EduGlu Sandbox

Familar Photo in Flickr Search Results by cogdogblog
posted 7 Oct ‘08, 4.39pm MDT PST on flickr

How weird it is to be in search of a flickr image for a post, and seeing your own photo show up? I have been using compfight for my cc image search, and a recent search on "microphone" brought up my own image of my old iRiver MP3 recorder- 3rd row, 5th from left- (why it is relevant is beyond me).

I did not use it.

This brings me to a different topic that perhaps deserves a more thought out blog post. There is some art, magic, and luck with getting good flickr search results. Just plain keywords matching what you are looking for does not always hit the mark.

The image I was looking for was to go with my post on Paging @KathySierra - search on the word “paging” really brough all kinds of things, none of which struck the metaphor I was looking for; thinking more of the old airport announcements where a voice booms, “Kathy Sierra, please pick up the white paging phone”.

What I really needed was the metaphor not the exact word I had in mind, and the better fit was a search for “microphone” - even in these results were many things to weed out, but I ended up on the first two screens of results with about 15 possible candidates.

The one I chose just felt right because a classic shot (it violates so called rule of thirds) and lack of distracting background.

So what are your “above the board” techniques for getting good results in image searches? How deep in the results to you dive?

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