Monday, August 10, 2009

Portraits of St. Louis Artists: J. C. Gray

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J. C. Gray was one of the most interesting people I met during studios open house weekend. Her approach is simple, sincere and lovely: she paints what she sees and feels. She doesn't have a website. She's not on Facebook. She has no need of e-mail (she said I could send us to her daughter if I wanted to). I was almost overcome with the charm of the painting she was beginning. Gray told me that it represented how she felt when she was at her happiest as a child.

Flickr says that this is my most interesting photo of all time, and there are 1,906 of them there as of today. The results you get at this link may change. Flickr has an arcane, semi-secret algorithm for determining "interestingness." It has something to do with how many views your picture gets, who views it, groups you upload to, tags and more. Every day, they determine what they call the 500 most interesting uploads. You can see August, 2009, to date here, for example. My work has never made the list, although sometimes I look at it and think "my picture is way better than this &$#!*&%@ picture." I almost never add tags. Maybe I should start doing that. Anybody have any insights about this?

By the way, if you look through my somebody-else-said-so most interesting pictures, all the ones from Nepal were shot by my wife in February-March, 2008. I'll get my own next month.

By the by the way, it's impossible to select your own most interesting photo; it's all so subjective. However, if I had to choose one I'd pick this.

There is a new Arch photo
today on GATEWAY.

4 comments:

Olivier said...

peut on dire si une photo est intéressante en suivant une formule de calcul !!! je n'aime pas trop cette option (et beaucoup de photographes l'ont critiques ouvertement et sévèrement). Un test avait été fait avec des photos de Doisneau, et le résultat était que ces photos n'étaient pas réussies et pas intéressantes ;o))

can you tell if a photo is interesting in following a formula! . I do not like this option (and many photographers have openly and harshly critical). A test was made with pictures of Doisneau, and the result was that these photos were not successful and not interesting ;o))

cieldequimper said...

I agree with Olivier. As for your photo, it is... sensitive! ;-)

Virginia said...

Lovely portrait and the painting so interesting.

About Flickr. So I'm not hte only one that can't figure out how to do Jack on it? I tried to see your most interesting photo via the link and it's PRIVATE! Oh Bob, now I'll just have to imagine which one of all the great ones it is. I like your entry though. How did you get those two guys to look like ghosts? Some gadget you've bought I suspect. And about Mrs. C's photos, they are some of my very favorites. Please tell me she'll have her own camera this trip !

Stefan Jansson said...

Some flickr users (not us of course), will do almost anything to be in that top 500. It's really weird. Nice portrait of the artist here.