How Flagging Works

A few days ago I posted that we've been feverishly working on ways to combat both abusive flagging and spamming on the site. We've gotten tons of emails with some really great ideas of things we could implement to help in these areas, so thank you for both your patience and your suggestions.



There does, however, seem to be a fair amount of confusion about the way flagging currently works so I think some clarification is probably needed. A video gets 'flagged' by a user clicking on the 'flag as inappropriate' link located below each video. Once a video is flagged, it is sent into a queue for our customer support team to review. Videos are NEVER automatically removed simply because they've been flagged. Every single flagged video is reviewed by someone at YouTube who then determines if the video contains material that is against our terms of use. You may have noticed that sometimes you're asked to login or register to verify your age because the video you're attempting to view may contain content that is inappropriate for some users. Sometimes flagged videos that we review do abide by our terms of use, but are not quite appropriate for all YouTube users. This could be due to a number of things - profanity, violence, adult content etc. Although they still abide by our terms of use, you can think of these videos as 'R' rated.



There are thousands of videos that are flagged for review every single day, and since we're still a small company with an even smaller team of people reviewing videos we do admittedly make mistakes at times. Occasionally a video gets flagged and we accidently take it down, or mark it as inappropriate. We're doing everything we can to diminish that margin of error but we would be lying if we said it's a 100% fail proof system.



We'll be continuing to roll out improvements to our flagging and spam filtering controls over the coming weeks so please check back here for continual updates. As always, thank you for patience and your feedback.



Best,

Maryrose

The YouTube Team

On Assignment: Medical Illustrator

I am home sick today.

Which means that I only have one assignment - an afternoon sports portrait.

So I am taking advantage of my nose-running, house-bound status to catch up on some admin. I'm burning assignment CD's, gathering mileage/receipts, backing up the hard drive, etc.

While backing up my hard drive, I came across some old photos from my pre-Baltimore Sun days. The one at top is a circa mid-90's quickie illustration of a medical illustrator named Tim Phelps.

I was assigned to do an office portrait of Phelps for a cover story on him. Which meant that I would likely have to make something boring into something interesting with some light. Office portraits can usually been improved from "nothing" to "something" with a little light.

So, I am shooting this guy at his desk. Even with decent light, the photo was a yawner. Then I see a drawing he had done of a profile of a human skull.

As someone who was just learning Photoshop at the time even I realized that the two could be combined for a cool illustration.

And before you get started, yes, I know my PS skills were pretty darn rudimentary at the time. But gimme credit for the idea.

The point here is that off-camera light can give you the flexibility to try something new. Or to develop an idea that works within tight composition constraints.

In my case the drawing was obviously going to drive the composition of the illustration, and thus the photograph. So I shot him in profile with a white wall for a backdrop.

The light was coming from camera left, slightly behind his face, into an umbrella. The one light illuminated both Phelps and the wall.

I used a Nikon SB-24 on 1/4 power manual. It was positioned just behind Phelps to give nice modeling on the camera-side ear, eye and cheeks. Lighting from slightly behind is usually better than lighting from straight-on profile for this reason.

Once I had a nice profile shot of him, I used the same flash as a copy light to shoot the drawing.

Then it was an easy matter to (badly) combine the two in Photoshop back at the office. (Hey, I was new at this.)

For you ethics hounds: Yes, it ran with a "Photo Illustration" credit line. And it is pretty obvious this is not a straight portrait.

The office portrait was moved from the cover to the inside lead, where it could be horizontal and carry more information than if it were a vertical cover shot with room for type.

I rounded it out with some copy shots of his illustrations, most of which were far more detailed and realistic than the skull drawing seen above. (This guy was good.)

In each case, the ability to get one cheap, small light off camera made a huge difference in the quality of the various photos in the package.

Which is an important point. Much of the time, lighting well does not yield a home run. It turns strikeouts into singles, and singles into doubles or triples.

This tends to raise your minimum standards. And that allows you to swing for the fences more often on your daily assignments.

Next: Fourth and Long? Punt With a Plant

Dark Grey: The New Black?

OK, folks. I have gone through and made some changes to the footer nav bars, which were stupidly hard-coded in to every single one of the (300+) posts.

Yikes.

Long story short, I now have the ability to alter the color scheme of the site without a ton of additional effort.

Over the past few months, I have received a small number of e-mails from people who found light grey text on a black background very difficult to read. Does the new scheme (a dark grey background) help any?

My preference is to not swap to a white background, as a darker one gives the photos more apparent tonal range and "pop."

Is this a good compromise?

Lemme know in the comments.

