Tiananmen Square

Mistaken Identity

| paulamyes
Easy Rider Horse
Easy Rider Horse, Kulin Tin Horse Highway, Western Australia

 

The other day I got an email from 500px telling me that some of the pictures I had listed with them for licensing could not be accepted because I didn’t have model releases for them. On contacting 500px I got the following reply:

 “We recently ran an algorithm to detect images that had people in them with no release attached, this was our attempt to speed up the ingestion process since we are working through a bit of a backlog at the moment. It has certainly been effective in identifying unreleased photos, but it sometimes tags photos that don’t have people in them so we still have some tweaking to do :)”

Heather
500px Prime

Now I can sort of understand how the shot at the top got selected by the computer as the sculpture does have some anthropomorphic features. But this next one sort of defies any sort of reasoning.

White Spider Orchid
White spider orchid, caladenia longicauda, is one of Western Australia’s most well known orchids. Mokine, Western Australia

 

Tiananmen Square.
A stone lion guarding Tiananmen Square.

Here the program picked the face of Chairman Mao on the wall of the Tiananmen gate tower to the Forbidden City north of Tiananmen Square. I don’t think I’d have much chance of getting a model release from Mao Zedong  seeing as he’s been dead for 39 years! I also think it’s a bit late to get a release from the subject of this next photo.

Australian Gothic
Australian Gothic. An old kangaroo skull found on Mount Brown.

 

I was even expected to get a model release from Elvis Presley for this next shot.
York Motor Show 2013
There’s a little bit of Elvis in all of us. York Vintage Car Show 2013. York, Western Australia

The annoying thing was that were 134 photos with this error so it doesn’t inspire a lot of faith in 500px to actually do a good job of selling the work because when you buy stock you enter what you want into a search engine and their computer has just demonstrated that it has no clue as to the subject content despite captioning and tagging.

Photography …

| paulamyes
2007china00008 by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
The Monument to The People’s Heroes, Tiananmen Square, Beijing.

 

… is a bit of a strange pastime really. It is supposed to be about making images, artistic expression and all that sort of stuff, but the reality is that it is more about the gear than we care to admit. When I first started down the road of making photography a hobby I became brand aware. I saw that the photographers that I admired used a particular make and model of camera and certain lenses. I didn’t realize that they were paid endorsements and  my flawed logic was that if I had one of those cameras and those lenses I would instantly become a better photographer. So I gave the credit card a good bashing and my pictures still sucked. Over the ensuing 32 years I slowly learnt it was more important to have a good mix of technical knowledge and artistry than have the latest and greatest camera. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still afflicted by large bouts of techno-lust and I would in many ways love a new camera, computer, printer, and scanner, but I just don’t have the financial means to go out and satisfy those urges. I have to make do with what I’ve actually got and this has made me focus on what photography really is – making images. In fact I’ve come to the conclusion if you have too much stuff it actually gets in the way of making pictures because you become wracked with indecision about what equipment to use.

 

Three bodies, seven lenses, two flashes, flash meter, filters, cables, flash triggers, and reflectors. It is a hernia inducing load.

 

A couple of weeks ago I was sat down reading Black and White Photography Magazine and came upon an article by Tim Clinch (www.timclinchphotography.com) and he was basically saying that if you invest all your money in equipment you won’t have the necessary folding to do anything with it. If I look at my Lightroom library I can see that the majority of my photos have been taken within a short distance from where I live, but if I look at the most memorable ones then they have come from dedicated photo trips away. So I believe what Tim Clinch is saying is true, you can have a lot of top-notch gear but no money or time to use it, or you can have stuff that is adequate for your needs and the time and money to actually go out and create art. I know which one I’d sooner have.

 

 

 

The Elephant in the Tearoom by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
Topiary at the Pavillion Gardens Cafe, Brighton, England.