A few nice the day the earth stood still rating images I found:
Your Time Is Gonna Come
Image by Mark Witton
To my constant shame, I don’t rate that highly on the Manometer. No, my Man Points are generally pretty low: I don’t get excited by fast cars or gadgets. I prefer chocolate to salty snacks. If I want to watch a film with cowboy hats, I’ll take Brokeback Mountain over True Grit. I reckon most clothes available in Burton or H&M are generally lacking in delicate fabrics and frilly bits, and, at times, my idea of a perfect evening is sitting down with a book listening to Thomas Newman soundtracks. Yup, the reading on my Man Point Scoreboard is worryingly stark most of the time, to the point where even my own parents have said ‘you know Mark, it’s really all right if you want to tell us something. Thank God, then, for Led Zeppelin, the most manly of all rock bands. Yes yes yes yes yes I know they owe a tremendous amount to The Yardbirds but that’s not the point: the important thing is that anyone who enjoys the beats of Misty Mountain Hop or swung around Gallows Pole has distilled testosterone pumping through their veins. I mean, we all like their quieter moments: Going to California, That’s The Way and the like, but nothing makes you want to put on your tightest spandex and do your best woman-toppling Robert Plant impression like, I don’t know… Immigrant Song, Kashmir, or Bring It On Home. Mmm: watch out, watch out now.
So, yes, Zeppelin are high on my list of good bands, and not the least because they give me some mild form of masculine credibility (although, let’s face it, if you need to wave Houses of the Holy at people to prove you aren’t really a very hairy woman, you’re in trouble anyway). So, imagine my shock when I heard late last year that the Zepper’s are touring without Robert Plant. I mean, what are they thinking? Sure, Black Mountain Side and Moby Dick show that Zeppelin can knock out good tunes without him, but you just know that Plant was simply out making the tea while they were recorded and would be back for vocals on the next track. I can dig the idea of playing without deceased band members if the vast majority of the band is still willing: that’s understandable, but to label yourself as the same band when only half of the original line-up is playing simply ain’t right. They’re missing too much to really be considered whole, and getting someone else in to replace them isn’t a substitute either, dangit.
Alas, I’ve also been operating as a mere shadow of what I should be. Y’see, this little corner of virtual real estate that I call my own has been running under the vague guise of a ‘pterosaur website’ for some time now: people chiefly know it and visit for images and rambly discussion of flying reptiles. Imagine my shame, therefore, for neglecting one of Pterosaurdom’s best known weirdos: the Early Cretaceous Argentinean ctenochasmatoid Pterodaustro. Everyone who’s ever picked up a pterosaur book knows this critter, having almost certainly stopped at whatever illustration was provided in said tome and uttered something like ‘that’s a weird one’. Leaving Pterodaustro off the running list of a pterosaur website is like a venue saying they’re hosting The Velvet Underground without Lou Reed or John Cale: it’s a sham, and one I’ve been getting away with for far too long.
So, in a vague attempt to recover some self-respect: what goes on with this Pterodaustro critter, then? Well, it’s not the world’s biggest pterosaur, growing up to a mere 2.5 m or so across the wings, nor does it bear an overly flamboyant headcrest like some taxa, but, obviously, that’s not what makes Pterodaustro a big deal. Nope: what turns heads for Pterodaustro is that it looks like it flew into a broomhair factory with its mouth open: it’s entire lower jaw is stuffed with incredibly long, bristle-like teeth that are arranged in rows akin to the baleen of modern whales. However, unlike our giant mysticete friends, Pterodaustro’s mandibular feeding apparatus is comprised of hundreds of genuine teeth with enamel, dentine and a pulp cavity, each one being about a third of a millimetre thick. In fact, there are so many teeth lining the lower jaw of Pterodaustro that they don’t have individual sockets: they lie in grooves running along the sides of the jaw. There are shedloads of teeth in the upper jaw, too: but these are small, spatulate things that don’t actually have any rooting in the skull whatsoever but are instead attached by some supportive soft tissue. If this weren’t weird enough, a series of tiny, tiny ossicles – small lumps of bone embedded in the skin – lie above each one of these. Neat.
