My Photo Sharing Workflow (and How to Share Pictures on Google+)

Which Photo Sharing Site to Use

First things first: where do I share my photos? I share on Google+, 500px, Instagram, and photography.twoperfect.ca. I share some, but not all on Facebook, since Facebook is more personal and less photography focused. I digress.

Share your photos in as many places as your time and interest allows. If you're a beginner photographer like me, people don't know about you. Your audience wont come to you, so you have to go to them.

More importantly, don't just share your own photos. Browse, follow, and like other people's photos and you might make some friends in the process.

How to Share Pictures on Google+ the Right Way

Google+ is inconsistent in how actions affect photos. Sometimes photos are duplicated, and sometimes they're referenced. Albums are also a mess. Moving is not allowed from "photos from posts" and copying does not include comments. Ideally I want all the stats for a photo (+1s, comments, reshares) to be aggregated no matter where it's viewed from: the album, the community I shared it in, or my profile. I want my photos organized in albums by type - not albums based on upload date. When I share a photo I want viewers to be able to click on it and be taken to the album - not to an album consisting of only that photo nor the "photos from posts" album.

After many trials, a little bit of OCD, and my Quality Assurance experience, I've figured out how to do it right. 

1. Designate an export folder. Only finished, post-processed photos should go in this folder. RAWs and intermediate files should not go in this folder.
   
   This is my Portfolio folder. I have subfolders but you can choose your own:
• All of the Lights - night photography
• Where the Wild Things Are - animal photography
• Digital Paintbrush - general portfolio
• Training Wheels - photos I'm not quite happy with
2. Set your export folder to be auto uploaded to Google+. Not absolutely necessary but this automates the upload step. The idea is to not clutter up your Google+ auto upload so that photos are easy to find.
3. On Google+ Photos, create the album structure you want to group your photos into.
4. When you're ready to share a photo, go to the album (Photos -> More -> Albums -> ) and click Add Photos from the album view. Instead of Upload from Computer, select Photos. Select the previously uploaded photo. The photos here are sorted by date taken, not date uploaded. The key in this step is you don't want to re-upload the photo or it will create a duplicate - Google+ does not de-duplicate uploads.
5. When you click Add, you should get a box getting you to share the photo. If not, delete the photo from the album and re-try. In the share box, write what you want about the photo (as well as the post itself, this will become the photo description in the photo view) and share it to the circles or community you want. The important thing here is getting that share box. If you didn't get the share box or you skip it and share later, the photo is copied and the newly created post will not take people to the album, and comments from the album will not appear in the post.

Communities, Circles, or Public?

If you're a beginner photographer like me, share to 1 community per photo.

When you share a photo to a community, you can't share with any other circles or communities. It's tempting to share to as many communities as you can, but each post creates a copy of the photo and you lose the aggregated stats and nice clean album. On top of that, your profile will show duplicates of the same post (unless you change your settings) and people who are in the multiple communities you shared to will see your photo multiple times. After a while it will look like spam.

You can still tag people who were involved in the photo, and if the community is public, your post is visible publicly, so sharing to 1 community should be enough.

Why communities instead of Public? It's for the same reason you should share to many photo sharing sites. You're new and unless someone's specifically looking for your name or the hashtags in your post, no one will see your Publicly shared posts. People follow communities - posts in communities show up on their home feed, which makes it easy for them to +1. Once you have many followers who re-share your photos, sharing to Public starts to make sense.

It Can't Be News if it's Old

Re-post from Facebook

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12 white people die in France and North American media freaks out with half hour segments (every hour) under the "Free Speech" banner. Facebook follows suit.

132 students were killed in Pakistan on Dec. 16. Without formatting on Facebook, that probably didn't sink in. 132 students. An estimated 500-2000 people died in Nigeria Jan. 3. In both cases, North America briefly mentions it. Facebook doesn't flinch. Why would we? We're back to our selfies. Besides, it happens all the time in those countries. It can't be "news" if it's old.

What happened to any of them was wrong, obviously - and go ahead, freak out. It's scary. Just don't post something because everyone is doing it. Don't post like you've always been passionate about the world - you aren't. You're passionate about what the media chooses to focus on. Don't post about people dying, homophobia, and other real topics with the same urgency and as little emotion (hashtagging implies you don't have time to write out a full sentence. ‪#‎notime‬) as a celebrity getting married or what you had for lunch. Most of all, don't forget that 12 people dying isn't the worst thing that happened this year, this month, or even today, probably.

I'm not saying all this from a high horse. I'm the same as the rest of Facebook - I hear about what the media talks about, and I don't go out of my way to seek out the rest. I freak out. And posts like this one happen. But most of the time, I keep it to real, person-to-person conversations - I don't broadcast to the world that I know about Charlie Hebdo.

Does Hogwarts Offer Photoshop Courses?

Adobe Photoshop is powerful magical. Everyone knows it's used heavily for models on magazine covers, because that's what people will buy -- that's a topic for a different day.

As I mentioned before, I've recently gotten into photography and so I've been watching some YouTube tutorials to learn from other people. I'm not surprised by how much Photoshop is used in post-processing, but what continues to surprise me is what it's being used for. I never thought Photoshop was capable of removing an entire boulder or shrinking branches because they were too distracting. I was in awe watching Photoshop straighten buildings distorted by a panoramic shot, or add rays of sunlight to a dark scene. Perhaps the most incredible feat I've seen Photoshop perform is included in the video below - create branches that weren't there using the content aware fill tool. In fact, my reaction is well summarized by one of the comments on the video:

Seriously, is this photography or computer geekery?

Back in Business... again

In May 2012 I un-published all old posts and promised that I "will be re-publishing any that I find Internet worthy." I also had plans to restart the vlog and make a website. Obviously none of that happened.

My friend +Tri Huynh has recently started a blog at trihuynh.ca which made me nostalgic about mine. I still want to restart the blog, vlog, and make a website, but judging from the past 2 years, that's not realistic.

So let's stick to what I've actually done...

Philippine Noms

One of the few things I was really excited about on the trip to the Philippines was the food.

Balut is a Filipino delicacy that has spread to other Asian countries. I've been told they're available in Asian supermarkets in Canada but those are not as good as the ones from the Philippines. Balut vendors roam the residential streets at night shouting "balut" in a deep voice with the "u" extended, similar to the familiar sound of an incoming ice cream truck. Except of course, instead of ice cream, it's fertilized duck embryo. I ate about 3 of these every night while I was there. Yes, I ate an unborn baby duck. It was delicious and I'd do it again!

Fun fact: Cracked.com seems to think it's one of The 6 Most Terrifying Foods in the World

Touchdown Philippines

Garage and garden

As our plane reaches the Philippine airport I remember the day we left, thinking to myself it will be a long time before I see this airport again. Today is "10 years from now."

There seemed an excessive amount of security for the duty free shops. Who knew liquor was such a high risk commodity. We cleared customs and suddenly: people. Thousands of them. Every time someone brushed up to me I checked my pockets. Through the hordes of people, we managed to pick up our 6 bags of luggage, 3 of which were filled with gifts, toiletries, and canned goods for relatives. We finally stepped out of the airport doors and into the pickup area.

Welcome to the Philippines. I was greeted with the uncomfortably humid, barely tolerable heat. I felt like I was burning. I was burning.