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The Journey of a Digital Photograph

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1. 3 2 Fieldwork 0 0000 eee ee ene 3 2 1 Participant recruitment 3 2 2 Initialinterview 3 2 3 Intermediate period 3 2 4 Final interview 3 9 WAUALYSIS amp ewe ha ee owe eee we RE Ew os 3 3 1 Transcription 3 3 2 Extraction of shooting information O90 COUING ad sre eh wna tad ee ee oe 3 4 Limitations 2 2 2 2000 4 Results 4 1 The context of personal photography 4 1 1 Lackoftime 4 1 2 The social context 4 2 Aesthetics and the purpose of personal photographs 4 2 1 Self evaluation of personal photographs 4 2 2 Evaluation criteria 4 2 3 The synergy between content and quality 4 3 Barriers against photographic quality 4 3 1 A wide array of unused features 4 3 2 Incomplete knowledge and trial and error 4 4 Sharing and quality Discussion amp Implications for Design 5 1 A persona of an amateur photographer 5 2 The design of digital cameras 5 2 1 Towards a different imaging paradigm Dio EGIGMIS LOOIS scares i digo a dd Se hh eer eG ald 5 3 1 Integration of automatic correction 5 3 2 Editing byexample 54 Learning tool 2 4 0 avd 4 Gah on a Whee ees Be 5 4 1 The digital photography advisor Conclusion 61l Future WOPK c aace desis ase ae BG er he SB Soh ew a
2. 5 Discussion amp Implications for Design Having described our findings about the needs the behaviour and the problems of amateur photographers it is now time to discuss these findings with a view to wards their implications for the design of digital photography products and services We begin by drafting a persona that consolidates our findings and justifies the sub sequent design proposals This is followed by a critique on the design of current digital cameras and a discussion of a novel imaging paradigm We then discuss the issues surrounding editing tools and propose editing paradigms aligned to the needs of amateur photographers Finally the problems that amateur photographers encounter while learning about digital photography are examined and a novel form of learning tools is suggested 5 1 A persona of an amateur photographer As a first step towards consolidating our findings in a form useful for design we have created a persona of an amateur photographer see Figure 5 1 A persona Cooper 1999 is a precise description of our user and what he wishes to accom plish Our persona incorporates the findings about the context in which personal photograph is used the attention that amateur photographers pay to picture qual ity and the problems they face with current digital cameras This persona has been used in drafting our recommendations for design that are presented along with the discussion of our findings in the foll
3. References A Information Sheet and Consent Form Interviewer s Guide Initial Interview Interviewer s Guide Final interview Sample Interview Transcript D 1 Initial Interview 08 8 D 2 Final Interview e e888 4 Contents 50 2 ee E 51 52 54 3 60 List of Figures 1 1 A magazine advertisement for Kodak s Brownie camera 1 2 Images from Canon s promotional video for the EOS 350D camera 1 3 The digital photography landscape 0064 2 1 A taxonomy of reasons for image capture 2 2 Social ses of ides 5 aw 4h bo OH oes ekea 2 3 A sample photo taken with the context photography method 3 1 The InqgScribe transcription environment 3 2 EXIF data extracted from a digital photograph 3 3 Open coding with sticky notes 0 000000 8 5 1 A persona of an amateur photographer 5 2 The LCD display of a Sony DSC W5 digital camera 5 3 The mode dial on a Sony DSC W5 digital camera 5 4 Flash processing with the moment camera 5 5 Application of the Auto Contrast correction 5 6 Integration of automatic correction in the download process 5 7 Advanced editing facilities in iPhoto 5 8 Editing byexample 0 0 0 eee eee ee ne 5 9 Excerpt from the manual of the Sony DSC W5 digital camera
4. Having a better understanding of the needs of amateur photographers and the prob lems that they face a series of recommendations were made about the design of digital photography products We explained why digital cameras should move from feature bloat to a new imaging paradigm that requires less intervention by time strapped amateur photographers Further proposals were made about the design of editing software that is more closely integrated with an amateur photographer s workflow and can be used without advanced knowledge of editing methods Finally 50 Conclusion Future work we presented an idea for a novel learning tool that could help amateur photogra phers make the most out of their cameras without having to go through complex and often poorly written instruction manuals 6 1 Future work As this study was an exploratory one it has covered a breadth of topics but has left several questions open to a more in depth investigation First of all by recruiting a random sample of participants we were able to experience a wide variety of phe nomena but not all phenomena were reported by all participants For example not all participants would regularly edit their photographs Thus the information that we collected for each phenomenon is inherently limited as it comes from only part of our sample However now that a set of phenomena relevant to the amateur use of digital photograph has been identified each of them can be studied
5. s for but friends said it s really good to use if in my pictures colours look a bit funny I usually take a white sheet and try to make sure the colour is OK but I don t know how it works 36 Results Barriers against photographic quality The flash has about 5 or 6 options like automatic or for day and night and when you walk or whatever I have to admit that I m not really familiar with the types that I should be using or what s the best thing Another indication of incomplete knowledge was that although participants would observe quality problems in their photographs they could not always explain why these problems had occurred or how to prevent them The image is just a bit of a blur altogether which is probably because I don t really know what I m doing taking photographs into the sun or the definition or the resolution are not high enough I m not sure There was something wrong with my camera that day I don t know what it was but the pictures came out really specked very grainy look ing I still don t know why that is Although the desire to learn more about photography was often expressed par ticipants complained that their primary source of information the user s manuals supplied with their digital cameras were inadequate Also because it is quite easy to use digital cameras in a point and shoot mode without the need to change any settings some participants did not
6. t do it when I download then downloading tends to be part of a ritual of must get the memory card clean so we can go and do sth else with the camera and then you need to find an hour or two another day to go and sort out all of the photos and put them into albums and stuff like that 00 06 16 09 I think for this kind of weekend for a family weekend it s a typical number of photos cause I don t like to be behind the camera all the time So if I m in the mood I might take some photographs I think if I go away for the weekend like on a holiday or walking or something like that I d probably take more photos more like 30 or 40 When I m with friends and family I take some photos just so especially if it s people I haven t seen for a little while but I don t like to take lots of photos bc then you don t get to talk to people 00 06 53 06 Yes I probably will share them bc there s some nice pictures of my niece and nephew playing in a bathtub I think I ll probably try and share those with their mum because she d like them 00 07 19 26 P took a lot of photos as well using my camera We tend to share all the time with the camera Generally I can always remember which 67 photos are mine It s easy to tell bc the ones that you re in you definately didn t take those 00 08 30 18 PHOTO 1 two variations 00 08 38 15 I like taking pictures of them bc actually you have to take loads
7. 5 10 A mock up of the UI for the Photo Advisor tool List of Tables 1 Introduction You push the button we do the rest George Eastman 1888 after the development of the Kodak camera 1 1 A short history of photography More than any other single factor the evolution of imaging technology has always defined the photographic experience At the end of the 19 century when George Eastman invented the photographic film bulky cameras and chemicals gave way to a medium flexible enough to be used by the average consumer In some of his earliest advertisements for film cameras he argued that such cameras were so simple they can be easily operated by any school boy or girl see Figure 1 1 During the 20 century advances in optics and electronics made cameras even more compact and automated offering a truly point and shoot experience Almost a century after the invention of film the photographic medium was to be transformed again this time into a digital form A number of technological breakthroughs made digital cameras affordable and practical for the average consumer Although basic human needs such as the need for recording memories may not have changed throughout the centuries the ways of satisfying these needs through photography have always been affected by the availability and the capabilities of different photographic media Especially during the last few years a digital media lifestyle has been promoted
8. Exposure Mode White Balance Scene Capture Type Contrast Saturation Sharpness ff2 8 Top Leftt Hand Top Lett Hand f2 dpi 72 dpi 2005 12 10 17 36 59 1 125 sec f 2 8 Normal Program 100 f 2 8 OEV Pattern No Flash Auto 5 60 mm sRGB 2048 1536 Normal Auto Auto Standard Normal Normal Normal Figure 3 2 EXIF data extracted from a digital photograph 3 3 3 Coding The primary technique used to analyse our observations is open coding part of the Grounded Theory methodology developed by Strauss and Corbin 1990 Open coding is a technique that allows observations to be distilled into phenomena which are then organised into categories The term phenomena refers to the discrete units of analysis which in our case may represent incidents ran out of space in memory gt See http futureshape net photothesis 25 Method Analysis card or opinions auto correct only seems to fix minor problems as described by the participants The term categories in turn refers to meaningful groupings of such phenomena for example what makes a photograph fail Open coding is an iterative technique in the sense that categories are not predeter mined and fixed but emerge out of the analysed observations and are constantly evolving while more and more observations are being analysed In this study cat egories were initially centred around the thematic areas investigated in the
9. 5 8 In this example the user can select from eight variations of the original photograph the one that he prefers A similar image editing interface has already been implemented for editing images imported into the PowerPoint for Mac presentation software and as part of the Adobe Photoshop 45 Brightness Contrast Saturation T Temperature i Tint Sharpness Straighten Exposure Gn ees Ei Levels Reset Sliders Figure 5 7 Advanced editing facilities in iPhoto Less Saturation Warmer White Balance Less Brightness More Brightness Colder White Balance More Contrast More Saturation Figure 5 8 Editing by example 46 Discussion amp Implications for Design Learning tools photo editing software but to the best of our knowledge this feature has not yet been part of mainstream photo editing software aimed at amateur photographers 5 4 Learning tools A frequently cited assumption among amateur photographers is that because digital photography enables limitless costless experimentation the quality of their pho tographs is eventually going to improve This assumes that some form of learning takes place as amateur photographers experiment and acquire experience How ever according to the results of this study amateur photographers only have limited time for experimentation and most importantly often cannot explain why some of their photographs have failed We believe th
10. Developing bed Prete lice wlll ceay ioien Tereewnfe Carrere fer 2 i x D Richer H i k i P F1 0 Tranapartnt Pilm Cariidgr aphisriis dh mw FY i 7 i i ila Facte Film Cartridges 6 ceeeeures Di r Be 4 a P Ai uh Brewnie Develesing and Prinding Gusfin i i The Brownie Camera Club Peery bop anil girl neler steen years of age suli join the eosin Causes Cire Fifty Kesbks vadeed ot over fomai sell be given bo nienibers of the club as peices for the best picture ouckowith the Arcee Cameras ial every Hititbet of dhe chb wll be giyen a copy ol mir Phetographic Ar lieber Mo nhl thet ded ot chert pon anna lerni Aak voir sunshine pia header iheaker at weitc fe dof a fone amera Chol Camara Iihere is na Helak Cacctitutemn dealer in Pau bean aod ow aaiedier aed wa will ship iha FEASTS AN HODAK co CLEA Bremer h N ochester N Ya Figure 1 1 A magazine advertisement for Kodak s Brownie camera dated 1900 em phasising low cost and simplicity of use and even promoting an photo sharing through the Brownie Camera Club The EOS 350D It s playtime Figure 1 2 Images from Canon s promotional video for the EOS 350D Digital SLR camera The video is focusing on the creative and playful side of photography Introduction Project aims Greene 2002 In theory digital photography encourages and aids creative experi mentation and several digital camera advertisements are app
11. This was because images on a compute screen lack the tangibility and manipulability of prints meaning that it s almost impossible to spontaneously move them around and compare them to each other A later ethnographic study that took place in 2001 across 22 households in the UK was published by Crabtree et al 2004 They focused on analysing photo talk which they define as the conversations that take place during co present photo shar ing Their conclusion is that the most important feature of sharing photographs is the production of an account that gives the photos in hand their particular mean ing If this feature is not adequately supported in digital photo sharing technolo gies especially in those technologies that underpin remote sharing we risk losing the very practices that allow photographs to be shared in a meaningful way Finally Lindley and Monk 2006 examine co present photo sharing from the view point of defining a set of affordances They argue that technologies for sharing digital photographs should afford enjoyment conversation and control For example one way a digital slide show could afford conversation and control is by allowing the viewers to control the rate of presentation and to pause on a selected image so as not to interrupt ongoing conversations Although all these studies do shed some light on the nature of photo sharing con versations there are still certain aspects that need further inv
12. When we got back from Chile we bored all of our family with going through a slideshow of all of the pictures and stuff on various computers we just took our camera around and plugged it in to people s computers 00 14 14 27 No I don t think we uploaded it anywhere actually we ve only shown it either through the PC or sometimes you can plug the camera in the TV but only when you remember the right lead which is very rarely 00 14 38 19 I think a lot of people thought that it looks a bit unreal the 64 sky almost looks like a painting rather than a real sky so a lot of people asked if that s what it actually looked like so that s interesting I guess I think part of this didn t quite look like this part of it is an effect I think of the camera it s made it look a bit unreal but it actually evokes what it felt like very well So yes I think people liked that one I don t think it s an amazing photo I don t think I ve taken an amazing photo I just think it s very pretty 00 15 39 07 I like it because it reminds me of being down there and as I said it really captures they way I felt when I was taking the photo just bc it looks a little bit surreal but it also looks very majestic 00 16 54 08 PHOTO 2 We ve got a lot of nice pictures of upwards looking buildings which is a bit of a favorite type of photographs That s one This one actually is from Peru from the same trip This is where
13. an aeroplane and there wasn t really very good contrast so you couldn t really see the lines very well 00 20 47 20 So you can see we cropped out the plane and then we kind of played around with the brightness and the contrast until you could really see the lines bc when we ve shown people the original photos they were saying I can t really see I don t believe that it s there When they see this one they re like oh wow that is amazing but then they also think it s kind of cheating bc you ve changed all the contrast so maybe you just drew it in I don t think we did that with Picasa bc it wasn t around by then probably did it with Photoshop or sth 00 21 35 00 I think the Nazca lines are really cool the thing about this photograph is that I m super impressed that you can see it bc I thought when we were taking any of the photos that there s no way we re going to be able to see any of this and I think it s a really good example of why a digital photograph in this case would be better than a photograph on film bc with a photograph on film you re just left with well this is what I ve got you just get the original and you can t make any changes to that whereas here you ve got the original and if you re even a little bit disappointed with it you can play around with it until you get what u were hoping to get That s one of the reasons why I like this one a lot 00 22 36 09 PHOTO 4 Th
14. find it necessary to go through the user s manual at all I wish there was something like a manual that came with it that would just say OK if it s night you should have these settings or if there s lots of people you should use those settings because I have no idea and in the heat of the moment you don t want to keep bugging around with the settings because you might get just one chance to make this picture I remember right at the start I got quite into it and I wanted to know how to do stuff in my camera learn about shutter speed and stuff like that I just flicked through the manual but then I didn t really get doing it I think the user manual wasn t very well written it wasn t nice to read I remember the camera came with just a really big leaflet that said how to start in basic steps so I knew how to take a relatively OK picture so I didn t see the need to it has an auto function so you just point and click Pve read a bit of the manual just to try and understand how to use the shutter speed stuff but probably only about 2 3 pages of it it s quite thick I remember it wasn t actually very easy to figure out how to use these things it wasn t very well written because I ended up having to do lots of experimentation to figure out how it was actually working I was trying to find out just how to use it but it s quite self explanatory I find it easier to just trial an