Now, the function of these teeth really couldn’t be clearer: it’s plain-as-day that Pterodaustro was some sort of filter-feeder, using its teeth to strain small bits of food from the water column – you know, seeds, invertebrates, that kind of thing. What’s not been looked at in detail, at least as far as I know, is how Pterodaustro really did this. Other than their teeth, there are two details of Pterodaustro’s jaws that are worthy of attention: one is that the retroarticular process, the bony extension of the lower jaw that extends behind the jaw joint, is quite robust and curves downwards, away from the cranium. This suggests that their posterior pterygoideus muscles – the big muscles you can see bulging from the side of alligator skulls – were probably quite big in Pterodaustro. A big posterior pterygoideus means that Pterodaustro would’ve generated relatively high bite strengths when it’s mouth was nearly closed: this is a bit weird as pterosaurs seem to generally favour the snappy-actions of jaw adductor musculature over the relatively slow, but more powerful, posterior pterygoideus. On top of this, you have an incredibly long- diagnostically so, in fact – and curved jaw. Curved jaws are brilliant if your intention is to bring the entire jaw together along its length simultaneously: you can try this out yourselves by hinging your hands at the wrists and then clapping them together with straight or curved hands – everyone see how that works? Good. What this might mean then, dear friends, is that Pterodaustro wasn’t simply moving forward through water with it’s jaws agape, trapping foodstuffs like a pterosaurian shearwater (so-called ‘ram filter feeding’): nope, Pterodaustro was probably pumping water through its teeth for its food, with the pumping action provided by that kick-ass posterior pterygoideus and the curvy jaw ensuring that water wasn’t just pushed forwards out of the mouth, but was pushed sideways through the teeth (try the same hand experiments in the bath and you’ll see where I’m coming from). Now, we don’t know enough about Pterodaustro’s anatomy to suggest how filtered food was taken off the teeth and moved into the throat, but I guess it’s possible they had a large tongue that could hold gathered food particles against the upper jaw, where those little-peg-like teeth and ossicles may have helped hold them in place. As in modern geese and swans, the food could’ve been moved backwards along the jaw over successive filter cycles, and then swallowed finally when it reached the throat. Well, possibly.
Now, looking beyond the skull of Pterodaustro, it’s obvious that it was a wading animal – like lots of other ctenochasmatoids, in fact – with big, broad feet that are almost as long as its shin bones. This, presumably, means it was feeding while standing, and hey – check that out – it’s got a long neck like our other favourite potential terrestrial feeding pterosaurs, the the azhdarchids. Is it possible, therefore, that all long-necked pterosaurs liked to feed when grounded? Well, maybe: something to look at in the future, I guess.
What’s more, by golly, Pterodaustro does occur in some abundance. There are, apparently, hundreds of Pterodaustro fossils out there, most of which stem from a site in which they’re so abundant that it’s been named after them: the Loma del Pterodaustro of Argentina. Presumably, if you travelled back to the Lower Cretaceous and wandered down to this ancient freshwater lake, you’d find whole flocks of these guys wading around in the shallows, filter-feeding their little hearts out. Pterodaustro fossils represent a suite of different ages, from embryos right the way up to burly adults, and recent work on this spectrum of differently-aged individuals has shed light on how quickly they grew. Like dinosaurs, Pterodaustro(and presumably other pterosaurs) grew like rocket-fuelled dynamos until they reached approximately two years old – about half their full size – before their growth rates slowed, taking another three-to-four years to gain their full adult size. Unlike some modern reptiles – your crocodiles, turtles and the like – Pterodaustro appears to have had determinate growth (that is, like us, it reached a certain size and then stopped growing altogether), but, like the same modern reptiles, Pterodaustro hit sexual maturity before they finished growing. Sexual maturity seems to coincide with that two year-old benchmark where a switch in bone texture (from fibrolamellar to parallel-fibred, histology fans) suggests that energy is partially redirected from growth to reproduction – hence the slow growth from that point on.
