When did we start photographing bits of things? Or am I noticing something that isn't new?

I might be wrong (could be confirmation bias) but I get the impression that there's been an increase in people taking photographs of bits of things in addition to (perhaps in preference to) photographs of the whole thing, ie as an accent, or colour, or to evoke a mood - Instagram is full of it, and I am certainly guilty of it too. Though I do think the photos are pretty.

(Edit: I'm not really talking about recording things for scientific purposes, which is certainly an example of people focusing closely on one aspect of a thing and also the thing in context, just about people taking snaps that don't encompass the full item, and looking at just an aspect of it).

Until I've worked out how to embed an Instagram pic I'll have to make do with a link, so here's one I took of the inside of a British Gas envelope - I think it's probably pretty obvious to most British Gas customers what it is http://instagram.com/p/ipfmI/

Note that this wasn't a macro photography shot, but I've been doing a fair bit of that as well by using a small drop of water on my iPhone - you can get some quite impressive shots - here's a close-up I took of a pound coin.




Is this shift that I think I'm perceiving a consequence of changes in the capability of cameras - easier to get close ups, more options with different kinds of lenses, with digital 'film' maybe people might be more confident about trying things that don't work etc., without worrying about the expense of wasting resources, or is it more to do with the way we look at stuff?

To me these evoke 'London'...





...every bit as much as larger shots of London vistas do



I know that people painted landscape scenes as well as studies on individual flowers so I'm not claiming that no-one has ever looked at things at different levels before, but I've certainly started noticing it a lot more. When I 'see' London I do see it all at once like this but even if I don't concentrate on the little fiddly bits (the pattern on Big Ben's tower, the little wiggly bits on the spire) if I see them separately I immediately recognise them as part of my landscape.

Is it a change in the way we think about how we look at stuff (perhaps we are becoming more artistic!) or a change in technology, or just me spotting a few instances of it and then just noticing it all the time?

Update on skeptical sneakery - using Flickr images as creative commons Trojan horses on sites selling woo

Shortened link: http://is.gd/jKM8RI

A little while ago I discovered, while doing a vanity google of my Flickr photos, that a couple of my pictures had found their way onto website pages selling food supplements, herbal remedies or homeopathy and I wrote about it here.

I was surprised to see that in a few of them they'd not only pinched the title I'd given the photo but also the comments that I'd added to my own Flickr page. Some of my comments were critical of the types of products that they were using the photograph to advertise, which amused me. Naturally the cogs began to whir and I wondered if i could exploit this by uploading the equivalent of photographic Trojan horses.

While I don't really think I'm stopping people from buying nonsense (and I doubt I'd be able to get any evidence) I've been refining the process to try and put my photos to work.

From what I can gather, the most fun can be had with:

1. Images (I created mine in PowerPoint) that are available under a Creative Commons license, tagged with weight loss or diet pills (or whatever fraudulent woo you want to target). I've created a basic image of a 'diet patch' with text on it saying that they don't work.

2. A title and description that are overtly critical of the product, ie 'diet patches don't work'

3. Addition of a comment that you've added, for the websites to pinch and pretend it was added by someone commenting on their page - I amused myself with "If this comment appears on a website other than..."

4. Adding to the comment an unformatted URL that readers can copy and paste (html'ed links don't seem to work when the comment is copied to its new location). I might even try drawing attention to it.

I'm also thinking about adding in a fake positive comment, that links to the blogpost I mentioned in the first paragraph.

An example of what I'd call a 'successful hit' is this one http://cowbid.com/diet-patches-2/ - my image appears near the top of the page and then there's some text advertising the product. For some reason a smaller version of my image appears again but this time it has my title "Diet and weight loss patches – they don’t really work, save your money" and critical description "Nicotine is a small plant-based alkaloid that easily dissolves in water and non-polar solvents. This does not mean that all plant-based molecules, or mixtures of molecules, can get across the skin and there’s no evidence that herbal diet patches are of any use beyond extracting money from your wallet. Avoid."