15. independently in more depth For example a follow up study could focus on the photo editing be haviour of amateur photographers For such a study our findings on photo editing can be used as an initial approximation that would shape more specific research questions Obviously participants in such a study will have to be selected among those amateur photographers that do edit their photographs regularly One finding that warrants further investigation is the amateur photographers per ception of image quality In the present study the quality criteria have been sub jectively defined based on some of the phrases used by participants It remains an open question whether these criteria could be defined in a more objective and measurable way and what would these definitions be For example participants talked about over and under exposed photographs but we could not precisely de fine what makes an amateur photographer consider that photograph is properly exposed Such a question could perhaps be answered through a carefully controlled experiment taking account of existing work on visual perception Further research is also needed for evaluating the design recommendations made as part of this study Especially when features are meant to function automatically their function should be properly specified so that they err on the side of caution and do not become a nuisance to the user In order to ensure user acceptance each of the proposed sol
16. people manage their digital pho tographs In CHI 03 Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems pp 409 416 New York NY USA ACM Press Sharples M Davison L Thomas G V amp Rudman P D 2003 Children as Pho tographers an Analysis of Children s Photographic Behaviour and Intentions at Three Age Levels Visual Communication 2 3 303 330 Stelmaszewska H Fields B amp Blandford A 2006 Camera phone use in social context In Proceedings of HCI2006 forthcoming Strauss A amp Corbin J 1990 Basics of qualitative research grounded theory procedures and techniques Newbury Park Calif Sage Publications Tesic J 2005 Metadata practices for consumer photos IEEE MultiMedia 12 3 86 92 Van House N Davis M Ames M Finn M amp Viswanathan V 2005 The uses of personal networked digital imaging an empirical study of cameraphone photos and sharing In CHI 05 CHI 05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems pp 1853 1856 New York NY USA ACM Press 53 A Information Sheet and Consent Form 54 The Journey of a Digital Photo Usability in the digital photography workflow Alexandros Baxevanis UCLIC MSc HCI E 05 06 Final Project Study Information Sheet and Consent Form Thank you for offering to take part in this research study Please take time to read the following information and feel free to ask if there is
17. perspective of Human Computer Interaction The third chapter describes and justifies the method used for answering the research questions and the results of the research are presented in the fourth chapter In the fifth chapter we discuss the research results with relation to the initial ques tions and to related research and we present the implications for design of digital photography equipment and services The sixth chapter concludes the report and presents some proposals for future work Some of the supporting material used during in our research is attached in the ap pendices at the end of this report 10 2 Related Work Before planing and conducting the fieldwork for this project a review of the lit erature related to personal photography from an HCI perspective was carried out Although some of the literature touched upon the notion of photographic quality very little was directly relevant to our research questions Also to the best of our knowledge most existing literature has so far focused on the later part of the pho tographic workflow organising and sharing photographs rather than on shooting and editing them which is what most affects their quality In the following sections we present related work grouped by thematic area and discuss how it has motivated and influenced our research 2 1 The use of camera phones A great part of recent HCI literature about the consumer use of photography is con cerned wit
18. photo Advice This photograph was probably The colours look washed out taken in a dark area with the flash Mit is too dark turned off Next time you could Mit is blurry turn on the flash or put your camera somewhere stable e g on It is too bright a table Figure 5 10 A mock up of the user interface for the Photo Advisor tool Kirk et al 2006 have already proposed employing computer vision techniques in order to isolate and cluster poor quality photos so that the process of selecting and sorting photographs can be sped up 49 6 Conclusion This study aimed to discover whether amateur photographers are interested in the aesthetic quality of their photographs and whether they could achieve the quality they desired with current digital photographic equipment software and services As there was very little existing research addressing these questions a qualitative exploratory approach was taken in order to develop a broad understanding of the use of digital photography by amateurs The inquiry was extended along the entire journey of a digital photograph from shooting to editing and sharing in order to identify the factors that affect the aesthetic quality of a picture in every stage By conducting interviews in the participants homes and engaging their personal photo collections in the discussion we managed to see clearly how digital photog raphy fits in their lives In addition by scheduling interviews soon afte
19. rather than just twidling the knob and that s too much hassle so I never do it So the contrast is not as good as I would like 00 15 23 06 I think I can fix it uses Fill Light slider in Picasa So that just kind of made the bg lighter a little bit so it kind of looks a little bit sunnier And then maybe a bit warmer I tend to make photos look really unreal when I start doing this though P is always complaining that nobody s grass is that green especially not this summer So now I think this editing is probably an improvement I don t think that it s a big deal that it s not particularly faithful I think what s important is that it reminds you of the memory rather than it s exactly what you saw And I remember that being much warmer so I can make the photo look warmer You can kind of see the background now where you couldn t before see that was all really dark 00 16 50 04 The one thing actually with printing out that I found when you re doing this sort of thing it s often very difficult to get the same 68 result on paper as it is when you see it on the screen so I often find that when you print something out when I printed something out on the weekend it was really nice and vibrant on the screen it was a picture actually of an ornament all different kinds of colours and when I printed that out it was much flatter and the contrast was much flatter so actually on the screen I had to make i
20. with computers acting as a hub that integrates personal media such as photographs videos and music in order to offer an entertainment ex perience One important factor for the success of such a lifestyle is usability should the user have to struggle to use these new products and services their entertainment value is lost 1 2 Project aims One of the most often mentioned advantages of digital photography is that it en courages everybody to experiment by virtually eliminating the cost of shooting a photograph After shooting the photograph can be instantly reviewed on the LCD display of a digital camera providing immediate feedback to the photographer In addition photographs in digital format can be edited by anybody using widely avail able photo editing software All these characteristics of digital photography can be mapped to the characteristics of applications that support creativity as identified by EASTMAN KODAK COS BROWNIE 7 an CAMERAS e Make pictures otf x 214 e eme itches Load in Daylight with our six exposure film cartridges and are so simple a they can be easily OPERATED BY ETA oe ANY SCHOOL nai BOY OR GIRL Fitted with fine Siete beter aid or hid notary shule dor inap whots ar lime tajem Biwi ibile cvderical wil un heather bave nickel Giings ead jili the Lee petals Forytour igr keka ching full directions ber opahe the camera together wih thiptors on Sry Shot Tine Espuma Fle Ligh
21. HI 06 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems pp 333 338 New York NY USA ACM Press Hakansson M Ljungblad S amp Holmquist L E 2003 Capturing the invisible designing context aware photography In DUX 03 Proceedings of the 2003 conference on Designing for user experiences pp 1 4 New York NY USA ACM Press Harada S Naaman M Song Y J Wang Q amp Paepcke A 2004 Lost in mem ories interacting with photo collections on PDAs In JCDL 04 Proceedings of the 4th ACM IEEE CS joint conference on Digital libraries pp 325 333 New York NY USA ACM Press Kindberg T Spasojevic M Fleck R amp Sellen A 2005 The ubiquitous camera An in depth study of camera phone use IEEE Pervasive Computing 4 2 42 50 Kirk D Sellen A Rother C amp Wood K 2006 Understanding photowork In CHI 06 Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems pp 761 770 New York NY USA ACM Press Koman R 2005 2 April Stewart Butterfield on Flickr http www oreillynet com pub a network 2005 02 04 sb_flckr html accessed 25 Jun 2006 52 References Lindley S amp Monk A 2006 Designing appropriate affordances for electronic photo sharing media In CHI 06 CHI 06 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems pp 1031 1036 New York NY USA ACM Press Ljungblad S Hakansson M Gaye L amp Holmquist
22. I came in here and printed out some photos 4 1 2 The social context Most of the participants who attended a social event during the intermediate period of the study had some comments about the experience of taking photographs during such an event One participant explained why he took only a few photographs during a family weekend T don t like to be behind the camera all the time If I go away for the weekend on a holiday or walking or something like that I d probably take more photos When I m with friends and family I take some photos especially if it s people I haven t seen for a little while but I don t like to take lots of photos because then you don t get to talk to people For this participant socialising was more important than taking photographs which was done more actively in activities less associated with a social context Another participant commented on the pressure she felt while taking photographs at a social event attended by many people I always find it really annoying to take pictures when there s a lot of people because you re just so aware of it for example the person that s posing feels awkward posing because there are so many other people around Finally two contrasting opinions by two individuals attending the same social event a wedding show how personal social attitudes may alter one s photo shooting strategies in this case in terms of positioning oneself at a
23. ISO the white balance and obviously the shutter speed and aperture bracketing it s all now done on buttons on the outside so you don t have to go into the menus Even when amateur photographers find a way to make adjustments these adjust ments can be the cause of further problems As each of the adjustments places the camera in a new mode of operation and there are hundreds of combinations for such modes it is not surprising that participants reported several instances of mode errors where the camera was left in a mode that was inappropriate for capturing a later scene In one case the camera had possibly been set to the wrong mode by another person which was not noticed by the participant I realised later that my camera was still in macro mode because I had taken some macro shots earlier so I think that might have had an effect on how this photograph looks as well I was actually using flash by accident for a lot of these pictures It was pointed out to me by a friend who said It s probably one of the sunniest days of the year do you really need your flash on and I said no probably not at which point it was turned off I think it probably does show the status of the flash on the camera screen but I paid no attention There was something wrong with my camera that day I don t know what it was My little brother was playing around with my camera so I think he just messed around with t
24. L E 2004 Context photog raphy modifying the digital camera into a new creative tool In CHI 04 CHI 04 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems pp 1191 1194 New York NY USA ACM Press Mills T J Pye D Sinclair D amp Wood K R 2000 Managing photos with AT amp T Shoebox demonstration session In SIGIR 00 Proceedings of the 23rd annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval p 390 New York NY USA ACM Press Nardi B A 1996 Studying context a comparison of activity theory situated action models and distributed cognition In B A Nardi Ed Context and consciousness activity theory and human computer interaction pp 69 102 Cambridge MA USA Massachusetts Institute of Technology Newman W amp Smith E L 2006 Disruption of meetings by laptop use is there a 10 second solution In CHI 06 CHI 06 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems pp 1145 1150 New York NY USA ACM Press Norman D A 1998 The invisible computer Cambridge MA USA MIT Press Okabe D 2004 Emergent social practices situations and relations through ev eryday camera phone use In Proc International Conference on Mobile Commu nication and Social Change pp 1 19 Rodden K 1999 How do people organise their photographs In Proceedings of the 21 BCS IRSG Colloquium Rodden K amp Wood K R 2003 How do
25. The Journey of a Digital Photograph Usability in the Digital Photography workflow Alexandros Baxevanis UCL Interaction Centre Project report submitted in part fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Human Computer Interaction with Ergonomics in the Faculty of Life Sciences University College London 2006 NOTE BY THE UNIVERSITY This project report is submitted as an examination paper No responsibility can be held by London University for the accuracy or completeness of the material therein Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Jeremy Gow for helping me stay on the right track while writing this thesis I am indebted to Amberlight Partners who sponsored the fieldwork for this project and especially to Gerred Blyth who helped shape this study Many thanks go to those who participated in my study let me in their homes and shown me their photographs even the ones that they were not proud of This thesis is dedicated to my partner Ania Mendrek who has always stood by me and to my parents who have always believed in the value of education Typeset with BIFX on a Mac ABSA Tu sn vsin NI Jog Abstract Anecdotal belief has it that photographs shot by amateur photographers often re ferred to as snapshots are not made with quality in mind as they are only meant to serve as reminders of social and recreational events On the other hand modern dig ital cameras
26. The first theme is related to the context of personal photography which includes information on the way photography fits in the participants lives The second theme encompasses the subjective evaluations that participants made about their photographs A taxonomy was created for classifying the criteria that partic ipants used in these evaluations The third theme is centred around the problems that participants reported they face while using digital photography products and services 4 1 The context of personal photography In most occasions during which participants shot photographs photography was not the primary activity taking place Only one participant reported going somewhere for the purpose of taking photographs although this was still combined with going out for a recreational walk The vast majority of photographs were shot during different social and recreational occasions The photo shooting occasions that we observed belonged to one of the following categories Travelling on vacation Going on a weekend trip Going out for a walk Visiting a museum Spending the night out with friends Attending a music festival Attending a wedding Two implications of photography being a secondary activity were found first of all people do not devote enough time to improving their photographs and their photographic skills Second the number of photographs taken and the time devoted to taking them is often reduced because of
27. a lab based setting Interviewing is a research method suitable for an initial exploratory approach and can be carried out easily in the participant s environment As a qualitative method it is suitable for answering the research questions most dimensions of which cannot be somehow quantified Interviews have also been used in many of the related research studies described in the previous chapter such as those by Kindberg et al 2005 Rodden 1999 and others Thus interviewing has been chosen as the main research method in this study Some other research methods were also considered but were rejected mostly due to the practical constraints and the limited time available for this project e Observation of amateur photographers while they are taking photographs could yield some interesting results However in contrast with using a personal com puter or similar device it is impossible to look through the photographer s eye and accurately record the use of the digital camera interface at least not without specialised equipment In addition shooting photographs is an inter 18 Method Fieldwork mittent activity for amateur photographers usually spread in space and time which makes following it rather difficult e Examination of publicly available corpora such as online photographic collec tions and commentary in photo sharing websites could also provide some rel evant information However it would be very difficul
28. ake more photographs in the near future Furthermore an ideal mix of participants across several dimensions was defined 1 Gender 50 male 50 female 2 Equipment 40 users of digital compact cameras 20 users of digital SLR cameras and 40 users of cameraphones 3 Editing 50 users who usually edit their photos and 50 who do not 19 Method Fieldwork These criteria were established in order to ensure the study s viability and validity Viability is ensured by selecting participants who are in a position to follow the experimental protocol and provide meaningful answers to the interview questions for example by having enough photographs about which they can be questioned Validity is ensured by selecting a diverse mix of participants for example both those who edit their photographs and those who do not During the fieldwork period ten amateur photographers were recruited and inter viewed None of them had any formal training in or earned their living through photography Their ages ranged from 19 to 65 With respect to the target mix four of them were female and six were male nine of them used a compact digital camera and one of them used a digital SLR and all but four edited their photos to some degree The divergence from the ideal equipment mix was because it proved impossible to recruit participants who were using cameraphones as their primary photographic device It was also very difficult to find more users of di
