Printable Version of Topic

Posted by: Cla68

For some reason, Shankbone is offended by http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/arts/20funny.html?_r=1 in the NY Times disparaging the celebrity photos in Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons. Evidently, according to a note on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:David_Shankbone and his blog (which I won't link to), Shankbone was offended that the Foundation didn't mention him when the NYTimes reporter called them to ask for a comment.

The NYTimes is correct, most of the celebrity photos in Wikipedia are lousy. Some participants, like Raul654 have tried to correct the situation by inviting celebrity publicists to submit better photos, but they have usually not responded.

I'm not sure why Shankbone should be so upset about it. Has he really taken that many pictures of celebrities? Did he really expect the Foundation members to have his name at instant recall when asked about it?

I uploaded http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Japanese_Persimmons_drying.JPG of drying persimmons (the picture is of an old dwelling on my in-laws farm), but I don't think I would be upset if the NYTimes said that all of the persimmon pictures in Wikipedia are terrible. Does Shankbone have good reason to be offended?

Posted by: tarantino

Shankbone has generated his share of horrid photos of celebrities. As thumbnails some might be okay, but judge for yourself the quality of the full resolution images.

A sampling of them are in his user space here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Shankbone/Entertainers

Posted by: Cla68

Some of those pictures are excellent, some are so-so, and some are lousy. I would say that on the whole they support the NYTimes' reporting which is that, in general, Wikipedia's celebrity shots aren't as good as the probably should be for an "encyclopedia". Shankbone's pictures all appear to be candid shots in some social setting, perhaps at the reception line for some awards show or premier or something. So some of them come out good, but many of them look amateurish. This is not necessarily Shankbone's fault, he is a victim of the situation. I think the NYTimes is saying, why not have professional-looking portraits of each of them since they are public figures?

Posted by: LaraLove

Some are pretty good, but others are just horrible. For example, the image of Christopher Walken. I would have never published that. Just horrible.

The image of Seth Green is good, and some of the prettier actresses. It would do celebrities well to have their agents send WP promo shots.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Shankbone is an amateur photographer and an amateur journalist. That is not a problem, per se, but his mistake is imagining that he is the real deal. As an amateur, his work is inconsistent and often bumbling. But he doesn't appear to take kindly to criticism, and he also doesn't have anyone mentoring him on how to do things correctly. His response to the Times coverage suggests his ego is running far ahead of his talent, and that is never a good thing.

Posted by: Viridae

Bingo.

Posted by: anthony

Allowing CC-BY-ND photos would probably be helpful. The insistence on allowing derivative works doesn't really make sense in terms of photographs.

Posted by: toddy

I think it does make sense in many ways; licensed as "no-derivatives" would bar alteration of the photo in any way, so (as far as I understand it, I'm not a lawyer) you couldn't even crop out crap/offensive/irrelevant parts of a photo, or change the brightness - you either use the photo as-is or not at all. There are always the "vanity" photographs of some-guy-with-celebrity or that person who plasters their name at the bottom.

The commercial use stipulation on the other hand, is utterly stupid. And I don't buy Wales' "if an entrepreneur in India wants to print textbooks and sell them for £1..." justification one bit.

Posted by: thekohser

Wow, I certainly http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=25383&view=findpost&p=184887.

Posted by: Sarcasticidealist

My understanding -- also not being a lawyer, and being very open to be shown wrong on this -- is that it's not a derivative work unless something that passes the threshold of creativity is done to it. I don't think cropping or basic brightness adjustments would generally qualify.

Posted by: Viridae

Its because WP is mirrored by commercial sites like about.com

Posted by: anthony

So only accept photos under CC-BY-ND which don't have any crap/offensive/irrelevant parts.

Posted by: Somey

The Foundation is extremely aware of Shankers and all of his online activities - that's most likely why they didn't mention his name to the reporter from the New York Times. If someone like Cohen had looked into Shankbone's WP history in any detail, he probably would have jettisoned the photography story completely, in favor of something far more embarrassing to Wikipedia and everyone associated with it.