The Hot List, September 2006

What follows is a brief look at the most popular items Strobist readers ordered from Amazon last month.

Regarding number nine, one can only wonder if "Yeah, I read Strobist" is starting to used as pick-up line. Just keep 'em work-safe in the Flickr pool, and what happens in the garage stays in the garage...

In order, the September Hot List:

1. 25 Pack of 9in. Ball Bungee Cords

2. Kingston 512 MB Secure SD Card

3. Matters of Light & Depth

4. Secrets of Lighting on Location: A Photographer's Guide to Professional Lighting Techniques

5. Art of RAW Conversion: How to Produce Art-Quality Photos with Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Leading RAW Converters

6. Light - Science and Magic, Second Edition: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting

7. Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers

8. Shooter

9. Garage Glamour: Digital Nude and Beauty Photography Made Simple

10. Photojournalism, Fifth Edition: The Professionals' Approach

-DH

Our days are numbered

Last night was our last feature release in this office. That's right, we're moving on to bigger, less rat infested digs next week. I can't even begin to tell you what a crazy ride it's been this past year and moving out of this, our first real office, has definitely been a little emotional for me. But more sappiness and nostalgia later. Tomorrow we're having a last day in the office shin dig and we'll be sure to post some videos from that.



So, what were we doing here until the wee hours of the morning last night? Launching a few new features. First off, QuickLists. The idea for QuickLists actually came from us watching users open up multiple browser windows so they could 'load up' a bunch of videos to watch later. Well, ⌘ N no more. See those little + icons on all the video images? Clicking on it will add that video to a list that is saved for later viewing. You can access your QuickList at anytime by clicking on the link at the top of every page, or by clicking the QuickList bar under any video you watch. You can watch all the videos in your QuickList at once by clicking 'play all', and if you want to keep the list permanently you can save it as a PlayList.



We've also been working diligently to combat two issues that have been somewhat plaguing YouTube lately - abusive flaggers and spammers. We get a lot of emails about both problems, and although we're not able to respond to everyone individually, please be rest assured that we are actively working on both of these issues and developing ways to abolish this type of abuse from the site. It's one of our highest priorities right now and we promise that in the coming weeks there will be much continued improvement in these areas.



In other news, The Underground contest is now accepting submissions. We've all spent countless (and I mean countless) hours this past week watching the entries and there are some truly amazing ones. Submissions are open until 10/18, so if you're a musician get your butt in gear and go make a video!



Best,

Maryrose

The YouTube Team

Easy DIY Lighting Diagrams

Over at FredMiranda.com, Kevin Kertz has created a little "unfinished" Photoshop PSD file that can be used to easily create a professional-looking lighting diagram. I'd be using it here, except Kevin would prefer it be used for personal purposes only.

But if you, personally, are a personal kind of person, you can use it to demonstrate your lighting prowess (after the fact) for your fellow shooter.

Simply download and open the file in Photoshop, drag and drop the various items (they are still live, in different layers) and flatten that sucker into a jpeg.

Beats illegible scribbles on the back of a cocktail napkin any day.

Thanks to trappedlight for the heads up on the Strobist Flickr discussion group.

If You Like, Spread the Luv.

Wanna know a little secret?

Many of the "ads" that pop up on my site aren't ads at all. They are image links.

Case in point: That link to MediaStorm on the right sidebar.

Why would I do this? Because one of the cool things about having your own blog - and if you don't have one yet, you really should try out the medium - is that I can point people to cool stuff that I am into.

So, in addition to blogging about Brian's site, I am leaving an image ad up on the sidebar to point people to him on an ongoing basis. He's doing some kickin' stuff, and I want to introduce people to it for longer than his post remained on the front page.

It sort of a blog roll on steroids, and it is one of the things a blogger can choose to do "just because."

In the months that I have been publishing, (in addition to MediaStorm) I have image-linked to Nikon, Canon, XM Satellite Radio, (I love my XM) Monsterpod, even PSA's on getting your blood sugar tested as an early warning against still-preventable diabetes. (I had a high reading and was lucky enough to catch mine in time.)

So, long story short, Brian Storm, who is parsecs ahead of me in this Web 2.0 stuff, got the idea to take the extra step of making it easy to link to him in a visual way. What a great idea.

So I am ripping it off adapting the idea to my own site. Okay, so mine is way clunkier than his. So what. I am pretty sure I can, um, beat him in chess.

Or something.

I think.

So, if you wanna link to Strobist you can now do it with a little visual impact. To see the image ads and grab the HTML code, click here.

And while I am still thinking about it, get your blood sugar tested. Most people who have diabetes do not know they have it. Yet.

Don't wanna miss those grandkids.