29. and loads of pics with them bc they don t smile well they do but whenever they see the camera specifically this one she pulls a funny face like this so it s not that she doesn t necessarily smile funny faces are good they also move very fast so sometimes you just get really dreadful photos of them 00 09 14 24 I prefer that one I think it better captures she s very bossy so I think this picture looks like a very good representation of her bossiness And he s very kind of like gets into things and he looks like he s really into the water there 00 09 56 13 I didn t use any special features for these ones actually just bc it was just a family weekend just point and snap 00 10 20 14 It s not wildly well composed I guess there s not very much context it s quite nice but it was just I was trying to take lots of photos very quickly I don t think I spent a lot of time thinking about should I have more of the bg in should I take it in the other direction For instance I guess the sun is in her eyes which is not that great but then if you went the other side the sun would be in the lens so that wouldn t be good either 00 11 21 04 I think maybe it s a little bit too zoomed in but I quite like that as well If you zoomed it out more you d get more context of where they were I quite like in the bg I m pretty sure on this table here there s a lot of plates and glasses from lunch or some
30. anything that is not clear or if you would like more information Then please sign the consent form overleaf 1 About the study This study is conducted by Alexandros Baxevanis MSc student at University College London Interaction Centre I am trying to understand how people behave when they are taking digital photographs and what qualities they appreciate when looking at a photograph This infor mation will be used in order to suggest ways for making digital photography more enjoyable and satisfying for amateur photographers You will be interviewed about your experience with digital photography your general knowl edge about photography and the equipment that you own I will also ask you to show me some of the photographs from your collection and reply to a few questions about each one There are no right or wrong answers for any of the questions neither will I judge the quality of your photographs I am interested in hearing your personal perspective Our session will be audio and video recorded and I may also take some notes during the interview I will also ask you for a digital copy of the photographs that we discuss 2 Your rights You do not have to show me any photos or disclose any information that you consider private and do not wish to share with third parties You are free to withdraw from the study at any time without having to provide any reason for doing so All information collected during this study will be treated as co
31. are marketed with a wide array of features that supposedly improve im age quality In this study we attempted to find out whether amateur photographers are actually interested in the aesthetic quality of their photographs and whether current digital photography equipment and services can help them in pursuing this quality As there was very little existing research addressing these questions this study took an exploratory qualitative approach Ten amateur photographers were recruited and were interviewed about their understanding of digital photography their equipment and the photographs in their photo collection Participants were also given an opportunity to shoot more photographs and were then interviewed again about their recent photographs on which they were able to comment in more detail We found that amateur photographers do judge their photos based on their aesthetic quality colours exposure sharpness composition as well as on the personal sig nificance of their content However they did not devote a lot of time in order to learn more about digital photography and to experiment with taking better pho tographs or improve the ones they had already taken Thus they often did not understand how to use many of the complex features in their cameras and editing software or would use them in a misguided way based on trial and error This had a negative impact on quality which caused disappointment among amateur photog raphers Bas
32. at s one that I really like actually 00 22 45 14 It s in Cuba and I just really like the colours in that picture and the three guys in the boat were really funny they were these army guys who were really we were staying on a boat in Cuba and they came to check our passports and they were really efficient and very army like and then they got in this tiny little boat with some oars and rowed themselves back to the shore and I just thought that was very Cuban 00 23 19 20 I think in this one we probably have done a bit of doctoring bc 65 when it started off it just wasn t the light was a bit flat bc it was a quite cloudy day and you couldn t really see the greens were a bit gray I think I can probably get it back to where it was that s how it looked It was a bit dark in the foreground you got really good definition on the clouds but not on the people and that was what I wanted to do 00 23 56 11 So I actually came back to this very recently bc I printed it out in order to put it up on the wall and I just did that kind of tuning I don t remember what it was that I had done I just brightened the whole thing up I think I used this this is quite a cool thing down here it s like a colour temperature thing I don t know what that means but basically when you scroll over to the right it brings out the reds and you scroll over to the left it brings out the blues So on this pic when you go back to th
33. at this is because of improper design of training materials and because failed photographs by themselves do not contribute proper feedback to the learning process The most prevalent training materials available to all amateur photographers are the instruction manuals that are normally supplied with their digital cameras which the majority of the participants either did not read at all or found unsatisfactory We ar gue that instruction manuals are not an effective way to learn about photography because they present knowledge out of context First of all we saw that photogra phers would normally try to read the manual just after they bought their camera in an attempt to learn more about its features This will typically be done at the user s home none of our participants reported carrying the manual with them and assuming they would do so is incompatible with the rest of our findings However only limited experimentation can be carried out in a home environment it does not make sense for example to try and learn how landscape mode works nor are the lighting conditions similar to outdoors settings Thus learning at that point is disengaged from from the conditions in which a digital camera may be used When the writers of instruction manuals attempt to give the user an example of the appropriate settings for different conditions this is often done with small low resolution black and white pictures see Figure 5 9 in which the i
34. at was quite a good idea because we were actually separated from the friend who got the map And then I had a photo of the timetable as well then you can just zoom in on the camera and read it I actually used it 3 4 times I think there were 10 different stages personal task Almost all participants declared at some point during the interview that they saw personal photography as different from any sort of professional or artistic form of photography My photographs are just memory photos really I m not at all a photographer photographer I like taking photos when recording events and memories but I m not I don t have any great pride in the artistic composition of my pictures or anything These pictures I share with my close friends or I put them up on a web site it s not like a professional thing so I know that people who know me would know enough to know that my pictures won t be amazing so I don t really feel the need to edit them In interpreting these declarations it must be taken into account that users are of ten biased towards putting the blame for any problems on themselves rather than the technology that they use Although photography was neither an artistic nor a professional endeavour for any of the participants they did regularly evaluate their photographs using aesthetic criteria in addition to the importance of the memory that photographs attempt to capture Furthe
35. ation with absent friends or family either in the moment or later Functional Mutual task Images intended to share 11 4 Personal task Images intended 29 10 with people present at capture in support to support some future task not of a task either in the moment or later involving sharing Remote Task Images intended to support 23 8 a task by sharing with remote family friends or colleagues either in the moment or later Figure 2 1 A taxonomy of reasons for image capture after Kindberg et al 2005 Social Personal and Self Self expression Functional self Functional relationships group memory presentation others Self portrait Figure 2 2 Examples of the social uses of images after Van House et al 2005 Although neither of the three studies has directly compared camera phones with standalone digital cameras or even traditional film cameras all seem to argue that camera phones are used in a unique way Okabe thinks that camera phones are used to record the more fleeting and unexpected moments of surprise beauty and ado ration in the everyday while traditionally a camera would be used for noteworthy moments special excursions and events Kindberg et al also argue that The camera phone is not a poor relation of the digital camera Rather it s a device that s sometimes used like a digital camera but differs in the range of activities it supports This raises a few inter
36. because it looks a bit dark or it looks a bit too overexposed or anything like that bc it will look different on the computer screen it will look different on paper but if you ve got somebody in a really bad pose or the whole scene just doesn t look right It s mostly about the compostion rather than necessarily the colours you can worry more about the colours on the computer And it seems like the colours you re always able to fix to a good enough degree 00 22 08 08 PHOTO 4 This is a nice photo but I didn t take it P took that one 00 22 15 03 It s just a good it s not a great photo and everyone doesn t look fantastic in it but it s a nice photo capturing everyone that was there at the weekend and that s what we spent most of the time doing sitting in the conservatory eating food drinking wine and stuff like that so it s good it just evokes things 69
37. d dimension the intention is classified as either individual or social where photos are captured for personal use or for sharing respectively A finer distinction is also made between sharing with persons who are present during the photo capture and sharing with persons at a remote location All these categories are not mutually exclusive Kind 11 Related Work The use of camera phones berg et al found that about one fifth of the images they studied could be associated with multiple user intentions Another study by Okabe 2004 examined camera phone use in Japan through diary studies and interviews with a sample of 15 camera phone users of different demo graphic groups from high school students to housewifes Okabe observed three major usage patterns of camera phones personal archiving intimate sharing and peer to peer news and sharing Finally Van House et al 2005 propose yet another taxonomy for what they define as the social uses of images see Figure 2 2 Al though all three taxonomies focus on different aspects of photo use they seem to be influenced by and compatible with each other Individual Description No of images Description No of images Affective Mutual experience Images intended to 103 35 Personal reflection Images 120 41 enrich a shared experience either intended for personal reflection in the moment or later or reminiscing Absent friends or family Images 63 21 intended for communic
38. d error myself rather than read how to do it Trial and error use of digital cameras was reported by several participants They considered it an advantage of digital photography that they could attempt pho tographing the same scene multiple times at no extra cost rather than having to get it right the first time It was also considered an advantage that digital pho 37 Results Sharing and quality tographs can be directly edited on a computer and problems in the original version can be corrected If you get a disposable camera you take loads of photos that aren t very good but with a digital camera you can see it straight away and if it s not very good you can get rid of it and take a lot more than you could with a 24 film or something With a photograph on film yourre just left with well this is what I ve got you just get the original and you can t make any changes to that whereas here you ve got the original and if you re even a little bit dis appointed with it you can play around with it until you get what you were hoping to get Finally in the limited number of photo editing sessions that we had the chance to observe we found signs of trial and error behaviour as well participants would try out changing different settings without consistently following any specific editing strategy and without being able to predict the effects of a modification before they had applied it 4 4 Shar
39. de for the design of digital camera user interfaces Camera features that may help the photographer create a better picture should be immediately accessible not least because this will increase the chances of successfully capturing a fleeting moment instead of fiddling with the camera Settings However there is more to improving the digital photography experience than to overhauling the user interface of digital cameras The current imaging paradigm that requires the photographer to modify camera settings in order to achieve the optimal result is inherently unsuitable for amateur photographers who do not have the time and motivation to learn and use these settings In a recent paper Co hen and Szelinsky 2006 propose a different imaging paradigm which they call the moment camera The new kind of camera that they propose does not shoot single photographs every time the shutter button is pressed but produces a series of pho tographs successively shot in a short amount of time something like a short video sequence Each of the photographs in this series can be automatically shot with slightly different settings without the need for the photographer to intervene and change the settings One example where this can be useful is the modification of the flash settings In our study some participants complained that the use of flash destroys the atmo sphere and colours in a picture shot indoors however when the flash is not used the resulting
40. define as photowork They produced a flowchart like diagram that represents the workflows typically used by amateur photographers working with their digital images similar to the diagram in Figure 1 3 of this text Fur 15 Related Work Context photography thermore they provide a detailed description of their observations for each of the workflow activities and the strategies and motivations associated with these activi ties Although this work by Kirk et al presents a very good overview of amateur photog raphers workflows their analysis is focusing on understanding users needs for ad vanced computer vision based CBIR Content Based Image Retrieval tools Thus although they describe activities that affect the aesthetics of a photograph such as photo editing they do this from the perspective of designing search and browsing tools that support such activities rather than the actual tools through these activities will be performed Things such as the criteria for keeping or deleting a photo im age quality blurriness exposure and details of photo editing activities cropping correcting for red eye colour balancing are only briefly mentioned and warrant further investigation 2 5 Context photography Hakansson et al 2003 have proposed context photography as a way of making dig ital photography more exciting for amateur photographers in particular those with artistic ambitions Their proto
41. e originial it s a bit cold looking as well and it was actually really hot I mean the day was really hot so you want to bring that out in the picture So I used a bit of this just to bring a bit of sunshine into the picture That s actually quite cool I only found it recently 00 25 40 17 I sometimes use this I m feeling lucky button as well bc that just does what it thinks is the right thing to do Sometimes it works it didn t work with this one but sometimes if your picture is just a little bit off it will just brighten it a little bit but this one I think was too far from that 00 26 50 08 OTHER PHOTOS I ve got a bunch of wedding photos these are photos of my sister in law s wedding these are some photos of my wedding so I wasn t taking any of these pictures but I quite like them These aren t professional pictures they re just random family taking pics over the professional shoulder 00 27 39 23 PHOTO 5 That s a nice one It s P me and my mum and dad and that s quite a nice photo 00 27 59 29 I think we asked everyone to send us the photos that they took on CDs and stuff It took a long time for them to send them through but eventually we did get them all 00 28 23 09 I think it was probably P s dad who shot that photo bc the main people that we got photos from were my mum and P s dad and my mum is in that picture 00 28 37 01 I don t really think he s very exper
42. e picture will look like you can usually tell whether it s too bright or too dark 31 Results Aesthetics and the purpose of personal photographs 4 2 2 Evaluation criteria During the present study about 125 photographs in total were discussed with the study participants who commented on them either positively or negatively In this section we present the main reasons that made participants like or dislike a pho tograph as they emerged from coding these comments during the analysis phase Criteria can be initially split in two broad categories content what is being de picted and how does it relate to the photographer and quality how well is it being depicted For quality criteria four main subcategories have been identified colour exposure composition and sharpness Table 4 1 lists some examples of the participants expres sions as well as a more formal definition for each subcategory Subcategories are not necessarily independent in the technical sense for example incorrect exposure can result in inaccurate colour reproduction However these issues were perceived as separate by the participants Content criteria were less clear and related mostly to the emotional response to the photograph s content rather than any objective judgement We were able to identify three main themes reminder happy people and fun Since reminiscing is a major reason for taking photographs it is hardly surprising that most partici