So, Pterodaustro is a pretty durned-interesting pterosaur, then, and one that I definitely should’ve covered a long time ago. However, that’s not all: oh no. If you’re the sort of person who would have a pterosaur as a pet if they weren’t so inconsiderately extinct then you should stick a pole in the ground, grab some ribbons and have an early May Dance of Joy because pterosaurs are, officially, Fossil Animals of Choice for January. Oh yes: a collection of papers has just been published following the proceedings of the 2007 Munich Wellnhofer Pterosaur Meeting and, by jingo, the Interweb is going crazy about it. Chief party venue is Dave Hone’s Archosaur Musings, recently voted one of the top 100 Earth Science Blogs on the ‘Net and home of the volume’s editor, um, Dave Hone (the giveaway’s in the blog title, see). The Musing’s are running a series of blogposts across this week: there’s an introduction to Peter Wellnhofer, the Godfather and Don of modern pterosaur research; an essay by yours truly about a paper in which I, along with my ex-PhD supervisor Dave Martill, describe a particularly strange specimen of Tupuxuara that looks like it flew into a wall and an overview of the Chinese istiodactylids, those pterosaurs with muzzle-like jaw tips. What’s more, Mike Habib has recently guest-posted on the musings with his own take on his paper from the volume about how pterosaurs may have taken off using their forelimbs rather than their hindlimbs. There’s some great coverage of this particular story as MSNBC, featuring opinions from Mike himself, Sankaar Chatterjee, noted expert on animal flight, and some hack they found on the internet. Personally, seeing as Mike’s been telling the world that he can launch a 250 kg azhdarchid into the air without any problem (well, maybe not him personally, but you know what I mean), I’m all in favour of his ideas and am dead-chuffed to have my own work on pterosaur mass estimation sitting side-by-side with Mike’s paper in the same volume. That’s all great stuff, then, and should give you plenty to do look at sneakily in your office when your bosses’ back is turned.
Oh yes, one more thing for those who’re still here: this is going to be quick because this mess is already w-a-y over 2,000 words. in fact, I’ll do in my best, unpunctuated telegram style of English to save time and words:
[START] picture above is Pterodaustro [STOP] note the size of the feet in the flying critter to the left – I told you it was a wader [STOP] avoided pink colour because the flamingo analogy has been done to death [STOP] once had considerably more acid coloured skies but was toned down because it looked too much like the trippy scene at the end of Easy Rider [STOP] i mean, it was cool but too funky to be realistic [STOP] like too much James Brown [STOP] might have messed up the blurring on some animals [STOP] but never mind [STOP] you may not have noticed if i had not brought it up [STOP] own worst enemy [STOP] anyway i need to get on with something else now so will stop typing [STOP] no really my back is hurting from hunching over this keyboard [STOP] am going now [STOP] bye bye [STOP] [END]
Top 10 Ways to Get Attention on Flickr
Image by Thomas Hawk
"What is more pleasant than the benevolent notice other people take of us, what is more agreeable than their compassionate empathy? What inspires us more than addressing ears flushed with excitement, what captivates us more than exercising our own power of fascination? What is more thrilling than an entire hall of expectant eyes, what more overwhelming than applause surging up to us? What, lastly, equals the enchantment sparked off by the delighted attention we receive from those who profoundly delight ourselves? – Attention by other people is the most irresistible of drugs. To receive it outshines receiving any other kind of income. This is why glory surpasses power and why wealth is overshadowed by prominence."
Caterina Fake, Co-founder of Flickr, 2005.
A couple of years ago I wrote a post called Top 10 Tips for Getting Attention on Flickr that proved fairly popular. A lot has changed at Flickr in the past 2 years though and how imagery is rated and ranked on the site has also changed. That said, I thought I’d write a fresher updated post on the top 10 ways, presently, to get attention on Flickr.
Back in 2006 when I wrote my original article on how to achieve popularity on Flickr my photostream had been viewed almost 400,000 times. According to a Flickr stats page that’s been added since that time, the view count for my pages on Flickr now stands at 9,953,328. It should pass 10 million sometime this week. I’m averaging about 14,000 page views a day on Flickr.
Some of how one gets attention on Flickr has remained the same since 2006. Other stuff has changed.
