Last Wednesday, I asked for help selecting images that I should consider launching my upcoming print store with. The response has been awesome. Out of the collection of almost 6000 images in my photo stream, 129 were tagged with print requests by a virtual army of people. This has been crowdsourcing at its best.
Even better, this exercise has resulted both validation and surprises. There were several photographs that I knew would be good enough to make the cut, and having them also picked by my readers is sweet validation. But, there were many more photographs picked out that I might not have selected on a first pass cut myself. And many of these photographs picked up a number of printmeplease1..n tags indicating that the support was coming from more than one person.
Throughout the process, I was keeping tabs on my Flickr account watching the ebb and flow of tags go by. The process of watching this happen was instructional. As well, the printmeplease1..n tags have turned out to be a great tool to use to measure response with. It's not a perfect, by any means, but the information provided by people who left them is incredibly useful.
The hands down winner was the photograph to the right. It was made in Sedona, Arizona with the help of a puddle midway up Bell Rock. It scored all the way to a printmeplease13 tag. The next closest images, two of them, scored printmeplease8 tags. With that kind of feedback, you can be absolutely sure that this photo will make the cut and be in the store.
I did receive some comments from readers indicating that the sheer scope of my request was daunting. After all, 6000 images are quite a few to look through. I was actually a bit worried that this would put some people off, but despite that hurdle and incredible number of people dug through and helped out. I owe a debt of gratitude to all of you. You've all truly helped out in this process. Everyone who left a tag should get a FlickrMail before the store launches with a special thank you.
Now, I've got my work cut out for me. Over the next few days, I'll be sitting down with incredibly valuable feedback, making test prints, and selecting the photographs will make the cut for the first dozen or so that will be offered as prints in the store. I don't think I'll stop there, however. With the amount of feedback I've received, there will probably be several waves of a dozen each that will be added to the store over the first few months of its life.
If you're interested in what people selected, here are all the images that were tagged:
Again, thank you to all who participated and helped me out. Not only have you helped to shape the catalog, you've given me the knowledge that I can proceed on with this endeavor.
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Nice one Duncan!
Who's the saucy Flickr user that would like your self portrait on their wall, then? ;)
That's a question I'll leave unanswered. But it's highly unlikely that I'll be putting that one up for sale in the store. I dunno, but I think I'd feel weird about that.
The sheer number was pretty daunting. I started somewhere near the beginning, tagged a couple then got sidetracked. I intended to come back, but didn't. I'm curious if the photos at the beginning of your sets were more heavily tagged.
I think if you (or anyone) were to do this again, it would be helpful to have a little app that displayed random images from a set (or sets) of photos, and let people comment/tag from there.
Brad: There is some weight—probably quite a bit really—to the tagged photos being towards the more recent part of the timeline than not. As to whether user fatigue contributed to that, it's hard to know. I'd be pretty sure that some amount of that weighting would be because the more recent photos tend toward being better as well.
I agree that some sort of randomization function would be good, as would the ability to filter out entire categories of photos. For example, a big bulk of my photostream is composed of conference photos would would be nice to filter out.
Thanks for your help!