43. ealing to the photogra phers creative side see Figure 1 2 but are amateur photographers following along the way On the other hand anecdotal belief has it that amateur snapshots are not made with quality in mind but is it that amateur photographers are not interested in the quality of their photographs or is there something that prevents them from achieving this quality Motivated by the aforementioned observations this project aims to explore the use of digital photography by amateur photographers and more specifically to answer the following questions 1 Are amateur photographers interested in the aesthetic quality of their pho tographs and how do they define this aesthetic quality 2 Does current digital photographic technology help them in achieving aestheti cally pleasing results and how can technology be improved in this respect Printed Photos Sef Sharing Home Photo Printing Professional Photo Printin a Internet Services mad aa inet J ir SS YAHOO PHOTOS g Be myspace com i C r a place for friends Digital Image Sources Personal Computer i DEE EE aa D i ieee LEA E E a J Bluetooth Ae gt Digital Picture Frame a Figure 1 3 The digital photography landscape a map of devices and services related to digital photography and the possible connections between them Although the aesthetic quality of a photograph depends largely on how it was or
44. early recorded atmosphere of the surroundings 2 Twilight portrait as Landscape Shoots landscapes etc by focusing on a distant subject Shoots portraits in dark places Candle ga Soft snap Shoot candlelit scenes without Shoots portraits of people spoiling the atmosphere flowers etc with a gentle atmosphere amp Snow Shoots whitish scenes brightly The shutter speed becomes slower so using a tripod is recommended Figure 5 9 Excerpt from the quick start manual of the Sony DSC W5 digital camera Image Sony Corporation be able to evaluate a digital photograph that the photographer considers problematic and explain what has gone wrong while offering suggestions for avoiding the same problem in the future There are several challenges in the development of such a tool First of all an automatic critique of all photographs may be undesirable and discouraging from the photographer s viewpoint For this reason the photographer should always be the initiating party in the interaction with this tool Second in many cases it is impossible for a computer to automatically analyse a photograph and understand if there is any problem For example a photograph may be intentionally dark if it portrays a dark interior or it may be dark because the photographer accidentally turned off the flash Thus some information about the intention of the photographer is needed This information can be prov
45. ed and the light so you can take slow aperture pics 00 02 34 20 Mainly I use it for taking pictures of waterfalls bc when you take a pic of a waterfall with slow aperture you get the effect of the water actually flowing down if you take it with a fast one then you can actually see the individual droplets of water So you get two completely different pictures of the same thing 00 02 59 26 I also use the flash It s got an automatic flash but it doesn t seem very good in doing the sort of shots where you ve got a lot of light in the bg and some people in the fg where you need the fill in flash So you generally have to select that quite a lot just to get good pics of groups of people Sometimes if you ve got a group of people against a dark bg and if you want to some of the dark bg then if you ve got the flash then you just get the people and the bg goes completely black and then sometimes you need to turn it off for that I think 00 04 08 20 I ve read a bit of the manual just to try and understand how to use the shutter speed stuff but probably only about 2 3 pages of it it s quite thick I remember it wasn t actually very easy to figure out how to use these things it wasn t very well written because I ended up having to do lots of experimentation to figure out how it was actually working 00 04 55 19 I roughly know how a camera works internally You ve got the lens which focuses the light effect
46. ed on our understanding of the needs of amateur photographers and the prob lems that they face we were able to make a series of recommendations about the design of digital photography products We explained why digital cameras should move from feature bloat to a new imaging paradigm that requires less intervention by time strapped amateur photographers Further proposals were made about the design of editing software that is more closely integrated with an amateur photogra pher s workflow and can be used without advanced knowledge of editing methods Finally we presented an idea for a novel learning tool that could help amateur photographers make the most out of their cameras without having to go through complex and often poorly written instruction manuals Keywords digital photography personal photography digital cameras image quality photo editing photo sharing learning user requirements usability Contents 1 Introduction 1 1 A short history of photography L2 PrOjeCt aims sa lt amp 4 4 aoe oe 2 ea oo 1 3 Contribution 2 00008 1 4 Layout of the report 2 Related Work 2 1 The use of camera phones 2 2 Personal photographic collections 2 3 Sharing and the social use of personal photography 2 4 Photowork sasaaa eee eee 2 5 Context photography 2 6 Children as photographers 3 Method 3 1 Choosing a research method
47. estigation Frohlich et al mention two kinds of photo talk storytelling which has been extensively described by Balabanovi et al 2000 and reminiscing talk No reference is made to any conversation about the aesthetic quality of the photographs although peo ple sometimes make such remarks Again demonstrating the aesthetic quality of a photograph may not be a primary goal but it could be considered as a secondary goal that is achieved along with storytelling or reminiscing Some researchers have already observed that people are motivated to select their best photos and sort them into albums mainly because it results in attractive presentation Rodden amp Wood 2003 This motivation is also related to the affordance of enjoyment described by Lindley and Monk but there is certainly more to enjoying photographs than their suggestion to employ large high resolution displays and easy to use editing facili ties 2 4 Photowork All the previously mentioned research studies consider the activities of organising and sharing photos individually To the best of our knowledge the only existing research that considers the wider context of working with digital photographs is a recent study titled Understanding Photowork by Kirk et al 2006 They inter viewed and observed twelve amateur photographers focusing on the processes of reviewing downloading organising editing sorting and filing of digital images which the collectively
48. esting questions which activities can be supported by both digital cameras and camera phones and which ones are best suited to one only one of the above devices How do owners of both devices select which one to use 12 Related Work Personal photographic collections Taking this one step further do users employ different strategies when shooting different kinds of photos One could imagine for example that more attention is paid to shooting a photograph meant to be shared with friends but is this really the case Another phenomenon that these taxonomies overlook is the effort that at least some amateur photographers put into making their photographs look beautiful Van House et al mention in passing that many of the images in their self expression category were primarily of aesthetic value to the participants who created them and Okabe recognises a unique pleasure in building a personal viewpoint Al though creating beautiful photos is certainly not a primary goal for an amateur photographer it looks that it may coexist with some of the other reasons for cap turing photographs that are already described in the aforementioned taxonomies One possible motivation for pursuing this secondary goal exists in the fact that ama teur photographers are often rewarded at least with some verbal praise for photos judged by their peers to be beautiful 2 2 Personal photographic collections The increasing use of digital cameras combi
49. estion that could have been asked in the initial interview it was moved here in order to balance the time between the two interviews and also to serve as an easy ice breaker question to start the interview The rest of the interview was again centred around the participants recent pho tographs The participants were asked to describe the occasion on which they shot their recent photographs and to confirm whether they normally carry their cameras with them in similar occasions This is followed by general questions about the pho tographs as a set the participants are queried about the number of the photos they shot and whether this is a typical number of photos for such an occasion about their plans for using their photographs including printing and sharing and about any general problems that they might have had taking photos in this occasion re lated either to the use of their camera or to external circumstances Through these questions we attempt to capture the general context of the photo shooting activi ties The discussion then shifted to individual photographs from the recent photo shooting occasion Unlike the initial interview photographs are now selected in random by the interviewer This was done in order to ensure that pictures that the participant may not particularly like such as those with obvious technical problems will also be included in the discussion as it is important to form a complete picture about aes the
50. etween content and quality Although content and quality have been discussed separately in the previous section they are not at all independent in the sense that good content or good quality 32 Name Description Positive amp Negative Expressions strong bright vibrant matching colours colourful colours not bright enough bleached out washed out u looking funny not realistic colour cast Accurate reproduction of Colour colour bright and saturated colours l over exposed too bright Good graduation along Exposure Ke imaee tonal ance under exposed light looks flat not enough contrast good angle symmetry perfect shape perspective vanishing Compan Arrangement of the pomit o elements of the image cut off the frame distracting things in the background bad pose In focus showing the the resolution is very good Sharpness subject with sufficient too blurry out of focus detail grainy images Table 4 1 What s in a beautiful photograph Summary of the quality criteria used for evaluating photographs 33 Results Barriers against photographic quality alone do not necessarily create an overall good picture A complaint expressed by several participants was that what they saw and considered worth remembering thus worth phot
51. eur photographers The software would then compare the corrected version with the original one and decide whether the correction has substantially changed the photograph in a way that the photogra pher would possibly like If yes then the corrected version of the photograph would be downloaded as a separate photograph next to the original one Of course there would need to be a clear indication that a corrected photograph has been auto matically generated and is not one of the photographs that were originally shot by the photographer Figure 5 6 shows a proposal for the integration of such a tool with the Image Capture application used to download photographs in the Mac OS X operating system Thinking back to our persona Peter would not have to install any additional edit ing software as this functionality would be integrated in the standard software used to download camera images Apart from marking the auto corrected picture this functionality would be transparent to the end user We expect the users to continue going through similar pictures and selecting the best ones as has already been ob served Kirk et al 2006 p 766 only now the photographer may pick one of the auto corrected photographs Of course care should be taken so that photographers are not flooded with alternative versions of their photographs this is the reason why an auto corrected version will only be shown if it is deemed to present an im provement over the original
52. f an hour or so or an hour of spare time I was supposed to do something else but I couldn t do it so I came in here and printed out some photos and put them into we ve got a lot of empty photo frames that aren t yet filled with photos and I was starting to feel like we should fill some of them up 00 01 07 12 And I ve got an album full of photos of the trip that we did in 2001 and I think I ve printed a bunch out from our honeymoon but other than that it s more like if it s a really nice photo and I want to put it on my wall 00 01 27 16 If you look at the ones that are on the wall they re mostly photos of family and friends where they kind of look like they re happy or photos of scenery something that s grand from a vacation or something 00 01 52 23 I print my photos on my printer It s a Canon Pixma IP500 I use photo paper with it The reason I ve got a big stack of it is because we also have a business that we run in the winter making calendars for people so people send us their digital photos and we print them out in calendars for them So that s actually what I probably use the printer for most but the nice upside is that I get to print out nice photos L00 02 50 29 Yes the printer is really good actually the only problem is you have to remember to get all settings right before you print out bc otherwise it looks awful If you tell it that you ve got a different kind of paper or if u for
53. find all of the photos from a particular time which I find really useful actually 00 08 16 24 Then you can also search for stuff so if I type ski and then it will just pull out everything that s got some sort of reference to ski It s picked it up of the computer so you have to have done some organisation or tagging of photos it picked these ones because we happened to put them all in a folder called skiing You do have to add some of the information yourself 00 08 53 16 You can do some simple editing with it When you click on the photo you get these options to do stuff with it so you can crop the photo selecting a bit of it like that I use crop a lot cause I m not very good at taking photos One of the things with a DC is that bc u know that u can post edit stuff you don t necessarily spend so much time setting the photo up and making sure you ve got the perfect composition of the photo bc afterwards you can make the composition better by cropping it or stuff like that I also use red eye reduction bc you get that a lot if you re taking pics in the dark with the flash And then there are some tuning things and some effects that you can do I don t use the effects very much but the tuning things they can just help you to brighten the picture or get it sharper A lot of the time you don t feel like the exposure is perfect on the pic and actually I think it s more so on the pics from our old camera the exposu
54. get to change it to high quality or anything like that then you waste a lot of paper which is a bit annoying 00 03 21 06 No I ve never printed any photos in a photo shop because my understanding of how it works is that you ve got to select a lot of photos and then put them on to a memory card and then take it too Boots and it just feels like well actually I 1ll just print them out here 00 03 45 24 I can comment on the quality because P has printed some photos in a photos in a photo shop for our holiday photos and I think actually the quality is better just bc the paper is thicker and of higher quality I don t really think that the printer is just as good but it kind of feels different in your hand 00 04 12 29 RECENT PHOTOS 00 04 23 04 I was P s birthday and it was mine two days later so we went to see some family and took some photos It s down in Portsmouth 00 04 50 04 Yes I would normally take my camera with me when I can remember For things like birthdays and stuff like that I always try to get my camera if I m going to see family and stuff 00 05 11 09 How many we took and how many there are on the computer is actually a different thing bc we tend to delete lots on the camera I probably took twice as many as these probably about 20 cause there s 10 in there 00 05 33 29 I haven t done any work on these I haven t even turned them round yet That tends to be sth that I do I don
55. gital SLRs who would classify themselves as an amateur photographer In hindsight this was not a problem as it limited the variability of one of our sample parameters and allowed us to get more focused results In addition it should be noted that editing proved to be a continuous variable rather than a discrete one some participants did not edit their photos at all while others performed complex edits but most of them were somewhere in the middle of the scale Eight participants were using a PC with Microsoft Windows as their main computing platform and the remaining two were using an Apple Mac with the Mac OS X operating system For a full list of the participant demographic information see Table 3 1 Code Age Occupation Camera P1 27 Business Analyst Canon Digital Ixus 400 P2 30 Theatrical Agent Sony DSC P72 P3 21 Postgraduate Student Sony DSC T7 P4 31 Finance Worker Sony DSC W5 P5 26 Postgraduate Student Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7 P6 23 Postgraduate Student hp Photosmart 435 P7 42 Writer Pentax Optio 430RS P8 65 Pensioner Nikon D200 P9 32 Civil Servant Unknown brand model P10 19 Student Vivitar Vivicam 4000 and Olympus mju Table 3 1 Demographic information of study participants To compensate for their time participants were paid a small cash incentive for each interview 3 2 2 Initial interview The initial interview took place at the participants home or workplace This was in order to ensure access to their digital phot
56. good point for shooting a photograph 29 Results Aesthetics and the purpose of personal photographs I didn t want to go right in front I wasn t very comfortable doing that and S was going in front anyway so I asked him to take some pics for 9 me I am kind of sharky enough to get where I want to be usually 4 2 Aesthetics and the purpose of personal photographs In Section 2 1 we discussed some of the literature that provides taxonomies of the reasons for image capture albeit from the perspective of camera phone users How ever these taxonomies seem to be valid for normal digital cameras as well since it was easy to categorise all the images collected during this study under one or more of the existing categories Some examples using the taxonomy by Kindberg et al 2005 are provided below Tm definitely going to share the wedding pictures because everybody who has not been to this occasion will want to see how it was and how it was set up so IIl put them online absent friends or family And when I m older I can see that it s a day that I might have forgotten so I ll see that and I ll be like oh I remember that surprise party and it was really like she was crying and quite shocked personal reflection We just bought one programme of the music festival so we took a picture of the festival map there were about 10 different places where they played music and th
