Autotag Away

It's no secret that I hate Facebook. And more than Facebook, I hate the incessant need for some people on the social networking site to upload and record their whole lives via photos. It may, then, be quite surprising that I am actually in favour of this whole new auto-tagging feature Facebook has introduced. Let me explain.

Although I dislike what I call the "social networking vomit" most online interaction ends in, I can't really complain about how others choose to represent themselves and their ideas online. It's their decision to be as promiscuous or private, deep or shallow and vain and modest as they like. If I have a problem with them then solution is both easy and in my hands - I can delete, mute or unfollow them and so everyone is happy.

Photos however can sometimes be different since often those of that super special event that the whole world must know you attended will include the image of someone other than they who are uploading the photo. In other words, the vomit is now affecting others.

Manual tagging was usually the only way I and many others would ever find out that a photo of ourselves had been uploaded. More often than not it didn't take more than a polite request to have these pictures removed, although sometimes major offence can be taken for some reason.

But as Facebook becomes more complicated and the rate of content generation grows, the quality of maintenance reduces - so people now forget or omit tagging, sometimes deliberately in order to avoid the complaints of those in the photos.

Autotag solves a lot of these problems - you now allow the computer to figure out who the people in the photos are for you. In fact the way in which this is optional in my mind makes it a little flawed, since becomes a bit of an unknown quantity, a false sense of security.

In terms of privacy, nothing really has changed here. Inconsiderate friends will still trounce on the privacy of their friends in order to play the cyber-peacock. And of course autotagged people will still be able to remove their tags if they want to keep certain photos off the search path. And finally you can't use the system maliciously - the system will only suggest photos of your friends, so you can't use it to identify some hot girl at a wedding. You'll still have to grow a pair to do that I'm afraid.

If Facebook is giving me the chance to be notified of when a friend has decided to unilaterally violate my privacy then I'm all for it really. It's certainly not violating the rights of my friend; and even if they think it is they only have themselves to blame by so easily clicking that upload button in the first place.

South Africa Photo Time

I've uploaded the photos I took during my stay in South Africa to Picasa. As usual, I've split them into public and private albums as necessary; what's changed is that I've now switched to Google Account managed privacy (as opposed to URL/token based) and will try to provide access to the respective albums as appropriate.

If you think you want access to a particular album but don't have a Google account (and have no interest in creating one) then drop me a line and we'll figure something out.

Apologies for the lack of quality - it almost seems as if a bug had crawled onto my sensor toward the beginning of my trip. My A200 seems prone to becoming dirty (despite me never changing the lens), which as an aside might be the excuse I need to replace it.

In any case, I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh

I'm quite the cynic when it comes to temporary art exhibitions. Unlike the more permanent collections which have stood the test of time and therefore have more of a classic feel to them, the more short term collections always seem to me to be jumping on some kind of bandwagon. Of course it could just be that I don't really Get It™, but I'd rather admit to that then fake some awe.

Take this exhibition for instance. Some might say it's come a little too late; being brown is so last year, but then I guess it takes time to find enough prints to build a collection justifying an 8.50 entry ticket (although we got in for nowt during Whitechapel Gallery's free 11-1 Sunday morning session).

That's not to say that the whole thing was totally just a mish mash of gimmicks and cliches; there were some genuinely good stuff in there - I liked a picture of a girl jumping in the burned streets of Lahore as well as some of the other "lifestyle" shots and my dad would have loved to see the older Bollywood stuff - but after a while the constant stream of yet more black and white and what I hope to have been deliberately out of focus shots began to grate a bit. In my opinion there was a lot of noise in this collection, and I think the whole display would have been a little better off had the organisers exercised a little more discretion.

So a bit of a disappointment then, although possibly one borne of my own bias. Either way today was the last day of the show so you can't really decide for yourselves, although I have a hunch the same stuff will pop up at the next brown art do anyway.

Sony Alpha A200

I used to hate both taking and being in pictures. The former was due to laziness and an irrational hatred of collecting things, in this case photos and albums. Where would you put them all? The latter was partly due to what I considered religious reasons but also due to a mixture of modesty and immodesty: why would anyone want to take a picture of me, and how dare they even think about owning my image? Besides, what's the point of taking pictures if you can remember the moments?

I'm not sure when exactly things changed. The digital age of photography allowed us all to now store and view a massive number of pictures on a home computer, with no space taking albums in sight, and you could keep taking pictures without worrying about wasting film. I also began to appreciate the memories stored in pictures - the evidence (for yourself and other, possibly new, people in your life) of who you've been, who you are and who you will be.

Regardless of this epiphany I never actually bought a camera. Most of my impromptu pictures had been taken by my various phones once they had reached a certain technical standard, while more planned shots (holidays and weddings) were taken with borrowed gear. I never really saw a need to change this situation, until now.

I've always appreciated DSLRs. Even my untrained eye could tell the difference between the shots taken with them (on "auto" by an amateur like me) and the more compact cameras currently funding the popularity of photo sharing nowadays. But still there was no way I could justify the cost of something that would probably spend most of its life gathering dust in a drawer. I had set myself a pretty impossible budget of £200.

A combination of discounts and offers allowed me to nab a Sony A200, already the cheapest of DSLRs from any manufacturer for the handsome price of £190 - a terrific bargain by any measure. The price betrays the quality of the camera though: although the kit lens it comes with was said to be a bit iffy, the body of the camera was well specified compared to others in its class (and sometimes above). Things like in-body steadyshot (as opposed to in-lens, which also has its benefits), anti-dust measures, a large generous LCD screen and image sensor and multipoint autofocussing are all unique on a camera at this price (even before the discounts).

In hand though there are some drawbacks. It's a bit bigger and heavier than the others I've played with, and I'll also be the first to admit that the pictures don't look as good as those taken with other cameras (albeit ones which cost three times as much). On the other hand it's pretty quick to turn on and focus and can take pictures at up to 3 frames per second. For someone new to advanced photography it's also extremely easy to use, with everything laid out in a way that makes sense to me.

The picture quality issues could just be me using it incorrectly of course, and hopefully as I get to grips with the camera they'll get better. In the meantime, I'll be posting any particularly interesting pictures into a single public Picasa album; feel free to comment and feedback on them as I'd love to know what you think and how I could improve.