One of the struggles I'm having with managing my photos - i.e. taking photos and displaying them the way my mind intends to see them - is providing the viewer the type of detail I see on my screen when I look at the photo. For example, I'm viewing the photo here:
The problem is that you see this picture as a thumbnail on the screen and may or may not go to flickr to view it in one of the six modes available. I'm looking at it on a 24“ monitor in all its glory (and if you are a mechanic buff of any type, you realize how amazing some of these old workhorse tractors are considering the use and abuse they have seen). This photo really doesn't evoke much emotion in the 3x2 cm square I'm currently viewing. Blow it up and it takes on a whole new meaning. I recently changed the layout of my flickr page to show larger versions of the pictures automatically, but they still aren't in the format in which I see them. This one, too,
is much better as a larger version. Ode's eye is relatively sharp and it looks like he's concentrating on something (not that I know or believe that animals concentrate on things like humans). Without seeing the image in the right setting, it is hard to get across the emotions I want you to feel as the viewer.
Flickr is the greatest photo tool currently available. It has an ”extensible“ API that allows developers to make plugins for programs like Aperture or iPhoto and subsequently, makes it easy for people like me to check in, modify, and upload our photos with little hassle. The problem is that I can't tell it to display photos the way I want you to see them. I don't mean that I want to control what file size you have access to, but I would like to control the background and how they are displayed initially. I'm not trying to set down a complaint here. I'm trying to explain how hard it is for us to really convey a point or statement without controlling the context in which something is seen. And isn't context everything?*
*No, really... I don't know and now am wondering...