57. h the use of camera phones A relatively recent invention which was first commercialised at the beginning of this decade camera phones promised to make photography a ubiquitous everyday experience Although the adoption of camera phones has been somewhat slower than originally predicted due to technical and economic constraints some common usage patterns for this technology have started to emerge A thorough study about the use of camera phones in the UK and the US has been conducted by Kindberg et al 2005 They interviewed a sample of 34 camera phone users with respect to the a sample of the photographs that they had stored in their phone memory including photographs received through picture messaging For each photograph the researchers asked questions about its contents and the in tent of capturing it There were two major results of this study First the authors present statistics about several parameters of camera phone use such as the fre quency of capturing photos and the primary content of the photos persons objects etc Second the authors have devised a taxonomy for categorising the reasons for image capture see Figure 2 1 This taxonomy has two major dimensions On the first dimension a distinction is made between capturing an image for affective reasons for example remembering an enjoyable event versus functional reasons for example photographing the date and location of an event advertised on a poster On the secon
58. had been as well we were supposed to be photographed against a panoramic view of the house in which S had lived but we re completely obscuring the houses So in hindsight if was to take this picture again probably would use the self timer and probably set it up a bit better to make sure that what I m supposed to be capturing is actually in the picture 00 22 51 21 probably will keep both of them although if was to send one I d send that one probably wouldn t share it with other poeople apart from my boyfriend can t imagine anybody else would be very interested possibly my mum might send it to my mum 00 24 04 12 PHOTO 6 00 24 09 23 That s a picture of the canal in Bath in the city And that one I d probably do different if did it again because again the sun is wrong There are 00 29 42 00 two versions the one before is not zoomed in and the one after is using the zoom so that s the view with the naked eye effectively and that s using the 00 00 00 00 00 33 03 01 zoom But that one certainly the light it wrong the reflection on the water is pretty distracting not overly attractive and was not intended to look like that 00 25 17 29 thought it was fairly likely it was going to happen but thought I d just give it a go 00 25 30 04 Yes the way things look on the viewfinder is quite accurate 00 25 50 15 Photographing moving things with a DC think is very problematic because what you think that yo
59. he low accuracy of the speech recognition engine The study also contains some interesting points regarding annotation of digital photographs When the photos are recent details are still fresh in the photogra pher s mind therefore recording them may not seem worth the effort Annotations may not begin to seem important until some time after the photos have been taken when many of the details have already been forgotten The same attitude has also been observed in an earlier study by Frohlich et al 2002 As life gets more hectic it appeared to get harder for families to keep up with the backlog of images Some of the busiest families had given up organising their photos completely People complained most about forgetting details of people and events depicted in old pho tos Since the time these studies were published the landscape of digital photography has changed a lot and this may warrant a re examination of the above results Although photo management software is still based on the same basic principles many different implementations now exist either as standalone products or bundled with the purchase of a digital camera It may also be that photographs are described more frequently when they are meant to be shared with others on the internet an increasingly popular practice At some point in 2005 about 70 of the photographs uploaded on the photo sharing website Flickr were accompanied with some hu
60. he settings quite a lot so I think that s what happened 35 Results Barriers against photographic quality Other problems that were reported by participants with regards to their equipment were e Shutter lag especially with relation to photographing people whose expres sion changes quickly or moving objects Photographing moving things with a digital camera I think is very problematic because there seems to be a de lay between the moment at which you press the button and the actual image being captured So if you got something that s moving the image that you see in the screen when you press the button and you were hoping to capture often you find you don t because the object has moved out of vision e Not enough zoom to photograph the photographer s object of interest e Limited memory capacity which sometimes led to compromising picture qual ity I think with these pictures I opted for saving them in a relatively low resolution in order that I could save more pictures to the memory stick be cause I only had one memory stick with me Which in hindsight when I saw them on the computer I regret having not opted for a high resolution when taking these pictures e Limited battery capacity especially when going somewhere where it was not possible to recharge or replace the batteries It is worth noting that those participants who had not had a lot of experience with digital photograph when the
61. her parameters that are usually adjustable are the focus the zoom the exposure bias making the image brighter or darker overall the white balance also known as colour temperature the functioning of the flash forcing it to illuminate or to turn off and the ISO number sensitivity of the imaging sensor Many cameras also offer some sort of picture effects most often converting the image into black and white or sepia tones If the user does not manually adjust any of the above settings the camera uses a default value or automatically selects a value which is somehow estimated to produce good results for the scene being photographed With so many modes available it is hardly surprising that mode errors have been reported especially since modes in digital cameras are usually signalled through a variety of symbols crammed in a small LCD display and superimposed to the image being photographed which is normally the focus of the photographer s attention see Figure 5 2 That most of these features of digital cameras remain largely unused is not a surpris ing finding either In the design of digital cameras like in every interactive system the context in which the system may be used should be taken into account Nardi 1996 With regards to the context of personal photography we found that pho tography is a secondary task executed in the background of other activities such as socialising with friends or examining a museum exhibit In m
62. http www inquirium net products ingscribe 24 Method Analysis between square brackets The transcripts were also edited to remove any person ally identifiable information mentioned during the conversation such as names of people A sample transcript for one of the participants is attached in the end of the present report see Appendix D All transcripts have been included in plain text format in the accompanying CD ROM and are also available online 3 3 2 Extraction of shooting information Most digital cameras create a record of shooting information such as shutter speed aperture use of flash and other settings and attach it to the image file using the industry standard EXIF format Tesic 2005 This information can be extracted with most standard image viewers and can be useful in understanding why some photographs have failed Figure 3 2 shows an example of EXIF data extracted from a digital photograph contributed by one of the study participants Camera Specific Properties KYOCERA CONTAX SL300R T QuickTime 7 0 3 Equipment Make Camera Model Camera Software Maximum Lens Aperture Image Specific Properties Image Orlentation Image Orientation Horizontal Resolution Vertical Resolution Image Created Exposure Time F Number Exposure Program ISO Speed Rating Lens Aperture Exposure Bias Metering Mode Flash Focal Length Color Space Information Image Width Image Height Rendering
63. icipants use of photo related software especially editing software and websites especially photo sharing websites where photographs may be discussed In the second part of the interview the focus shifted to the participants own pho tographs Participants were asked to select from their photographic collection a sample of their best photographs The wording of this question was an important issue and a few alternatives had initially been considered Id like you to find in your collection 3 4 photographs that you re proud of that are your favourite photographs that mean a lot to you that are your best photographs Through a pilot study conducted among three amateur photographers prior to the beginning of the interviews it was found that participants were more likely to con sider the aesthetics of a photograph when prompted with the last wording of the question Other wordings though maybe less vague were biased towards other attributes of a photograph such as personal feelings towards the persons or objects depicted therein For each of the photographs that the participant has selected a set of questions were asked Some of these questions intended to establish the basic facts about the photograph and the way it was used and have been roughly based on the ques tionnaire designed by Kindberg et al 2005 p 43 In attempting to see whether peer feedback may be a motivation for creating aesthetically pleasing phot
64. ided by the photographer himself when initiating the interaction with the tool and can take the form of a comment about the quality of the photograph for example this photograph is blurry These comments can be selected from a predefined list which could be based on the taxonomy of comments created as part of the present study see Table 4 1 The tool would then use these comments as a starting point and perform further analysis of the picture using the EXIF shooting information as well as computer 48 Discussion amp Implications for Design Learning tools vision techniques in order to understand the root cause of the problems in a pho tograph and propose appropriate solutions For example the photographer could complain to the tool that the photograph he has loaded is too dark and blurry The tool would then analyse the photograph and find out that it was shot without the use of flash using a slow shutter speed It would then propose using the flash or stabilising the camera Coming back to our persona Peter who doesn t know what to do better would now have some concrete recommendations about improving his photographs A mock up of the tool s user interface demonstrating the above interaction can be seen in Figure 5 10 This tool would ideally be integrated with the software that the photographer is using for managing his photo collection Digital Photography Advisor What s wrong with this
65. ienced He s had a digital camera for almost as long as us and he takes a lot of photos he s hada lifetime for taking photographs I guess but he s not a professional photographer or anything like that 00 29 06 24 I think we told him that we liked all of the photographs that he sent probably not this one specifically although this one is a nice one but all of these ones here are really nice 00 29 15 24 I actually quite like looking at them all just together like this rather than one at a time that s kind of more fun That s a nice picture but the overall view feels like the day in one go which is quite nice 00 30 03 03 PHOTO 6 We get a lot of these from P s sister That one is quite nice it s our niece and her mum takes a lot of photos of her and e mails them to us that sort of thing 00 30 41 28 Again she s probably had a digital camera for a bit less long 3 4 yrs sth like that but any experience that she s got is just from taking lots of photographs nothing other than that 00 31 02 06 If they send us an e mail we just reply to e mail saying yes those are really lovely photographs she s growing up it s nice to see her that sort of thing D 2 Final Interview 00 00 17 11 Sometimes I print some of my photographs I do it irregularly but then a few at a time I have a lot less paper copies of photos than I used 66 to I actually printed some this weekend bc I had about hal
66. ig inally shot it may also be affected by processing in later stages of the workflow In addition the value of creating an aesthetically pleasing photograph may not be ex perienced until this photograph is shared with other people who may appreciate the result Thus in a complex landscape of digital photography products and services see Figure 1 3 we aim to examine not only isolated artefacts digital cameras Introduction Contribution computers photo sharing websites but also how these artefacts are used in real life workflows for achieving the desired result 1 3 Contribution This project contributes a more thorough understanding of the needs and behaviour of amateur photographers By acquiring such an understanding one can formulate appropriate user requirements for the design of digital photography products and services that are usable by amateur photographers To that end several specific proposals are made for the design of improved digital cameras and editing software as well as novel learning tools As this project has made an exploratory approach in an area for which to the best of our knowledge there is limited existing research it also contributes a series of findings as well as open questions that can be an interesting topic for future re search 1 4 Layout of the report In the second chapter of this report we present a review of literature relevant to photography and especially digital photography from the
67. ine based photo browser is at least as fast as on a traditional browser that requires users to manually organise their photos for example in folders Rodden also asked the participants to subjectively rate possible features of software for organising digital photographs This feedback influenced the development of Shoebox a digital photograph management application developed at AT amp T Lab oratories Cambridge Mills et al 2000 This application implemented simple browsing features such folders such as folders thumbnails and timelines as well as advanced multimedia features such as content based image retrieval and speech recognition applied to voice annotations Rodden amp Wood 2003 13 Related Work Sharing and the social use of personal photography In the follow up study thirteen participants previously using film photography were given digital cameras and a copy of the Shoebox software and their experience with managing their digital photographs was studied over a period of six months As expected participants reported that they found organising their photo collections a lot easier although this was due to the basic sorting functionality combined with the flexibility of digital storage not because of the advanced features The authors admit that the advanced features were not used very often and their perceived utility was low although this was certainly affected by technical limitations for example by t
68. ing and quality Apart from shooting and editing photographs this study has also looked into photo sharing as an activity related to the aesthetic quality of photographs We have al ready noted that sharing motivated amateur photographers to evaluate their pho tographs and select the best ones to show to their friends and family Another dimen sion that was explored were the comments exchanged along the process of photo sharing and their potential motivating effect for amateur photographers However no such connection has emerged from the data The participants reported receiving very few comments in which something about the quality of the photograph was mentioned For the vast majority of the pho tographs discussed participants were either unable to recall any specific comments or were certain that they had not received any comments at all or had received comments that were simply a matter of courtesy Participants also reported that they normally comment on the photos that they receive out of courtesy rather than with specific comments about the quality of each photograph If they send us an e mail we just reply to e mail saying yes those are really lovely photographs she s growing up it s nice to see her that sort of thing I think we told him that we liked all of the photographs that he sent probably not this one specifically although this one is a nice one but all of these ones here are really nice 38
69. inter views During the analysis categories shifted to representing recurring patterns that were mentioned in more than one of the initial thematic areas For example the concept of colour balance was present in discussions about camera settings edit ing strategies or individual pictures Towards the end of the analysis it was observed that categories tended to stabilise most of the phenomena distilled from observa tions were either identical with one of the phenomena already categorised or would fit in one of the existing categories in a straightforward way Figure 3 3 Open coding with sticky notes each note represents a concept and clusters of notes represent categories The open coding process was conducted using a large number of sticky notes on a flat surface see Figure 3 3 The interview transcripts were read and for each of the phenomena identified a sticky note was written that described it in a few words Then the note was stuck on the surface close to other notes representing phenomena of the same category In that way categories are physically represented as clusters of sticky notes Using this technique we were able to keep a situa tional awareness of the emerging categories at all times while allowing for rapid re organisation with minimal effort as our understanding of the data evolved 26 Method Limitations 3 4 Limitations As with all qualitative studies the analysis and interpretation of the da
