas, and wanted to know if he could use a couple of my photos for the East Anglian Traction Engine Society newsletter. He was writing a piece about the engine for the next issue. I was more than happy to oblige, and today a complimentary copy of the pamplet style newsletter arrived in the post. It has a colour cover, and the whole back page is taken up with the photo above, with another one in B&W on the article inside. It’s really nice to see one of my flickr photos used in this way, and especially nice of Michael to send me a copy.

Which reminds me, the Southern Daily Echo haven’t paid me for the photo they used a couple of months ago!

Thanks to a note from Alexis, I learnt about the London Camera Exchange photography show which took place at the Novotel in Southampton today. I managed to pop along for a look after work, mainly motivated by the fact they they were offering free sensor cleaning by Canon and Nikon technicians. I have a couple of persistent dust spots despite the dust removal features of the 400D, so was keen on getting a clean. The guy did a great job, and took plenty of care over it. A check against a white piece of paper at f22 shows the spots had gone.

The show itself was fairly small scale, and consisted of stands from Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Sigma, Sony and a number of others displaying and selling gear from a number of other vendors. Prices were typically what you could get from the Internet, so there wasn’t too much compelling reason to buy apart from getting stuff there and then. I had a play with a 1Ds which was nice, and also gave a 430EX speedlight a go on my 400D. I didn’t buy anything however, I have a wedding to fund!

Congratulations must go to James though, who purchased a nice piece of L glass. It was a 70-200 and from the price he said, I presume the f4 USM. I look forward to seeing the results on his flickr stream.

A relatively minor landmark, but it appears I’ve broken the 10,000 photo views mark on my flickr photostream. The rise from 2000 views in December has been pretty quick, and the London photos boosted me quite a bit. I have been a bit more active in posting to groups, but then I’ve also tended to stick to relevant groups rather than the general ones like Karma and World through my eyes.

Looking at the popular view, two photos dominate…

Most interesting, most views (857):

Most favourited (20), most comments (19):

So, thank you to all those who have viewed, favourited, commented and bloggged my photos!

I had to miss trying to photograph the eclipse last night due to an indecently early start for a Sunday morning. Fortunately, nature treated me to an amazing sunrise instead.