Posted by: Cla68

Very good point. David, if you're reading this, remember that sometimes there are consequences for our actions.

Posted by: EricBarbour

Looks as if I need to point something else out:

Real "encyclopedias" don't have BLPs of all these assorted actors, singers, athletes
and other semi-famous tabloid fodder. So they don't need photos of them.

Look in a dead-tree directory of famous people, like Who's Who. Very few photos.
And they expect people to PAY to have them run a photo. IMDB wants the rights
to any photos posted for a bio--period. No rights, no photo.

If WP simply removed those BLPs, multiple problems are solved at once!

Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayumi_Hamasaki. One of the most famous pop singers in Japan.
Do you see a pic of her on http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0357354/?
Or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namie_Amuro? IMDB listing,http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0025480/
Or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitomi? Same http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2370031/.
Or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikaru_Utada? http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0882483/. (Bad WP photo, too.)

They don't have photos on IMDB, because they're almost unknown outside Japan, and
the Japanese don't use IMDB anyway. But WPers who are Japanomaniacs, especially
the anime freaks, know who these singers are--because they're famous in Japan, and
have had songs or vocal parts on animes. So, they get extra-special treatment on
WP, and not anywhere else in English-language online media, except on anime
fansites and J-pop fansites......

Posted by: JohnA

I take it back. Shankers can't photograph to save his worthless life.

My wife is horrible at taking pictures and she'd still take better than Shankbone.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Indeed -- Kenneth Pinyan learned that the hard way.

Posted by: sbrown

There are no photos at all in Who's Who. Do you mean some other publication thats taken the name?

Posted by: grievous

Shankbone is butthurt? This is news?

Posted by: Nerd

It looks like he has a red halo. And he had an awful haircut there too.



Yes. If he wanted credit or recognition, he should have published the photos on his own site. Otherwise, people will take his work for granted.

Posted by: grievous

Anyone running a counter for how many times David has threatened or claimed to actually quit because he wasn't adequately recognized for his contributions?

Posted by: LaraLove

I ran out of fingers... too lazy to use my toes.

Posted by: Grep

Perhaps the NPG will hack into the database, illegally download his photos and ... er ... delete them all again.

Posted by: sbrown

The NPG isnt a wikipeida sockhunter!

Posted by: grievous

I don't exactly understand all his drama here. He may have spent many hours standing around waiting to take pictures of celebrities, but based on a majority of his contributions, I don't see where he labored over the process. He stood around and clicked a button on his digital camera (often at times unflattering to the subject) then uploaded them to his computer and then to commons. It doesn't appear that he spent much time in post processing on most of these images. It isn't like he labored in the darkroom for hours like photographers of old were required to do. So what's to feel sorry for if he wasn't "recognized"?

It is prime time that he realize the waste of time this has all been, stop his whining, and get on with his life. He blames WMF for Noam Cohen's lack of research, when, if you analyze his contributions objectively, he can be lumped into the paragraph about amateur photographers. Despite Mr. Shankbone's contributions, Mr. Cohen's reporting on the dearth of quality photographs for BLPs is still true. If the article called out Shankbone's contributions specifically as poor that would be one thing. But it's Mr. Shankbone himself who has assumed the slight here. He claims to not require the be "noticed" in the same breath that he complains about his contributions not being recognized by the WMF. Time to find a new hobby, bub.

Posted by: JohnA

Actually, Shankers managed to "labour" to produce extremely bad pictures. He appears to have the magical ability to make some of the world's most recognizable people look terrible. The backgrounds interfere with the pictures on some of them, but mainly they are just very bad photographs.

My wife actually took umbrage that I told everybody that she's a bad photographer, but then she saw Shankers' works and agreed that even she isn't that bad.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Yep. Even with all the doo-hickies and doo-dads to automatically adjust focus and exposure for you, it's still surprisingly hard to take a decent photograph. It probably takes a minimum of 10 hours of instruction even to turn out non-bad ones.