70. ir editing motivations and strategies Participants were asked not to delete any pictures that they downloaded to their computer before the interview Ideally participants should have been asked not to delete photos on camera either but given the limited capacity of memory cards this would have been an unreasonable demand that could have altered their photo shooting behaviour 23 Method Analysis 3 3 Analysis The main body of data analysed for this study consists of the interview recordings which were transcribed and the digital images files contributed by the participants which in most cases contained embedded information about the shooting settings The resulting transcripts were then analysed through qualitative coding methods as detailed in the following sections 3 3 1 Transcription The video files were transcribed with the help of the InqScribe transcription soft ware which incorporates a video player and a text editor under the same user interface and allows typing and controlling the video at the same time without the need to switch applications see Figure 3 1 Despite the use of this efficient tool the transcription phase was the main bottelneck in the analysis process with each hour of interview requiring approximately four hours of transcription aA eA e s2 2 inqser the way looked so took another one just in case looked better in the second one SO pure vanity 00 22 09 07 The intention
71. it in order to take a picture Do you know what all these buttons menus features do and how they affect the resulting image pick a couple of features and discuss 2 3 General knowledge Do you know how a camera works internally Do you know the meaning of the following shutter apperture focus 2 4 Computer software and websites Do you have any software on your computer for working with digital photos Can you tell me what you can do with it How did you get this piece of software Did it come with your camera Did you download it yourself Why did you choose it Do you use any photo related websites repeat questions about software 3 Best Photographs 3 1 Selection of own best photographs I d like you to find in your collection 3 4 photographs that you re proud of that you think are your best favorite photographs that mean a lot to you if aesthetics is not mentioned in the first selection maybe try asking more specifically 3 2 Discussion about each photograph What does this photograph show Where was it taken and why were you there Why did you take this photograph Have you shared this photograph With who Did you upload it to some website Have you edited this photograph Have you received any positive comments from others who have seen this photograph Why do you like this photograph 3 3 Selection of other best photographs Have you ever received from a friend relative or seen on the interne
72. ively on a CCD which detects the light and turns it into electrical current I do know what the shutter and aperture are but I couldn t draw it for you The shutter is the bit that opens and closes to let the light in the aperture is the size of the hole that lets light in and then I think you ve got the lens behind that So I imagine it goes shutter aperture lens although I m not quite sure of that 00 05 45 17 We ve got a couple of programs we ve got Picasa which is what 63 we use mostly we ve also got the stuff that comes with Windows which isn t very good There s a bunch of stuff that came with the printer bc it s a photo printer so there s a bunch of easy photo print stuff 00 06 39 14 I only really use Picasa just bc I can t bother to learn any other ones I m just a bit of a Google o phile I guess I downloaded it to have a look at it and actually I think the first version wasn t very good but Picasa 2 is much better I think 00 07 15 23 You can sort all of your photos it just finds all of the photos on your HD which is really nice bc you don t have to remember where they all are so it just goes and looks for all of them and then in this view you ve got all of your photos and you can just scroll through them They re organised the way they re organised on your HD or if you go to this view you can then organise them based on the date stamp on the photo so you can scroll through and
73. ject s website http www cap ac uk 17 3 Method A photograph is usually looked at seldom looked into Ansel Adams 3 1 Choosing a research method As described in the previous chapter there has not been enough research into the role of photo aesthetics in amateur photography neither has there been any re search to the best of our knowledge concerning the interfaces of imaging devices such as digital cameras or camera phones With little information available es pecially about creative process of taking photographs it was not possible to ask highly focused research questions Instead this study took an exploratory approach for creating an initial understanding of this area Another fact that affected the choice of research methods is the personal charac ter of amateur photography Amateur photographers tend to photograph sights and people familiar to them whereas professionals would photograph whatever subject is assigned to them Because of this familiarity amateur photographers may judge their own photographs and those of their friends and family differently than they would judge a sample of random photographs Hence this study tried to take ad vantage of this familiarity by involving the use of participants own photographs rather than artificial stimuli This approach also extended to involving the partic ipants own photographic equipment and personal computing environment which should be more familiar than
74. l photography paradigm may significantly improve user experience such a change is a long term one and will require investment in new equipment Therefore there remains a question of what can be done in order to help amateur photographers produce high quality photographs in the short term We believe there is potential for achieving these goals through the use of photo editing software However in order to unleash this potential editing tools must be designed taking into account the needs and limitations of amateur photographers that were uncovered in the present study In particular there are two major barriers that need to be overcome first we found that lack of time and incomplete knowledge reduced the adoption of editing tools Those participants who did not edit their photographs reported that they did not have the time to install and learn how to use editing software Second incomplete knowledge about the way editing tools work led to trial and error use which might be ineffective 5 3 1 Integration of automatic correction As some of the participants already knew automatic photo correction algorithms can fix many common problems with a photograph For example Figure 5 5 shows a photograph contributed by one participant about which she complained that the colours looked quite washed out By applying the Auto Contrast correction in the Adobe Photoshop photo editing software the picture shows more contrast and the colou
75. lity stances reported in the interviews where a participant had manually adjusted any camera setting although participants claimed to different extents each that they knew about the existence of these settings In order to verify that this was actually true the EXIF shooting information see Section 3 3 2 was examined in more than a hundred photographs that were collected during this study Consistently to what participants had reported very few photographs were found in which at least one of the settings was manually adjusted One reason why features remained unused is that they are sometimes hidden through a complex menu hierarchy in the camera s user interface I think it was a little bit cloudy when we took the photo and there is a cloudy setting on the camera which basically makes all the colours more vibrant but I just rarely use it to get to it you have to go through a couple of menus on the screen rather than just twidling the knob and that s too much hassle so I never do it I have used in the past the black and white feature but I can t even remember how to do that now A participant who owned a digital SLR camera found it an advantage that most of the basic settings could be controlled through buttons on the camera body rather than through the menu system A lot of the adjustments are on the buttons so you don t have to go into the menu it has lots and lots of menus but things like the
76. ll go on to looking at some photographs 2 Printing Do you print any of your photographs Which ones Where do you print them Are you satisfied with the printing quality 3 Recent photographs 3 1 The occasion On what occasion did you last shoot some photographs Where was it Why did you take your camera with you Were you alone or accompanied with friends family 3 2 Taking photographs How many photographs did you take if too few or too many why What are you going to do with them Are you planning to share them Why How With who Why not Did you share your camera with other people Why Do you know which photographs are yours Did you have any general problems taking photographs using your camera achieving the desired result in this occasion 3 3 Selection of random photographs I will now randomly select a few of your recent photographs and we ll have a short discussion about each of them interesting photographs to select variations on the same theme photographs with obvious technical problems 3 4 Discussion about each photograph What does this photograph show Why did you take this photograph Do you like it Why why not What features of your camera if any did you use in taking the photograph Suppose you were in a similar occasion would you be able to shoot a photograph like that again Is there anything you could improve in this photograph something that you would do differently next time Do you wan
77. man generated metadata Koman 2005 2 3 Sharing and the social use of personal photography Long before the advent of digital photography sharing has always been a one of the primary use of personal photos This was traditionally done through conversing around a collection of photographic prints or through mailing prints and discussing over the telephone Frohlich et al 2002 have published an ethnographic study in which they attempt to describe how sharing takes place and discuss the implica tions for digital photography technology The study took place in 1998 and included eleven US based families who had already had some experience with digital photog raphy although they were still mostly using film photography Frohlich et al found that a major motivation for sharing photographs is the joy from the feedback and subsequent conversation around the photos and consider photo sharing an important part of ongoing social interactions and relationships Remote sharing of photos was predominately done over e mail although this was 14 Related Work Photowork at a time when major photo sharing websites had yet to emerge For co present sharing i e for sharing the photographs in person photographic prints were still used even if some of the photographs were shot in digital format and many par ticipants believed that it wouldn t be any fun to go sit in front of a computer screen and look at the pictures
78. ms and expressions mentioned by the participant for example What does picture quality mean to you 1 Introduction and Greeting 1 1 Greet and introduce the purpose of the study Hello my name is Alexander Baxevanis and I m a student at UCL Thank you for participating this study is about This interview will take about X minutes 1 2 Information sheet and consent form Can you please take a moment to read this document which explains what we re going to do today Feel free to ask me for any clarifications If everything is OK please fill in your name and sign on the back You may keep a copy if you wish here are my contact details and those of my supervisor 1 3 Install AV equipment As you read in the information sheet I m going to audio and video record our session I am going to use this video camera and this microphone show equipment Is it OK if I install the video camera here 2 Digital photography experience and equipment 2 1 Experience with photography How long have you been using digital photography Did you use film cameras before that For how long Why did you switch to digital photography 2 2 Current equipment Can you show me the camera cameraphone that you ve been using recently for most of your photographs Which model is it How long have you been using it Why did you choose that particular model Have you ever read the user s manual What for Can you show me how you would hold
79. ned with the falling prices of mass stor age devices has almost eliminated the cost of capturing and keeping a digital pho tograph This has resulted in amateur photographers building up massive personal photographic collections The need to create new software tools for organising and searching such collections has been acknowledged by researchers who tried to un derstand how people manage their photographs An in depth study in this field has been published by Rodden and Wood 2003 Rodden started by examining how people had already been organising their tra ditional photographic prints or slides when digital photography was not yet as widespread as it is today Rodden 1999 He conducted structured interviews with a sample of twelve amateur photographers whom he interrogated about their cur rent practices in organising and searching in their collection of photographs Most participants reported doing some sort of filing for example in photo albums al though this was rarely done for all photographs Written annotation either on ev ery single photograph or on a group of photographs was rather sporadic When searching for a particular photo participants revealed that they had a rough idea of its position based on the time they thought it was shot or on other cues such as the appearance of the album they believed it was in In fact a carefully controlled experiment by Harada et al 2004 showed that photo browsing and searching on a timel
80. nfidential Your name pho tographs audio and video recordings or any other personal information will not be published anywhere This study has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the University College London Psychology Department You may keep a copy of this document for your reference 3 Consent Form e I have read and understood the information provided about the study and my rights as a participant e I have had the opportunity to ask questions and I have received satisfactory answers I agree to participate in the study I consent to the interview being audio and video recorded Participant code Participant name Participant signature Date 4 Contact Information Should you have any further queries about this study please use the following information to contact me or my academic supervisor Alexandros Baxevanis Student researcher Telephone 077 04 13 75 44 e mail a baxevanis ucl ac uk Jeremy Gow Project supervisor UCL Interaction Centre UCLIC University College London Remax House 31 32 Alfred Place London WC1E 7DP UK Telephone 020 7679 5232 e mail j gow ucl ac uk B Interviewer s Guide Initial Interview 5 The Journey of a Digital Photo Usability in the digital photography workflow Alexandros Baxevanis UCLIC MSc HCI E 05 06 Final Project Interviewer s Guide Initial Interview 0 General Guidelines Always ask Why Also ask for the meaning of any relevant ter
81. nsider something that they normally would not When there was no reference to aesthetics during the initial selection of photographs the participants were directly questioned about this topic This is because it was equally important to verify why the participants failed to mention aesthetics it may possibly be of minor importance to them or they may think that they are not capable of creating aesthetically pleasing photographs Either of these reasons may be subject to further discussion relevant to this study s research questions 3 2 3 Intermediate period During the period between the two interviews all participants had the chance to take some photographs on one or more occasions These occasions included go ing to a music festival attending a wedding visiting friends and family during the weekend or simply going out for a walk All but three participants shot photographs on different unrelated occasions The remaining three attended the same event to gether This is a useful coincidence which added a comparative dimension to some points of the later analysis It also happened that the researcher was able to attend the same event Thus al though no observation activities were planned this event was an opportunity for an observation session albeit a rather informal one since the nature of the event did not allow for continuous shadowing of the participants Although such an informal observation had no value of its own information c
82. ntended effect is barely if at all visible Furthermore the sample images are arbitrary and may not relate to what the user intends to photograph In this case learning is again disengaged from the photographer s own photographs The second major problem with learning how to use a digital camera is the lack of appropriate feedback Feedback an essential part of the learning process is cur rently limited to the immediate presentation of the captured image This is certainly a step forward from film cameras and participants did express their appreciation for that feature but we believe it is still not enough Simply looking at the captured image does not provide any information about the reason behind its failure or suc cess It is left to the photographers to relate the camera settings that they used or did not use with the quality problems present in the image Often this is beyond the capabilities of amateur photographers 5 4 1 The digital photography advisor In order to facilitate learning we propose the development of a tool that provides appropriate feedback in context This tool called Digital Photography Advisor will 47 Discussion amp Implications for Design Learning tools Scene Selection modes The following modes are predetermined to match the scene conditions 2 Twilight 7e_ Beach Shoots night scenes at a distance Shoots seasides or lakesides the without losing the dark blue of the water cl
83. o collection which was most com monly stored in their personal computer and their photographic equipment The interview was semi structured following a list of probing questions from the Inter viewer s Guide see Appendix B and lasted for approximately 20 30 minutes An 20 Method Fieldwork audio and video recording of each interview session was made for later study and transcription In most cases a digital copy of the photographs discussed during the interview was kept by the interviewer so that the photos could be studied in full resolution during the analysis of the interview The first major topic of the interview was related to the participant s experience with digital photograph and to the equipment and software that they use Much of the final result in a digital photograph depends on how the digital camera was used Therefore the participants were asked several probing questions about their understanding of the camera s features and their perceived effects on the resulting image Some cameras attempt to allow creative control of the photographic process by allowing the photographer to manually control internal settings such as aperture or focus Another set of questions aimed at eliciting the participant s mental model of the inner workings of a digital camera and confirming whether such settings are understandable from an amateur photographer s viewpoint Further questions in this topic were concerned with the part