1. Take great pictures. This was my number one way to achieve popularity on Flickr in 2006 and remains the number one way today. Despite all the other things that you might do to promote your photography, none of it will matter if your photos are not interesting. Everyone can be creative. Some are more creative than others. Sometimes your gear and photo processing matters, other times it doesn’t. I’ve seen incredibly beautiful and creative photos taken with a toy camera. And I’ve seen incredibly beautiful and creative photos taken with a ,000 digital Hasselblad. I’ve seen people upload interesting things from a crappy iPhone camera and I’ve seen people upload interesting things that they spent 8 hours on Photoshop with. But, the better your photos are the more likely that you will get attention. Taking great photos is a prerequisite to everything else in this article.
This said, there are certain types of photos that tend to become more popular on Flickr than others. Provocatively posed female self portraits or photos of attractive women in interesting poses, extremely saturated photos rich with eye candy like color, cityscapes, night photography, photos depicting movement and motion, silhouettes, dramatic architecture, unique portraits, creatively arranged macros and cross processed and some film photography.
2. The order that you post your photos to Flickr counts. The number one way that your photos will likely be seen in Flickr comes from your Flickr contacts looking at their Flickr contact’s photos. At present Flickr allows you to set your contacts most recent photos to their last photo, or their last 5 photos. Anything beyond 5 photos in a single batch upload will largely be buried on Flickr. If you are uploading more than 5 photos at once, make sure that you upload your best 5 photos last and what you consider your very best photo last of all. Frequently people will upload a batch of 30 photos from a concert or something with no thought as to which will be the last 5 of the 30 in order.
3. Consider places outside of Flickr to promote your photography. Do you have a blog or a photoblog? If you want more attention on Flickr you should. Flickr makes it very easy to blog your photos, you simply cut and paste the html code above your photo and you are now photoblogging with a direct link back to your photo. My blog, thomashawk.com is my number two external referrer of pageviews to my Flickrstream. Are you on FriendFeed yet? You should be. It’s easy to set up and makes sure more people see your photos. Pownce (when it is working) is another place to post interesting photos.
4. Do you have your settings on Flickr configured for maximum exposure? After Flickr itself, Google drives more traffic to my Flickrstream than any other source, even my blog. Yahoo search and both Google and Yahoo image search drive traffic as well. But your photos will be blocked from appearing in search engines unless you authorize Flickr to display your images in search engines. Make sure your photostream is set to not "hide your stuff from public searches," here.
Same goes for the Flickr API. Lots of people are using the Flickr API in interesting ways. I get traffic from places like Flickrleech, Compfight, Technorati and lots of other places that use the Flickr API to extend your photos outside of Flickr. Make sure that you’ve authorized Flickr to allow API access to your photos here.
5. Explore. Explore still remains the number one way to get photos viewed on Flickr. Explore uses Flickr’s "Magic Donkey" algorithm to each day highlight 500 of what Flickr feels are the best photos on Flickr for that day. It’s a very popular section of the site despite the fact that everyone seems to constantly hate Explore and decry its mediocrity in selecting exceptional photos. Explore has changed and evolved a lot since it was first introduced at Flickr a few years back. Initially things like *when* you posted your photos mattered.
Whether or not Flickr chooses your photos for Explore is still very much a mystery. But there are some things that we do know. The more faves, comments, tags, etc. your photo gets, the more likely it is that it will appear in Explore. Explore also uses averaging in their algorithm now. This means that if your average photo gets 5 faves, then you’ll need to do considerably better than average if you hope to see that photo in Explore.
Photos are also constantly dropping in and out of Explore. I’ve got 157 photos in Explore at present but I’ve had 446 that have appeared in Explore at one time or another. You can check out which and how many of your photos that have been showcased by Flickr in Explore here. Just change my Flickr ID at the link above for your own.
6. Groups. Speaking of Explore, if you really want to get a particular photo in Explore consider adding it to a group that encourages tagging, faving and comments of photos. Photo critique groups are good examples of this. Some of the photo critique groups play games where tagging and commenting on a photo are part of the game. Flickr does not distinguish between a photo that has been commented on or tagged organically vs. one that is included in some sort of photo critique game. If you want to boost the likelihood that your photo will be selected for Explore consider putting a strong photo into one of these pools. Photo critique groups on Flickr run the gamut from nice and friendly photo critique groups like TWIP’s, to hostile and brutal photo critique groups like DeleteMe Uncensored (note NSFW and maybe not the best group if you are easily offended).