I have seen a few people who have "the eye" and can be taught in less than an hour. They automatically frame, pay attention to foreground, medium and background, composition, overcontrast, and so on. Some of this is hard to teach somebody who doesn't have the "eye." It's like teaching painting.

Posted by: Kevin

I'm a part timer pro photographer in RL, and even after years of experience I still take shots that are hideous. I just don't show those shots to anyone. Anyone can take a great picture, but you need to be heavily self-critical to weed out the crap.

I do sympathize with his situation, press conferences with no exclusive access would have to be among the worst situations from which make a decent portrait. Damn, can't believe I'm defending the guy.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Yes. Back in the days of film the pros said you were lucky if you got one really pro-quality shot per dozen rolls of 36. Now that's it's all digital, god knows what the ratio is.

I wish I could afford these cameras which can fire and store an hour's worth of bracketted sets every fraction of a second, as you walk around your subject. Somewhere in there, there's bound to be the magic flag-raising-at-Iwo-Jima moment where the spark just jumps. But it seems like cheating.

That said, I'm sure there are people who couldn't take one good portait photo even with the latest Nikon. And if you can't control angle, lighting, background (yes, as in press conferences) that can happen, as you say.

Posted by: seicer

He doesn't shoot with a d-SLR or anything fancy. If I recall what he told me about a year ago, he just has a step above a point-and-shoot and I nearly convinced him to splurge on something of a prosumer or an entry-level d-SLR.

He wasn't intending on being a photographer by any means, but he more or less fell in love with the role and with the access he gained by shooting for Wikipedia.

I don't know why he up-and-sudden quit. There are hundreds of photographers on WP, yet they did not receive a mention and are still editing.

Posted by: anthony

What, you mean "f/8 and be there" isn't enough?

Posted by: Somey

Personally, I see no reason to criticize him as a photographer, at least from a technical standpoint - obviously he's no professional, and lacks that "eye" that might otherwise lift him into the "artist" category, but he's not a terrible photographer IMO. A terrible person, sure, but not a terrible photographer.

What seems clear is that he likes to be around celebrities, whom he probably sees as "power people" or a kind of authority surrogate - this is a common narcissistic trait. What strikes me is that the life of a papparazzi photographer is simply not suited to him - those people are always having to debase themselves, lurking outside of people's homes and hiding in trash cans and the like, following people into tunnels while riding on motorcycles, etc., etc. What he needs is a way to maintain access and proximity to the famous and fabulous folks of the world without requiring an excuse or an ID badge of dubious legitimacy. Where he'll find that I don't know, but I have to admit, he's gotten considerably more mileage out of Wikipedia for that purpose than I would have thought possible just a year or so ago. Putting aside the toxic nature of his personality, that's a fairly impressive thing to have done.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

I certainly hope the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jim_Carroll_by_David_Shankbone.jpg is a very, very bad photo. At least no one (for now) has put that pic in his BLP.

Posted by: grievous

Well that's the thing. Not all of his photographs are bad. But what he does is go to these events, snaps what appears to be one photo per celebrity, then regurgitates all of them onto commons. At these red carpet events each celebrity stands there posing for a few minutes because they want the photographers to get the chance to take at least one quality shot. Surely he has time even with the most limited equipment to bracket more than one shot to compensate for the occasional weird expression. Even most mid-level cameras have the capability to be set to quick-shot, and Shankbone has lamented that he's spent over $5,000 on this hobby.

Posted by: LaraLove

Jesus... that's just horrible. That's a good example of a shot that should be deleted, or never have been uploaded.