84. ographing was not not depicted with good enough quality in the final photograph I only like it because I know how it was supposed to look I think as a picture it doesn t really look as I would wish it to I think with a picture like that the reality of the view all the colours were much more distinct and the blues were much brighter and the recorded image is just a bit of a blur altogether That s why it disappoints me as a picture because what I was seeing with the naked eye the colours were much brighter and the things much more separated but it s quite washed out The light was really interesting this morning it was really strong here in the foreground really bright sunlight and then quite dark as you went back towards the city and these pictures don t do it justice at all they re very disappointing They re very dull there s not any con trast they don t come close to what I was seeing This is not to say that an exact realistic depiction of a scene is the goal of all amateur photographers A photograph sometimes acts as a symbol for an entire experience that might span more than the split second opening of the shutter One participant explained that he edited some of his photographs because the cold looking colours caused by an overcast sky did not fit with his memory of a hot day So on this picture when you go back to the original it s a bit cold looking as well and it
85. ographs the participant was asked to recall any comments he received when and if he had shared the photograph with other people Finally the participant was called to give his subjective reason for selecting this photograph as one of his best Since sharing is a two way experience it is also interesting to see whether aesthetics play the same role when the participant is on the receiving side Participants were asked to select a sample of photos that they particularly like from those sent to Video recording was necessary in order to capture important cues such as participants pointing to different places on their camera or on the pictures displayed on a computer screen 21 Method Fieldwork them by friends and family or perhaps those that they found while browsing on the Internet For each of these photographs the participants were queried again about basic facts although this time they may not be aware of all the details and about the reason for selecting this photograph They were also asked whether their ap preciation of this photograph had ever been expressed to the photographer through some form of positive comments All the above questions attempt to elicit references to the aesthetics of photographs through different avenues including personal and social motivations However no explicit mention of aesthetics is made in the wording of the questions so as to avoid initially biasing the participants by asking them to co
86. ollected therein was used to in form the design of questions for the final interview For example it was observed that participants would share their cameras with each other as well as with third persons Following this observation a question was added to the final interview in order to understand whether camera sharing was a common practice and how this affected the use of digital cameras 3 2 4 Final interview The final interview was conducted in the same place as the initial interview using the same method semi structured interviewing using an Interviewer s Guide with a list of basic questions see Appendix C Again the interviews lasted for approxi mately 20 30 minutes each and an audio visual record was kept as well as a copy of the photographs discussed Because of scheduling constraints two of the participants were interviewed for the first time after the photo shooting occasion with both interviews merged in one longer session However we do not believe that this has somehow affected the interview results 22 Method Fieldwork The interview started with some general questions about printing digital photo graphs focused on understanding the criteria for selecting the photos to be printed which may include aesthetic as well as functional criteria and on eliciting the participant s views on the quality of prints made with different means such as ink jet printers or photo shops Although this is a general qu
87. one 5 3 2 Editing by example When automatic corrections are not enough for solving a problem most editing tools provide manual editing facilities This usually involves interactively changing several editing parameters for example brightness contrast and saturation while watching the image for the desired result Most commonly the interface provided for changing these parameters is a set of slider controls see Figure 5 7 However amateur photographers are often not familiar with that terminology and cannot predict what the effect of changing these parameters would be We believe there is a way for making these editing facilities more accessible to am ateur photographers and this is to allow them to navigate in the parameter space i e the combinations of different parameters making use of example images that demonstrate the impact of each parameter For example the slider that adjusts con trast can be replaced by a set of three thumbnail images The centre image will show the photograph in its unedited state while the thumbnail images on the left and on the right will have their contrast decreased or increased respectively by a specified fixed value The advantage of such an approach is that it favours recognition of the desired result rather than the user having to recall knowledge of how to achieve it An example implementation of that feature where the image can be modified in more than one dimensions is shown in Figure
88. ost occasions pho tography does not immediately support the primary activity in the sense that the primary activity could proceed unaffected even when the person is not taking any photographs In fact the only case where photography is actively involved in the primary activity is the case of co present sharing of photographs while socialising A detailed description of all these settings is outside the scope of this thesis Readers who are not familiar with the terminology may wish to read a primer on digital photography such as the one provided by Atkins 2005 41 Discussion amp Implications for Design The design of digital cameras Stelmaszewska et al 2006 Therefore very little time is devoted to learning about camera features and to actually using them 5 2 1 Towards a different imaging paradigm It was seen that participants were conscious to the potential disruption of their social activities through prolonged interaction with a digital camera An analogous phe nomenon the disruption of meetings by laptop use has been researched by Newman and Smith 2006 They found that interacting with a laptop often leads people to disengage from the conversation for periods beyond 10 seconds and this is unac ceptable both to them and to others and they recommend adapting the software tools used in meetings so that users can more easily keep their tasks within the 10 second threshold Perhaps a similar case could be ma
89. otographers Sharples et al 2003 report the results of a large scale survey of children as pho tographers The survey took place in 2000 with 180 children aged 7 11 and 15 from five European countries The children were given disposable cameras to use during a weekend and were subsequently interviewed about the content of their photos and their perception of photography in general In total the children shot about 4300 photographs The researchers asked a broad range of questions what children photograph what they like and dislike about photographs why they take photographs and what they intend to do with them Although this project is focused on adult photographers the answers to some of the above questions are still relevant Sharples et al found that many older chil dren aged 15 showed increased sensitivity to the aesthetic properties and formal composition of the images and that they were aware of and commented on their aesthetically successful images Children also see their own photography as spon taneous and authentic especially in comparison to photos taken by adults which are sometimes described as boring Despite this last remark it seems implausi ble that appreciation for aesthetics disappears completely in everyone s adulthood although it may be expressed in a different way Many of the photographs collected and detailed information about project results are also available online at the pro
90. owing sections 5 2 The design of digital cameras Modern digital cameras are packed with an abundance of features that let the pho tographer alter the way in which an image is captured As with many other kinds of gadgets digital camera design suffers from creeping featurism a condition where new features are constantly added to a product in order to make it more marketable only to dramatically increase its complexity Norman 1998 p 81 To start with the most well known setting is the exposure programme often referred to simply as mode This is usually changed through a ubiquitous control known as mode dial see Figure 5 3 Each mode is supposed to be optimised for a particular The examples refer to a model of digital camera that one of the participants owned No endorse ment of this model should be implied neither is this a critique of a particular camera model 39 Peter is 26 years old lives in Cambridge and has got a rather busy job in the financial sector He bought his first digital camera two years ago from Argos it was on offer and he thought it was a good bargain Peter likes to take photographs when he is on vacation Last summer he went to the Caribbean and he managed to shoot some impressive photographs he things the bright colours are just amazing He is very proud when he shows these photographs to his friends and tells them about the great time he had He also likes to take photographs when he s out with hi
91. pants said that they like a photograph simply because it reminds them of something that they think is interesting or important to them T lived in Madrid for 3 months in 2004 just pretty much between grad uating and starting my job I went to an exhibition with a friend and that s the picture I shot and there s nothing really special about it but I ve always come back to this picture and still find it interesting because it really reminds me of my time there Another frequently cited reason for liking a photograph was the depiction of people usually the photographer s friends and family in what they thought was a good mood described usually with the adjectives happy smiling and relaxed The third broad theme fun includes photographs that display a subject or situation that is somehow funny unexpected or unusual in the photographer s judgement That s my friend sleeping in an inflatable boat I like it I think it s funny I particularly like the water because it looks like it s coming out of his head and it looks really funny Again these three themes are not mutually exclusive and more than one reasons for liking a photograph were often cited T like this photo because of the humour of being buried in the sand also because it reminds me of a good day it s actually my birthday I think best birthday I ve had in a while reminder fun 4 2 3 The synergy b
92. picture is typically dark and noisy A moment camera can capture a pair of images with and without the flash and details from the flash image can be combined with a smoothed version of the no flash image to obtain a desired low noise image while maintaining the original lighting Cohen amp Szelinsky 2006 p 42 An example of this transformation can be seen in Figure 5 4 Other bene fits of the moment camera include high dynamic range HDR imaging which can address under and over exposure problems Although Cohen and Szelinsky do not mention any user research as a motivation for their creation of the moment camera our findings do justify its functionality and it appears that the future of digital photography lies not in increasing the settings available to the photographer but in capturing more information at shooting time and utilising them to improve the final image as transparently as possible to the end user Peter our persona would not have to learn which camera features could make his pictures better as the camera would try out different features by itself and combine them in an optimal way 42 Discussion amp Implications for Design Editing tools Figure 5 4 Flash processing with the moment camera a noisy no flash image a and a low noise flash image b combine to produce a low noise image with good lighting c after Cohen and Szelinsky 2006 5 3 Editing tools Even though changing the digita
93. r participants had shot some photographs we were able to uncover how digital cameras are ac tually used and what are the everyday problems that amateur photographers face More than ten hours of interviews with ten participants were transcribed and anal ysed using qualitative methods and more than a hundred photographs in total were contributed by the participants and were subsequently examined Through coding and grouping the opinions that the participants expressed we were able to discover several repeating patterns that are expressed in our findings We found that digital photography is a secondary activity for amateur photogra phers usually practised in the background of other social and recreational activi ties This also meant that amateurs did not devote a lot of time in order to learn more about digital photography and to experiment with taking better photographs or improve the ones they had already taken However contrary to anecdotal beliefs that amateur snapshots are not shot with quality in mind it was found that ama teur photographers do judge their photos based on their quality colours exposure sharpness composition as well as on the personal significance of their content When they could not achieve this quality we understood it was not because they were not willing but because they did not know how to use many of the complex features in their cameras and editing software or would use them in a misguided way
94. re wasn t that great I mean the light looks really flat or u don t have as much contrast as you wanted to get Sometimes when you look at a picture you thing that doesn t look like what it looked like to me 00 10 51 28 I don t really use any websites I ve just got the version of Picasa this week that can upload photos to the web and share them with people but I haven t really started doing that very much yet apart from just playing around with it I ve never really used any of these websites like Snapfish or something like that just because it always seems like a lot of hard work You have to go and register for the site then you have to get your photos in the right format then you ve got to upload them Picasa has got a feature when you can just select a bunch of photos and press a button and then it goes to the web 00 12 04 08 BEST PHOTOS Some of my favorites are from Chile I think 00 12 58 18 PHOTO 1 That one is one of my favorites definately 00 13 03 14 This is the great glacier in a national park in very southern Chile this is the great lake We went travelling around there in 2001 for a bit and we went for a long hike a 2 3 day hike through there 00 13 28 27 I really love the colour of the sky and the clouds actually in that photo 00 13 37 09 I shot it just bc I thought it was an amazing view at the time be I d never really seen a glacier like that before 00 13 49 29
95. rmore the aesthetic quality of memory photos was sometimes seen as an important factor of the reminiscing process 30 Results Aesthetics and the purpose of personal photographs 4 2 1 Self evaluation of personal photographs In different stages of this study participants were asked to evaluate their personal photographs either explicitly Do you like this photograph or implicitly Can you find the best photographs in your collection However participants were also used to evaluating their photographs on a regular basis during shooting editing sorting and sharing This is usually done in order to select which photographs to delete from a memory card that is becoming full and in order to make a selection of photographs to be shared because sharing a large amount of photographs can be inconvenient TIf I delete on camera it s usually because Pm running out of space on my memory card so I sometimes go through and get rid of the ones that are obviously not very nice Or if I know that I m going to take a lot of photos then sometimes I even do that straight away so after I ve taken a series I look at them quickly and then delete the ones that are obviously not going to be very good Tve done photo shows when you show your friends 500 pictures and that s just nuts because no one can actually appreciate that many pic tures so you have to be very selective I think 100 is really the maximum abou
96. rs become more vibrant We believe that automatic correction algorithms like that should be integrated early in the photographer s workflow so that they would be available without the need for installing extra software or adding to the workflow One point where this can happen is when photographs are downloaded to the computer The software that performs the downloading would examine each of the photographs while they are Only problems related to colour exposure and to a limited extent sharpness can be fixed through computer processing It is impossible to fix a badly shaken picture or recover something that was cut off the frame 43 Figure 5 5 A photograph contributed by one of the participants before and after the application of the Auto Contrast correction in Adobe Photoshop Photograph reproduced with the participant s permission Canon PowerShot 50400 a Riah Thumbnail Size IMG_0074 JPG Teme IMC_0076 PC Size Actual Size_ Figure 5 6 Ul mock up for the integration of automatic correction in the download process The auto corrected version of the photograph is marked with a tick mark 44 Discussion amp Implications for Design Editing tools downloaded and would attempt to apply a few auto correction algorithms that ad dress the most common problems faced by amat
97. s friends having a nice dinner or just some drinks after work However some of these photographs turn out blurry dark or with washed out colours not what it looked like in that nicely lit restaurant He is a bit disappointed with these photos but he doesnt know what to do better He knows his camera has got a lot of settings but doesn t know which ones could make his pictures better Maybe he could also edit them with the software that came with his camera but he never bothered to install it When he first got his camera he just wanted to start playing around immediately so he threw the CDs and the manuals somewhere and doesn t know where they are now Figure 5 1 A persona of an amateur photographer 309 es 1800M Figure 5 2 Symbols indicating camera modes on the LCD display of a Sony DSC W5 digital camera When superimposed on an actual image symbols may be less visible Images Sony Corporation amp Digital Photography Review 40 Discussion amp Implications for Design The design of digital cameras Figure 5 3 The mode dial on a Sony DSC W5 digital camera Most symbols have a similar meaning in all digital cameras Image Sony Corporation kind of scene For example pictures shot using the landscape mode usually sym bolised with the image of a mountain on the mode dial are optimised for maximum depth of field meaning that objects both close and far to the camera will be in perfect focus Ot
