In similar fashion to my previous post, I’m singling out a keyword for this set of photos and today that is “Bark”. We went to Westonbirt
I started a bit of a thing yesterday with my Clocks post where I plucked a keyword out of the air (more or less) and search my photo library with it. My photo library is spread across two distinct collections within LIghtroom and iCloud photos, the majority being in the latter these days, as I use my cameras less and my phone more. However the iPhone 15 Pro Max does come equipped with the tools I need for different styles of photograph, granted in some areas it falters, where a regular camera would excel but nowadays, I can count those shortcomings on one hand.
Another technology that has improved immensely in recent years is image searching. In the past such tasks were heavily reliant on how well we humans annotated our images with keyword metadata. However nowadays as AI tooling gathers impressive momentum the machine is getting better at "knowing what it is you're looking for".
I am sure that you've tried searching for people you know using your photos app on whichever phone it is you own. I certainly have and it's quite crazy how well it singles out various people or how well it recognises objects like trees, coastal images and so on. It's training itself all of the time and it is mind boggling.
I will get back on to the topic of bark in a minute but bear with me a bit more....
Last week I made sales on Pond5 for the very first time and was excited to find out which image it was I had sold. I was baffled to learn that I hadn't sold a photo at all, I'd instead sold data!
It turns out that Pond5 have begun selling data for training AI with and are working their way through their massive image, video and audio archives to facilitate this. Thankfully they are paying their contributors for this. It wasn't a lot of money and I sit on the fence a little bit here, how much wealth will be generated from this for the pittance they pay us? Or am I being unreasonable in thinking that way....
A topic for another post I suspect, back to the original thread of this post series lol!
New photos for the chain
Today's photos are all new, I took them over the weekend and I hereby commit them to the chain. I love saying that, there is something very esoteric about creating blocks on this chain, do you feel that every time you post? OK the images may be stored in a slightly different way but let's not split hairs!
Westonbirt
I took a huge amount of photos on Friday for Westonbirt and have decided to share them in stages, by keyword. A curator of the world.
I was drawn to the smaller details as much as I was to the glorious parkland vistas that this arboretum treats you to with every corner you turn. I have been meaning to go here for a very long time and one of my favourite trees in the world is one that isn't strictly native to the UK, that is the mighty Redwood.
To touch the bark is a sensory treat and is something I encourage our children to do, it has a feel that you'd not expect, it is soft and springy.
Macro photography is an area of the craft I am strongly drawn to and I am blown away by how good the iPhone is for this. I have owned many macro lenses over the years from Sigma to Tamron, Canon to Nikon, all have been phenomenal as you'd expect - The iPhone is quite frankly giving them a run for their money.
However I forgot to take a notebook on the day to identify the following photos, that is something I will improve upon in my keyword based post series going forward.
So we have a mixture of Redwood, Plane and Oak in this set of images. That is all I can say!
