Ultimate shoulder rides

I also imagine,that I wish I had the power to locate shoulder ride pics..Believe it or not,in this day and age on the internet,there is only, one real true image search,that has millions of daily photos...That is, Flickr...We can have arguments,and other oppinions about this topic,but that is the truth..It's the only,photo sharing site that gives you TRUE,REAL photos from regular people,like you and me..5 years ago,we had several image search sites,that had daily photos..Not any more..I am on flickr,and have to search many different kinds of search terms on a daily basis..I go through THOUSANDS of photos per day..I pick and choose a date,and search my search terms...If something has over 5,000 photos for a certain date(beach as example)I search ,not just recent for it,but also interesting,and relevant..this way,you get the full set of pics from that search term,cause let's say if beach has 10,000 photos for today let's say,I need to to search all three types to see all the pics..recent,interesting,relevant..That's the key..Now,what does that get me on flickr?Well,I find roughly one photo per 20,to 40,000 photos..Is this worth it?Not sure,and yes,I do have a lot of time on my hands searching:)..

blakjac29 wrote:

I wish that I had the ability and the capability to locate and post shoulder riding pics and videos from around the world like some members of our group.  It seems that the group has become stagnant in locating pics.  You would have a difficult time trying to convince me that nowhere in the world that there is no shoulder riding.  This is summertime in Australia?  Surely there must be sr taking place .  Has Facebook gone from the InternetI only wish that I was not so dumb and confined to this bed so that I could locate and post pics.

Blackjack - unfortunately the Internet is a changed world from the one we enjoyed 5-6 years ago when there were pictures galore which we all enjoyed sharing at the time. I used to locate thousands of pictures, especially  in the Northern Hemisphere Summer.

More specifically, pictures taken by people in the USA always have  and always will take up 80-90% of all SR pictures. Reasons are numerous, but the lifestyle, climate and different languages in Europe  hinder the locating of pictures, and the large population size has always worked in the favour of USA. And the take-up rate for the Internet still lags behind in many third world countries where other large population levels exist even though many are starting to catch up now.

Australias lifestyle is much more akin to the USA rather than Europe in terms of the way people interact, and warm Summer weather - and people in the USA and Australia similarly enjoy wide open spaces, have large houses with backyards and pools and enjoy plenty of social interaction such as family get-togethers, BBQ's etc - which is a bit more limited with population density the way it is in the UK and Europe. What hinders Australia is the very small population though compared to the USA even though  the countries are virtually identical in lifestyle. You could mistake any large Australian city for a location in the USA without too much trouble, and even the rural areas are  identical to what you have in the US. The major difference is the amount of uninhabitable arid wasteland which makes up a large portion of the very centre of Australia which explains much of the lower population.

Yes - there is much SR taking place here in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere countries where it is Summer but all the pictures are well hidden in social media which is the real cause of the problem. It is the burgeoning popularity of firstly Myspace and now Facebook which has killed off the ability to locate any meaningful picture sharing and the lack of any picture search in Facebook. There would be tens of millions of SR pictures buried in FB which will never get to be seen by the world at large. The growth of those  social media networks has killed off the big picture sharing sites where the contributors used to post good pictures - the main one of course was Webshots which did not adapt as what Flickr did as it lacked any meaningful social interaction. There are still a few small picture sharing sites like Picasa etc but you will not find anything like what used to be located at sites like Webshots. I am surprised that WS is still operable - it is only a matter of time before the site is shut for good I am sad to say. There are also good SR pictures in peoples blogs which are searchable in Google but that really is about it. Even Flickr is more a hosting for people who are more serious photographers that want to share their work on an artistic level and so the younger social media crowd do not post there. 99.9% of SR material is still posted by the under-30s, in fact 95% would be those under 18.

As far as videos go, well Youtube is the one and only site now - and at least most things posted are shared which makes it easy to locate good SR videos - and there are plenty. The growth of Youtube has compensated somewhat for the lack of good picture sharing.

Believe me Blackjack, you have missed very  little - there is little to find - and even less if you take away all the low resolution material that people do post. That is another problem - even on FB, 99% of the pictures are of a very poor resolution. No-one seems to mind having to condense their original pictures any more it seems. For people like you and me that is a real loss - but that is how things are now.

Regards

Scotty

Scotty, it's interesting that you mention Youtube. Yes, Youtube has grown steadily and the number of videos posted has grown exponentially. But even there I seem to have more trouble finding relevant videos than I used to, say, several years ago. For example, when I searched for terms such as "chicken fight" or "piggy back" I used to get lots of relevant, quality videos on a daily basis. Now a search for "chicken fight" will yield maybe a couple of videos per week. I'm not sure if Facebook is connected to that somehow, too. Or maybe it's just me and other people have a different opinion? And then, of course, Myspace used to be a darn good source for videos, too, before it completely collapsed.

gunde wrote:

scottydl wrote:

You could mistake any large Australian city for a location in the USA without too much trouble.

No, you couldn´t. You drive on the wrong side of the road...

On a more serious basis. Facebook is a good source of pics even without the search engine. Most of the pics are rather low in resulution, but they still are sr pics. Flickroom has many good quality pics and you can also find pics on professional photographers homepages, but it takes time to search.

Ha ha - forgot about that driving part - what you should have said was that people in the USA drive on the wromg side of the road  - are not people in Europe the same as Australia with regards to which side of the road we drive - that makes us the majority!!

I think the best part of FB to search would be all the public events, concerts etc where the pictures are public. As for a picture search engine - well - forget it - at least for FB. Will never happen.

We are all complaining on a high level guys, you know that right? Think back how it was ten years ago or even before that. We have almost sixty thousand pictures posted on our site. Plus many more pics in gunde's yahoo group and our archives. That's not bad, is it? With what level would you be satisfied nowadays? Finding 100 good pictures every day? Or 500, 1000? It might be true that some pages that used to deliver lot's of sr pics are down or about to disappear. And flickr is more for photographers generally spoken, that's true, too. But that is still a great site, also because lot of the pics posted there have good quality and size. Which in most cases on facebook you would not find. There is not the slightest doubt that if all the pictures on facebook would be public and be able to be found by search terms you would find endless amounts of pictures even on a daily basis. I admit I would not mind to have the possibility to search for pics like that even though we have so many pics here already and new pics are being added regularly. I love photos and I admit you get kind of addicted to see more. And that's why we are easily unsatisfied. Try to see this also from another point of view maybe. There is a reason for privacy settings. Or would you want to know that your children's fun moments at a pool party taken on photos on a nice summer day for instance will end on a "special interest website" where mostly elder men are starring at those pics? We would want to have our privacy respected, too.
I know that is a tough example and I do not want to criticize members or hurt anyone's feelings, I really don't. I just believe we could be thankful sometimes for the chances we have. There is still a lot out there without a doubt. Facebook does deliver a lot of pictures of events, I found plenty there as I stated last year and if a girl in that pic is tagged you might also find more pics of her on shoulders on her site as there are still not so few who post their photos (or some of their photos) publically. Found several hundreds of sr pics on facebook alone that way. Better than nothing I'd say. And flickr is still the biggest one with a search engine. Be creative and you will find pictures.

And as I like to say there is also the chance to go out on events or whatever and get somebody on your shoulders. If you want to you can do it. It's not that difficult actually.

Wish you all a great weekend!

Louie

I agree, Louie. I hope I didn't sound like I was complaining too much. Especially with regards to videos, the situation today is FAR better now than it was 7-8 years ago, when there were NO video sharing sites! But the original poster made some valid observations, I thought.