Every year after Dragon*Con I invariably end up spending a lot of time looking over flickr. I'm looking for pics of myself, my friends, stuff that I missed, and those really beautiful shots that talented (and/or lucky) photographers get.
I like flickr and in general I think it's a great place to post photos. Clearly many folks agree since over 73,000 Dragon*Con photos have been uploaded in the past few weeks.
The problem with flickr is this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zarathud/4983179528/Basically flickr queries appear to be limited to 4000 results. Sure that sounds like a lot, but there are 18 times that many for dragoncon. Stick to a basic search (even viewing a tag) and you'll miss out on 94% of them. Sure you can look at the 4000 "most interesting," but there are a
ton of great shots that missed that bus. Early uploads get a head start on views and favs and become the kings of flickr's 4000-limit hill.
This year I was on a mission to find some photos that I knew would be hard to find, so I wanted a way to trawl flickr effectively and efficiently. Something that would:
- hit every dragoncon photo, within reason
- support sane stop and resume -- 73k is a /lot/ to for one session
- minimize repeat views -- the numbers get a lot bigger when you start seeing photos more than once
This gets a little long, so I'm putting sections behind cuts.
( This is what I came up with )( Day by Day )( Scanning the queries )( The hidden gems )