There are some really good ones, though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Debra_Messing_2009.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mary_Kate_Olsen_2009_Tribeca_portrait.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Evan_Rachel_Wood_portrait_2009.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Seth_Green_at_the_2008_Tribeca_Film_Festival.JPG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Danica_Patrick_at_the_2008_Tribeca_Film_Festival.JPG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kristen_Bell_at_the_2008_Tribeca_Film_Festival.JPG

Others, the subject looks like death, and you really can't fault the photographer for not being able to improve upon that when on a red carpet; however, some shots should just not be published. But then, there are the plain bad shots, such as this unfortunate shot of a beautiful woman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Padma_Lakshmi_at_the_2008_Tribeca_Film_Festival.JPG
And this shot isn't even in focus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Leonardo_DiCaprio_by_David_Shankbone.jpg

Investing in a quality camera and a lot of memory is necessary for such photo ops, I think (those on red carpets and such). You gotta have many shots per celebrity so that there is a best shot to publish. And in the absence of a best shot, no shot should be published.

All that said, I don't think David should take it personally. Plenty of people say that Wikipedia is wholly unreliable, can't be trusted, is full of crap articles, blah blah blah. Those of us who have written quality articles can take that as a slight against us. It's not about getting paid or getting recognized. It's about providing information to others. Children in Africa and all that shit.

Posted by: Eva Destruction

Why exactly is that blurry DiCaprio shot in White people in Zimbabwe? "Once played a character who had been born in Zimbabwe, in a film set in Sierra Leone and filmed in Mozambique and the US" seems tenuous even by Wikipedia standards.

Posted by: Somey

Why is there even an article about White people in Zimbabwe at all? Not to mention the fact that it goes on for pages and pages and pages... I think it may actually be longer than the Zimbabwe (T-H-L-K-D) article itself! And according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Zimbabwe#Ethnic_groups, they're less than 1 percent of the population.

Posted by: Eva Destruction

Same reason there's African American, Anglo-Irish or History of the Jews in Germany – because they're a minority who've had a significant impact on the country, and "White people in Zimbabwe" is less politically charged than "Rhodesian". The very fact that the population is down to less than 40,000, from 300,000 a few years ago, is itself part of the story (and a broad "race relations in Zimbabwe" article would cover too many inter-tribal conflicts). I don't have any problem at all with Wikipedia having this particular article.

Posted by: grievous

There are still problems with those. Shankbone needs to learn to re-direct or soften his flash. Even in the "good" photographs, the subjects seem cursed with oily skin due to the glare of the flash on their skin. Not to mention they look a little over-exposed. His white balance seems a bit off. A lot of that could be solved by burning-in some of those over-exposed areas. He says he has Photoshop. He should use it.

Commons ought to have some objective inclusion criteria instead of being the free Flickr that it's become.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Cheap trick: You can buy battery-powered slave flashes that are both radio and photocell controlled. The second type, which are pocket-sized, work with any type flash camera (even a cheap one), and so long as you're the only one taking flash photos, can turn a mediocre flash shot into a professional-looking one (depending on where you place them). They can provide indirect lighting, bounce-lighting, extra diffuse stuff, etc. You just place them about your subject out of frame, turn down the zorch on your primary flash, and away you go. I've got cheap slave-flash shots that look like they were done with a whole umbrella setup and studio.

Posted by: carbuncle

Yes, that photo makes Jim Carroll look like some sort of decrepit junkie.

Posted by: tarantino

The photo in http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Woody_Allen&oldid=303454259's bio is no better. In addition to his death warmed over appearance, the thumb at the bottom almost looks like someone photoshopped a penis into it.

Posted by: EricBarbour

?? He is a decrepit junkie.....at least, an ex-junkie.
Started on the shit when he was 13.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Look at #5 definition of "geezer"

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=geezer

Posted by: Cla68

He might like it in Japan where visiting Western celebrities often go out at night in Roppongi without their entourage or security teams and are usually very approachable. It's so common that some of my friends who hung out in Roppongi a lot got to the point where they didn't even pay much attention to it if some band like U2 or actor like Robert DeNiro was sitting at the other end of the bar.