My comment appears there too "If this comment appears on a website other than my Flickr stream then it’s been pinched from this page and posted without permission. You may well be looking at a website that’s hoping to cheat you out of some money. Run away", and just in case it gets deleted I've frozen the page here http://www.freezepage.com/1311890041DRDYOIBFJO

There are two reasons that I'm particularly pleased to find that this particular page has unwittingly used my critical title and description.

One is the link that can be found within the phrase "Weight Loss Diet Patches" - it's from MoreNiche and is an affiliate marketing tracker http://track.moreniche.com/hit.php?w=125995&s=163

The other is that the page redirects to Roduve's Slimweight patch http://www.slimweightpatch.com/swp_en/

I've written about both MoreNiche and Slimweight patches here "Do Slimweight patches work? How?"

Graphic design and picture resources

On my trawls through the web for media services, medical illustrators, graphic design and medical (and other) images I have come across the following which I'm recording here mostly for me but I hope others find it useful too.

Creative Commons
Search.CreativeCommons - click on the tab you want, eg Flickr, type in what you want (when I just tried this they had a default search for flowers which demonstrates the system) and you'll be given a set of pictures that you can choose from. Were you to search for 'food processor' you'd find one of mine (Jodiepedia) which has been gratifyingly used on the web :)
http://search.creativecommons.org/

You can of course search both Flickr and Wikipedia (Wikimedia) databases directly but this global search is much quicker.

Media Services or Medical Illustrators based in London universities
UCL Information Services Division: Creative design services
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/common/creative_services

UCL Medical School: Medical Illustration (Royal Free Campus)
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/medicalschool/msa/medical-illustration/services.htm

St George's University of London: Media Services
http://www.sgul.ac.uk/services/graphic-design-1

Medical Illustration UK Ltd
(based in Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and the Charing Cross Hospital)
http://www.migroup.co.uk/

The latter two were found via the Institute of Medical Illustrators
http://www.imi.org.uk/links/links01.asp

Recommended on psci-com mailing list
http://www.liquidjigsaw.com/
http://www.samchurch.co.uk/
http://www.practicalaction.org.uk/education/renewable-energy-resources
http://www.martinbolchover.com/

Recommended on Twitter
Gareth at @Dot_Design, recommended by @imascientist

Crowdsource designers on the web (hat tip @mediaczar)
CrowdSPRING
http://www.crowdspring.com/

99 designs
http://99designs.com/

A blog post comparing the two: http://www.seoexpert.tv/do-it-yourself-seo/crowdspring-vs-99designs.html

and how I heard about the crowdsourcing designers concept from @mediaczar
The Magic Bean Laboratory
http://magicbeanlab.com/logo_competition/ (see 'the brief' as well).

**********
I used to do some freelance blurb-ing (generating 30 word precis and title from about-to-be published manuscripts) for BioMedCentral which included a bit of picture accessing and tweaking. As such the following websites are for medical images rather than general graphics - I've not included login details (it's private). You will have to judge for yourself whether an image or photo can be used.

Commercial and other
BioMed Central
http://www.biologyimagelibrary.com

Science Photo Library
http://www.sciencephoto.com/

Getty Images
http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/
http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/CreativeImages/RoyaltyFree

Alamy
http://www.alamy.com/

Public health image library at the CDC
Most of the images are public domain. If the link randomly takes you to the Session Expired page, just click on the link to 're-establish'.
http://phil.cdc.gov/phil/home.asp

Wellcome Images
http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/

Science and Society Picture Library
http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/index.asp

Google
http://images.google.com - search for an image, and contact the people on whose page it is and see if you can use it.

iStock photo
http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php

Stock.xchng
http://www.sxc.hu/

Pbase.com
Host and share your photos on the internet
http://www.pbase.com/

Photo.net
A community of photographers
http://photo.net/

Thinkstock (formerly Ablestock)
http://www.thinkstockphotos.com/home/transition