{"id":2577,"date":"2015-06-23T07:20:31","date_gmt":"2015-06-23T14:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/?p=2577"},"modified":"2015-10-28T13:42:12","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T20:42:12","slug":"of-photography-bad-wine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/23\/of-photography-bad-wine\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Photography & Bad Wine"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve grudgingly come to accept that most people regard photography much like I regard wine: there\u2019s bad wine, and then there\u2019s wine<\/strong>. I know there’s crap (crummy liturgical stuff, etc.), and I know that all the rest tastes pretty good. Sure, I might notice & like something outstanding, but generally good enough is good enough.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how it is with most people\u2019s photos: \u201cIs it way too dark or blurry? Is my head cut off? No? Fine, then.”<\/p>\n

No matter how well or poorly I do my job, most people simply won\u2019t edit photos\u2014at all, ever. They just don\u2019t care. And if they do<\/em>\u00a0edit photos, it\u2019ll overwhelmingly be to crop & rotate them, and maybe to brighten things up & add a filter. None of this is unique to Google: we saw exactly the same thing with Adobe Revel (built on the world-class\u2014and for its audience, irrelevant\u2014Lightroom engine).<\/p>\n

So, on a per-user basis, editing hardly matters, and yet the scale at which Google operates is enormous, so the editor gets used millions of times. \u201cA small number times a big number is still a big number.”<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reminded of an observation from Adam Carolla. Paraphrasing my recollection:<\/p>\n

\n

Let\u2019s say you loved watermelon. If someone gave you a watermelon the size of a minivan, you\u2019d probably say, \u201cWow, that\u2019s a ton of watermelon!!\u201d But then if you realized they carved it out of a watermelon the size of the Hindenburg, you\u2019d probably say, \u201cCome on, that\u2019s all I get?!”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m proud of the new Google Photos editor\u2014of the way we were able to radically streamline the UI while retaining tons of smarts under the hood (e.g. centering vignettes on faces, treating faces specially when applying midtone contrast, etc.). And I\u2019m proud of the new Snapseed, which puts big power one tap away for nerds like us. I just have to be happy driving my fruity little minivan next to a Zeppelin\u2014or metaphors to that effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve grudgingly come to accept that most people regard photography much like I regard wine: there\u2019s bad wine, and then there\u2019s wine. I know there’s crap (crummy liturgical stuff, etc.), and I know that all the rest tastes pretty good. Sure, I might notice & like something outstanding, but generally good enough is good enough. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,3,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2577"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2577"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2579,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2577\/revisions\/2579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}