I guess, though, if I were younger I would have been interested in using a Wikinews press pass to attend some of those celebrity events just to see what it was like. Anyway, Milton's advice on using a "softer" flash is something I might look into, because I'm always interested myself in improving the quality of the pictures I take.

Posted by: Somey

It's basically a gauntlet of photographers, isn't it? There's actually a movie called [i]Jiminy Glick in Lalawood[/url] that might give you a decent idea of what such events are like, though of course it's kind of a silly parody, and not particularly worth seeing for any other reason.

Standing in the gauntlet may or may not have been a pleasant experience for him, but IMO the real achievement from Shanky's perspective was getting the Wikinews "press pass" validated in the first place. Few people would have gone to that much trouble, and many would have felt like they risked embarrassment to even try it. I suspect that's the real reason he feels unrecognized (and is therefore upset) now.

I'd be surprised if the Tribeca Film Festival allows just anybody to stand in the gauntlet (hard to say though, since their http://www.tribecafilm.com/festival/media/Press_Credentials.html doesn't give any detail on it). However, I think we can at least safely assume that if anyone asked, he most likely told them he represented "Wikipedia," and either didn't mention Wikinews at all, or just mentioned it as an "offshoot."

Posted by: carbuncle

I guess it really is necessary for me to include smileys when I'm making a joke...

Posted by: Kelly Martin

I am a mediocre photographer (some of my work, for good or bad, is on flickr, and you can ask me for the link if you're interested; there's also some in Commons), and yet most of it is both better than virtually all of Shanker's crap, as well as better than most of the crap on Wikipedia.

Getting good photographs of subjects who aren't actively trying to be photographed is hard.

Posted by: taiwopanfob

Ding! Whatever the quality of his work, he got off his ass and tried. The rest of them just want to sit at their terminals and maintain their Experience Points at their favorite MMORPG.




I'm sorry, but You Don't Know What You Are Talking About™. I suggest you try to take a few photographs yourself before passing on 'advice'...

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

I agree -- it is better to rush out and create third-rate works of endless mediocrity instead of taking the time to correctly learn your trade and doing the job in a professional manner. Or something like that.

Posted by: Milton Roe

He means "dodging in" overexposed areas (you burn in underexposed areas). But that was back in the days of the dinosaurs when people actually made prints on a projector and table (not easy for color, but I once did it for B&W prints taken through a red filter, ala Ansel Adams).

For color, Dah Compuuuter and digital image processing has made all that obsolete. Not that you can entirely compensate for bad exposure even so....

Posted by: taiwopanfob

In the the environment in which Shakers was working the above isn't really feasible. Even if the organizers permitted it, no one is going to lay out an array of flashes, radio triggers, and such.

The man mainly needs longer, faster lenses and a camera with larger pixels. But that is truly serious money.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

It's true that you'll never learn to become a good photographer if you don't get out there and take pictures. However, it's not enough to go out there and take pictures; you also have to look at them afterward critically, and learn from your successes and your failures.

The Wikipedia environment does not provide useful feedback toward this: the Featured Picture cabal has idiotic standards for quality that are difficult to meet and have very little to do with actual photographic quality; outside of that particular land of stupid the evaluatory metric is weighted so heavily on the licensing question (which is completely irrelevant from a quality standpoint) that an aspiring photographer who uploads content to Wikipedia is actually more likely to receive damaging feedback than helpful feedback, in the sense of using that feedback to improve their skill.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

Even holding a flash in your off hand over your head and off to the side will improve the quality of many shots by providing some off-axis lighting. (The problem with integral camera flashes is that they only provide on-axis lighting.) I've done with with one of my flashes, which has a photoelectric slaving option.

Nah, he needs to learn how to compose shots, and how to discard crap. That's got nothing to do with the camera. No quantity, or quality, of equipment can substitute for the skill of the photographer.

Posted by: taiwopanfob

Yes. However, I prefer using flash brackets.