Whatever the case, the key to groups is participation. If you simply dump a bunch of photos blindly into random groups you will likely not get much benefit. In fact, Flickr actually penalizes photo rank if someone posts their photo to too many groups. But posting your photo to selective groups where you participate will encourage activity on your photos and photostream.
7. Tag for Exploration (especially your most popular photos). Why has this photo of mine been viewed over 27,000 times on Flickr? Well in part because it shows up on the first page search results on Flickr for the search term guitar. And why does it show up in searches for the word "guitar?" Because I’ve got the photo *tagged* guitar. By tagging your photos appropriately you can ensure that more people will see them in search. Think of other ways that you can tag your photos. Are all of your photos taken in San Francisco also tagged "California?" They should be. Are all of your photos tagged "self portrait" also tagged with your name? Again, they should be.
The better you keyword and tag your photos, the more likely they will show up in searches that take place on Flickr. Even if you think that your photos will never be popular enough to rank highly in search, remember that there are other ways that Flickr users can filter search. You can search just by your contacts photos on Flickr for instance. So even if you don’t have the most popular sunset photo amongst millions on Flickr, you might have the most popular sunset photo amongst your contacts because you tagged it.
A note that I’ve seen some people on Flickr abuse tags. They will tag every photo with girl, sunset, cat, etc. Even if these things are not in their photo simply to try and trick people into getting to their photos through search. This sucks. I’m not sure what/if/how Flickr penalizes people who do this, but it’s a crappy thing to do and ruins the search experience for everyone. Tag early and often, but only tag your photos with tags that truly are accurate and descriptive.
8. Geotag. One of the more interesting ways to find photos on Flickr is through exploring photos that are geotagged on a map. When I’m going to a new place that I’m not familiar with, frequently Flickr’s "Explore the World Map," is one of my first destinations. But of course your photos will not show up here if they are not geotagged. The best way to geotag your photos is actually at the file level before you upload them. I use Geotagger on the Mac which allows you to use Google Earth to geotag your photos. You can also download the free software program from Microsoft Pro Photo Tools to geotag photos on a PC.
Check what Flickr considers your most popular photos and make sure that you geotag (and more descriptively tag) these photos especially — even if you have to geotag these shots on Flickr using their tools. Geotagging has been documented by Flickr staff as increasing the Flickr "interestingness" rating of a photograph.
9. Consider creating a few "best of" sets and feature them prominently on your Flickrstream. Frequently when people first discover your photostream they don’t have time to check out your entire stream. But if you make it easier for them and create a few sets that highlight some of your best work they may stick around longer. I’ve created two such sets myself. My 10 faves or more set and my 25 faves or more set. These sets highlight what are some of my best work according to the Flickr community and are my two most visited sets on Flickr. As my photos are faved 10 or 25 times I add the tag fav10 or fav25 to these sets and then use SmartSetr to automatically generate these sets.
Make sure also that you change your Flickr page layout from the boring default one to one that highlights your collections and sets better.
10. Tell everyone you know about your Flickrstream. Are you active on other social networks? Is a link to your Flickrstream prominently displayed on your blog? On your Facebook profile page? Be sure to include a link to your Flickrstream in every profile that you are on with other sites. Consider buying Moo cards (even though Moo.com has been lousy for me lately and won’t let me buy anymore cards from them) which highlight your photostream that you can give out to people that you run across while out shooting. Tell your friends and family and your offline "real life" contacts about your Flickrstream.
Bonus tip: Reciprocation. Above everything else, perhaps the most important thing about Flickr is that it is a community and a reciprocation based community. If you think that you can just post your photos on the site and they will garner thousands of faves and views simply because, you are wrong. Even the best photos on Flickr will not get very much attention if you simply upload them to the site and never participate.
Flickr has been built to encourage reciprocation. In fact a recent study cited reciprocation as the number one key to popularity on Flickr. Every single time you fave or comment on someone else’s photo you are giving them a link back to your own photostream. While you may not have the time to check out *everyone* who faves your photos, spend time each day faving and commenting on other people’s photos on Flickr. By sharing with others the fact that you appreciate their photos they will return the favor. Be generous with your faves and comments. Remember, other people like the attention as much as you do.
Update: An interesting link to comments Flickr staff have made about the Explore algorithm here. Thanks, Ole!