Browsing Tag: photos

    Miscellany

    It’s Hard to Take a Selfie with a Dog

    May 19, 2014

    I had no idea it would be so tough to take a selfie with Sparky. He’s usually pretty relaxed when I’m taking his picture, or any picture, but not the case this weekend. It took me five tries to get a good one.

    First, he started reaching up to lick my face.

    dog-selfie-1

    dog-selfie-2

    When he wasn’t trying to lick me, he wouldn’t stay still, so the selfie was all blurry. At least he was blurry. (I know how to be still.)

    dog-selfie-3

    Finally got him to be still, but he wouldn’t look at the camera. So this one’s not much of a selfie.

    dog-selfie-4

    When he kept looking off to the side, I decided to match his pose — but in the opposite direction. And so, finally, on the fifth try, we ended up with an acceptable selfie!

    dog-selfie-5

    And how did you spend your Saturday evening?

    Miscellany

    Tesla Photo Tour

    May 27, 2013

    I saw several Teslas on the road a few weeks ago when I was down in the Bay Area, and I’ve read a fair amount about them, too. But I’d never seen one up close until this weekend.

    We were over in the Seattle area for the weekend, and came upon a Tesla “store” inside the Bellevue Square Mall. It was pretty crowded, no doubt thanks to the cherry red Tesla right in front. Everyone was gawking at it, so we had to join in. And a couple people were sitting in it.

    So we waited our turn and then got inside, too.

    W.H.O.A.

    Seriously beautiful. I’m not even sure what words to use to describe it, so how about just seeing the Tesla photos that I took? That should get the point across.

    tesla-1

    tesla-1a

    tesla-2

    tesla-3

    tesla-5

    tesla-6

    tesla-7

    I’ve read that Tesla’s usually run in the $80-90k range. One of the sales people said that this model, decked out as it was, cost about $110,000.

    O.U.C.H.

    But still … W.O.W. Stunning vehicle.

    Miscellany

    Fun = Seeing my Photos in Yahoo’s Weather App

    May 24, 2013

    My first photo showed up in the Yahoo Weather app a month ago, and now I’m up to 11 photos in their system. Some are winter pics, so those won’t show up for a while.

    But I’ve started seeing several of my contributions in the app for different local cities, like these:

    yahoo-weather-1

    yahoo-weather-2

    I still use the Weather Channel app as my main source of info because it can be awfully windy where we live, and that app has hour-by-hour wind speeds … and Yahoo doesn’t. šŸ™ But I do enjoy firing up the Yahoo app every day or two to see what photos are showing, both locally and in bigger cities like San Francisco, New York, etc.

    Cool idea for Yahoo to crowdsource these photos.

    Miscellany

    BAM! Already Got One Photo Approved for Yahoo’s Weather App

    April 22, 2013

    How’s this for a fast turnaround? Less than 24 hours after I submitted a couple dozen photos to Yahoo for possible inclusion in their new weather app, one has already been accepted!

    A little after 6:00 pm tonight, I got Flickrmail from Yahoo letting me know that one image I submitted didn’t meet the size requirements — and the fact that they’d already started reviewing my images made me wonder if any were approved.

    Sure enough, in the list of “Top Contributors” to the Project Weather group, it says that I have one photo in the group:

    yahoo-weather

    And when I clicked that “YOU” link, it shows just my image(s) that are in the group:

    yahoo-weather-2

    That’s a sunset photo from 2008 taken right here in West Richland. Cool! So hopefully someday (soon) I’ll see my own image in the Yahoo Weather app. And hopefully some of the others that I submitted will get picked, too.

    Miscellany

    How to Add Your Photos to Yahoo’s Weather App

    April 22, 2013

    Yahoo launched a new weather app last week, and it’s getting rave reviews. Pretty amazing, because there’s only so much you can do when it comes to presenting weather info, right?

    What Yahoo’s doing differently is crowdsourcing stunning photos from Flickr users. Here are a couple screenshots I took last night:

    yahoo-weather-app-photos

    Every image is credited to the photographer in the lower right, and that credit links to the photo page. (The credit is easier to see in the app than in my screenshots.) So, while Yahoo isn’t paying photographers for these images, they could be sending some nice traffic and exposure. And that leads to the obvious question:

    How Do I Get My Photos in Yahoo’s Weather App?

    1. Sign up for a Flickr account, or sign-in if you already have one.

    2. To have your photos considered, you have to be a member of the Project Weather group on Flickr. Join that group.

    3. Submit your best weather-related photos to the group. Your photos won’t automatically show up in the group. Yahoo has a team of moderators that reviews images for possible inclusion in the Yahoo Weather app.

    In addition, there are some photo-related guidelines you need to know about. These are detailed in a Welcome/Help message that’s posted in the group. The guidelines include:

    a) The photo should depict one of these weather conditions: Clear, Cloudy, Rain, Storm, Fog, Snow

    b) People shouldn’t be the focal point of the photo. If it has people, they shouldn’t be identifiable.

    c) Horizontal-shaped photos should be at least 1024px wide by 554 px high

    d) Vertical-shaped photos should be at least 680px wide by 1024px high

    e) Square photos should be at least 1024px by 1024px

    f) No borders, frames, timestamps, etc. Just clear, unadorned images.

    g) THIS IS IMPORTANT: Your photo has to be geotagged using Flickr’s map-tagging tool. That’s how they know the photo’s location.

    If you don’t geotag your images, you’ll get an error message like this when you try to submit it to the Project Weather group:

    weather-no

    As best I can tell, the title and description of your photo don’t matter. That amazing New York photo above, for example, is titled “Civilizzazione / Civilization” and, even though it mentions New York in the description, Yahoo gets the location from the geotagging, not the description.

    4. You’re done! Sit back and wait.

    Yahoo says you won’t be notified if they choose your photo. It’ll just show up in the Project Weather group someday (Yahoo says it should be reviewed within 30 days, but that group is getting popular so I think it’s going to be longer than that.) and you’ll see “Project Weather” listed on your photo page under the Groups section.

    More Tips for Yahoo Weather Photos

    As I said above, Yahoo is looking for photos of these six specific weather conditions:

    Clear, Cloudy, Rain, Storm, Fog, Snow

    Photos are also being assigned based on time of day. The Help page says

    The frequency at which your photo displays in the app depends on the number of photos in the group that reflect the same weather condition, location, and time of day as your photo.

    So if you geotag your photos, that takes care of the location. If you shoot photos of those six weather conditions, that helps your chances of getting your photos included. And then there’s the “time of day.” My guess is that Yahoo will be looking for photos that match these times of day:

    Sunrise, Morning/Daytime/Afternoon, Dusk/Sunset, Night

    But that’s a guess on my part; Yahoo doesn’t specifically call out how many times of day it uses. But the team is obviously reviewing each image and assigning it to show in the app at certain times of day.

    So that’s it. Pretty simple to submit. But maybe not easy to get your photos in the Yahoo Weather App. I’m not even going to bother submitting any Hawaii photos — I’m sure Yahoo will have a zillion to choose from. So I’ve mostly submitted photos from my hometown area, where there are likely less pics to choose from.

    Hopefully in a month or so, I’ll spot my photo(s) in the app and do another post about that!

    UPDATE: It didn’t take a month. It took less than 24 hours, as I wrote about here: BAM! Already Got One Photo Approved for Yahoo’s Weather App.