Well, I tried to separate his earnestness from his quality. The man clearly has the balls for the job of a photojournalist. But it is also true, as you say, he needs a lesson in how to use the delete button on the camera and general editorial restraint. But then again, Wikipedia/Commons arguably needs to learn to delete crap on sight. What does hoarding it forever accomplish?

But the equipment I recommended would make the output far better -- once the delete-button starts to get used! The long, fast, lenses blur out the background (which emphasizes the subject), and you don't need to hammer poor target with as much flash. Timing and basic composition is something that will come with practice.

Posted by: sbrown

Do you mean more pixels?

Posted by: Kevin

Larger pixels collect more light, have higher dynamic range and have lower noise in poor light. More pixels is mostly marketing crap.

Posted by: grievous

I assure you I'm using my terms correctly. "Burning in" comes from old-school dark room techniques where you expose parts of the paper for a longer period of time to darken parts of the picture that were over-exposed on the negative. I understand how in this day of digital photography this can be confusing, but Photoshop has a brush that does this and happens to be called "Burn in."

Shankers has expressed disdain about having to "Photoshop" pictures to improve their quality. This only exposes how much of an amateur he is. Any photographer worth their salt, professional or otherwise, knows that framing the shot and snapping the shutter button is the easy part. The art is done in post-processing.

Posted by: anthony

I can't completely agree with this in all situations, but anyone who takes a posed shot on a red carpet using the auto-flash and then gets a stick up his ass about cleaning up the glare from that flash can't be taken seriously.

Start out with contradictory goals and you're guaranteed to fail.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

And yet Wikipedia is still here.

Posted by: anthony

I said fail, not cease existing.

Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy

Then why in the same breath does he boast about spending all that money on software? Did he pay for Photoshop!?!

I actually read the blog piece. WITH RED INK FOR MAXIMUM QUEEN OUT EFFECT. Yes, I know, I feel kind of dirty and ashamed from having gone over there ... but you know how it is.

Its a shame he did not retire his ego. How could the Mediawiki Foundation refer the New York Times to him ... to fluff his reputation even further?

He sticks photographs of his erection (or his boyfriend's erection, spare me the details) on a high profile website likely to be used by children for school research to be archive for 'posteriority'!!!

I mean, it-was-not-even-a-very-big-one-by-david-shankers.jpg. These people are insane ... and the term "boyfriend" is merely a slightly more neutral euphemism than "model").

Imagine if you stuck a picture of an glistening erection up on your work or school noticeboard, what would happen to you?

Yes, and I meant for the sake of a nice bit of posterior rather than 'posterity'.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Yep, you're right. There's even a Burning and dodging Wiki. My memory was reversed (easy to do) and of course burning (more light) makes the positive print paper darker and dodging leaves it light. Thus, as you say, you "burn in" parts that have been overexposed (and so would be too light on the positive print), by leaving the printing light on longer (the burn). But you then you often have to "dodge" (block light from other areas of the print sometimes, during the print exposure) to save the rest of the photo from being over-printed. Happens a lot with background problems where a subject is taken indoors against a window or something. Or the opposite, when they are too close to a flash and were off center so your flash exposure missed the primary subject. We did it with a lot of literal handwaving (between lens and paper) for the dodge. Manual image processing was more fun that digital, as most things are.

Posted by: grievous

Like painting with light. Sure with digital you can futz and undo, archive different versions, mask, apply filters, not have to deal with the smell of the chemicals, accidentally exposed paper, wet fingers or drying racks. But it's still not as fun as playing with light and watching the images magically appear in the developing fluid.




I think it's a sign of narcissm. He wants to be recognized for all the toil and trouble. This is why he labels every file with "by David Shankbone" and includes a byline in every caption for pictures that are included in articles. He wants to be seen as Wikipedia's preeminent photographer, which is why he's so butthurt by this article.

It's a sign of amateur status that he shows disdain for touching up photographs. It a common novice conception that perfect photographs are conceived in-camera. It can happen, but it's rare.