98. t any photographs that you particularly like Can you show me a couple of them 3 4 Discussion about each photograph What does this photograph show Why do you like it Where was it taken Who took it and why was that person there Can you comment on that person s experience with photography Have other people apart from you received this photograph Did you ever express your appreciation to the photographer 4 Debriefing 4 1 Thanks etc Thank you for taking part in this interview your input is much appreciated Is there anything that you d like to ask me 4 2 Next interview I d like to have another interview with you after you take some more photographs so that we can discuss these recent photographs in more detail When do you think might be appropriate to call you back schedule the next interview C Interviewer s Guide Final interview 60 The Journey of a Digital Photo Usability in the digital photography workflow Alexandros Baxevanis UCLIC MSc HCI E 05 06 Final Project Interviewer s Guide Final Interview 0 General Guidelines Always ask Why Also ask for the meaning of any relevant terms and expressions mentioned by the participant for example What does picture quality mean to you 1 Introduction and Greeting Hello thanks for participating in the second part of the study I hope you had a nice weekend Like in our previous interview Ill start with some general questions and then we
99. t a holiday Although selection was done in different stages of the workflow there appeared to be a common set of criteria used in all stages as well as stage specific criteria For example photographs were being deleted if they were blurry whether this was noticed on camera or after downloading them on the computer However deciding whether to share a photograph depended on a different set of criteria which were checked only when participants wished to share some photographs The stage at which photographs were evaluated also varied because of technical factors some features of the image could not be properly evaluated using the on camera LCD display When we delete things on the camera we rarely delete them because it looks a bit dark or it looks a bit too overexposed or anything like that be cause it will look different on the computer screen it will look different on paper but if you ve got somebody in a really bad pose or the whole scene just doesn t look right It s mostly about the composition rather than necessarily the colours you can worry more about the colours on the computer It should be noted that participant s opinions on this topic were varied possibly because of differences between the cameras that they used For example another participant thought that the display on his camera was more accurate because the display is quite accurate a quite accurate representa tion of what th
100. t look a bit garish and then when I printed it out it looked great I ve no idea why that is But what it means is that you have to make it look a bit garish on the screen before you print it out I guess I guess it must be something to do with the settings between the printer and the computer but that s beyond my level of skill 00 18 13 20 PHOTO 3 That looks quite nice 00 18 18 00 It s my nephew with his mum Yes I like it But I think that one definately needs cropping 00 18 31 20 bc it s got I think my brother in law here partly in the picture I think I should crop it like that Yeah I think that s better I really like that I think it s a good photo 00 19 14 17 I guess it would have been better if I framed it differently so that I got both of their faces a bit more it looks like he s pulling a really nice face so I could have set it up a bit better 00 20 01 06 No I won t edit it any more I ll probably just leave it as it is it s good bc I think with that sort of photo you don t want it to be too perfect or anything like that it s just capturing a moment 00 20 43 04 I think most of the ones that didn t work so well we ve deleted on the camera bc you can see them on the screen I think the screen is large enough to do so bc you can also zoom in a bit and it s a reasonably high resolution screen 00 21 11 07 When we delete things on the camera we rarely delete them
101. t to consistently retrieve any additional demographic data such as the photographers experience and professional status as well as to ask any follow up questions 3 2 Fieldwork The fieldwork for this project was carried out in July 2006 in London in the United Kingdom and had four major steps 1 Recruitment of participants who are amateur photographers but already have some basic experience with photography on which a discussion can be based 2 Initial interview with research participants focusing on their experience with photography their equipment and selected photographs from their archive 3 Intermediate period during which participants are expected to take some more photographs 4 Final interview focusing on the recent photographs Each of these steps is explained and justified in one of the following sections 3 2 1 Participant recruitment Participants were recruited from the general adult population of London The fol lowing criteria were used for selecting participants eligible for participating in the study 1 They have at least a few months experience with digital photography 2 They are not practising photography professionally 3 They have a sufficiently large digital photo archive at least a few hundred photographs 4 They are available for interview in London during the study period 5 They consent to showing photographs from their their archive to the inter viewer 6 They are likely to t
102. t to edit this photograph What would you edit Can you try that right now Will you keep this photograph Will you share it 3 5 Best photograph Which photograph would you pick as your best photograph from this set Why D Sample Interview Transcript D 1 Initial Interview 00 00 09 27 I ve been using DP for 5 yrs or so I was never really a photographs kind of person mainly bc I never really bother to get the films developed or anything like that But P my wife she s a big photographer person she takes a lot of photos so when we got together we got a DC together and took a lot of photos with this Since I ve had a DC I ve taken a lot more photos 00 01 13 17 I ve got a Sony W 7 or W 5 I never keep up bc we had one and then it got stolen and when we got the new one it was slightly different 00 01 38 03 We had a Fuji Finepix before that this one we ve had about 18 months or so 00 01 49 25 We chose this one I think bc it had a really big screen bc we kind of realised that actually we spend a lot of time looking at pics on the screen on the camera I think nowadays all of the screens are pretty big but at the time this kind of had a much bigger screen than most of the ones on the market And it also has loads of cool programmable effects so you can kind of use it a little bit like an SLR which is just fun to mess around with 00 02 17 25 You can control the aperture and stuff like that the shutter spe
103. ta was sub jectively done by the researcher and therefore is susceptible to individual biases This is commonly countered by employing more than one researchers who analyse data individually and attempt to reach a consensus over their final interpretation Because this was an individual project it was not possible to arrange for such a col laboration However at several points during the analysis independent input was sought and possible interpretations of the data were informally discussed with third parties In addition our primary data consisting of interview transcripts are avail able to other researchers who may wish to analyse them from a different perspective and validate or contest our findings The size of our sample although comparable to similar qualitative studies in rele vant literature may not be enough in order to generalise our findings to all amateur photographers especially over the entire range of issues that we have explored Be cause of the inherent difficulty in collecting and analysing qualitative data we were not able to recruit a larger sample in the limited time available for completing this project However our findings should still be a good initial approximation and can be explored further with more tightly targeted future research 2 4 Results I just press the shutter and hope Anonymous study participant During the analysis phase three major themes emerged from the participants com ments
104. the need to conduct the primary activity especially if it is a social one These results are presented in more detail in the following sections 4 1 1 Lack of time Lack of time was one of the most cited reasons among participants for what they perceived as shortcomings in their photographs and in their knowledge and use of digital photography 28 Results The context of personal photography Tve never really had the time to learn more about photography If I had more time I d be very interested to understand about taking photographs properly which I don t really Lack of time was also an issue for the adoption of software and online services such as photo sharing websites Do you use any photo related websites No but I ve often thought of doing that What stopped you from doing that Just laziness I think just too many other things going on Because printing involves time consuming activities such as selecting the photographs to print and operating the printer or copying the photographs to storage media and taking them to a photo shop some participants reported that they kept postponing it indefinitely while others did it irregularly when they could find some time to spare I print photographs irregularly but then a few at a time I actually printed some this weekend because I had about half an hour or so or an hour I was supposed to do something else but I couldn t do it so
105. thing like that and I quite like to see that sort of thing in the background sometimes it just gives you a bit more of a feel for what was going on 00 12 11 16 I haven t edited anything really I actually think it s pretty good it s probably not one that I m going to print off to be hones but I m going to keep it and share 00 12 40 11 You could maybe crop it down a bit further given that you don t actually have anything interesting up there that could be quite nice And that s a quite nice little separate crop crops around one of the children in the photo I might do that Picasa gives you a crop frame for a certain size of photo which you can then drag around 00 13 52 16 PHOTO 2 I like these ones actually it shows some cousins of P and we bought these beanbags for their garden they just got married and that was their wedding present 00 14 13 05 I quite like it just bc I think I like it bc they look very happy which is very nice but also I think the colours work pretty well actually The beanbags are great they re really vibrant and colourful and they look quite good in their garden so it s a good fun shot 00 14 43 24 This bg here is a little bit dark I think it was a little bit cloudy when we took the photo and there is a cloudy setting on the camera which basically makes all the colours more vibrant but I just rarely to get to it you have to go through a couple of menus on the screen
106. tics using both positive and negative comments Imperfect photos are also more likely to be edited which we were hoping to observe and to uncover problems with the use of the camera and the understanding of photographic techniques For each of the photographs participants are again queried about the contents of the image their motivation for shooting it and are asked to explain why they like or dislike this photograph They are also asked to recall whether they used any special features of their digital camera by which we mean anything done differently than turning the camera on to the default mode and shooting a picture Participants who said they liked a photo were questioned whether they believed that they would be able to shoot an equally good photo in a similar occasion this is to determine if a photograph turned out nice because of luck rather than deliberate action Partici pants who reported problems in a particular photo were asked whether they knew what went wrong and what they would do differently next time they shot a photo graph like that All interviews took place no later than a week after the photographs had been shot so we expected participants to be able to answer these questions with reasonable precision Finally all participants were asked whether they would like to edit each photograph When they replied positively they were given the chance to try and do the editing during the interview in order to gain some insight on the
107. type system eventually implemented as a camera phone application modifies the image in real time based on several contextual factors such as ambient sound and camera movement These factors affect a num ber of special effects such as distortion or pixelation which are applied to the final image see Figure 2 3 W i Figure 2 3 A sample photo taken with the context photography method The distortion represents the contextual factor of camera movement after H kansson et al 2006 Context photography is still an experiment and has not been implemented in any consumer products However there are a few studies evaluating this method with real users and their results can help us understand the users attitude towards cre ativity in photography Feedback from a workshop with context photography in dicates that for some users this method may reduce the feeling of personal ex pression if the contextual effects specified by the designer do not match the user s subjective aesthetics Also creating aesthetically pleasing images without any effort by the photographer is experienced by some users as cheating Ljungblad et al 2004 Nevertheless another user commented that context photography encour 16 Related Work Children as photographers aged more creative thinking and experimentation in order to get the desired image than normal digital photography Hakansson et al 2006 2 6 Children as ph
108. u re capturing because of the delay there seems to be a delay between the moment at which you press the button and the actual image being captured so if you got something that s moving the image that you see in the screen when you press the button and you were hoping to capture 00 27 35 04 I was trying to bring bits of the city closer into view and cut out something That one has been done twice cause a man got in the way 00 28 09 24 I actually prefer the ones that aren t zoomed in think they re probably more interesting they show more of the cityscape as opposed to individual bits I ll probably keep most of them they ll probably just get stuck in that folder and then might send one of the selection to the fellow Bath a dwellers v Time code format 30 fps da Play Rate e 10x often you find you don t because the object has moved out of vision l 00 26 35 22 probably won t keep Volume A alll 00 27 15 06 PHOTO 7 series There are various ones think it s the same a i series of pretty much the same view some of them using the zoom and some of i L e R them not i Figure 3 1 The InqScribe transcription environment In the final transcripts the interviewer s questions have been omitted and the par ticipant s answers have been edited appropriately to provide a seamless narrative and to clarify any ambiguous expressions Such corrections appear in the transcripts Available online at
109. utions will have to be prototyped and tested with amateur photographers following a truly user centred design methodology 51 References Atkins B 2005 Digital Camera Basics A primer http www bobatkins com photography digital digitalbasics html accessed 26 Aug 2006 Balabanovic M Chu L L amp Wolff G J 2000 Storytelling with digital pho tographs In CHI 00 Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems pp 564 571 New York NY USA ACM Press Cohen M F amp Szelinsky R 2006 The Moment Camera Computer 38 9 40 45 Cooper A 1999 The Inmates Are Running the Asylum Indianapolis IN USA Macmillan Publishing Co Inc Crabtree A Rodden T amp Mariani J 2004 Collaborating around collections informing the continued development of photoware In CSCW 04 Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work pp 396 405 New York NY USA ACM Press Frohlich D Kuchinsky A Pering C Don A amp Ariss S 2002 Requirements for photoware In CSCW 02 Proceedings of the 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work pp 166 175 New York NY USA ACM Press Greene S L 2002 Characteristics of applications that support creativity Com mun ACM 45 10 100 104 Hakansson M Ljungblad S Gaye L amp Holmquist L E 2006 Snapshots from a study of context photography In CHI 06 C
110. was actually really hot I mean the day was really hot so you want to bring that out in the picture So I corrected the colours just to bring a bit of sunshine into the picture I don t think that it s a big deal that it s not particularly faithful I think what s important is that it reminds you of the memory rather than it s exactly what you saw And I remember that being much warmer so I can make the photo look warmer 4 3 Barriers against photographic quality In the previous sections we have shown that amateur photographers are indeed interested in the aesthetic quality of their photographs even though producing aes thetically pleasing photographs is not their primary goal However we have also seen that amateur photographers sometimes fail to achieve this goal and are disap pointed with their photographs Although current digital photography products and services contain a wide array of features aimed at helping photographers in shoot ing better photographs or in editing them to improve their quality it was found that these features are often underused or used in a misguided way 4 3 1 A wide array of unused features Although a wide array of features are now available in most digital cameras that if used correctly can improve image quality it was found that they are hardly ever employed by amateur photographers There were no more than half a dozen in 34 Results Barriers against photographic qua
111. we started taking this pictures of buildings at the base of them looking up into the sky 00 17 54 20 With these ones we ve actually printed them out and put them in an album which is pretty rare actually bc we don t print things out very often But I think that we took them to one of these photo shops where you can actually turn your digital photos into real photos and we ve shared them that way too 00 18 20 29 We selected I think the best 100 or so You just go through them and say I like that one and that one there are some that just aren t very good bc u can t really see people s faces or sth like that so u can get rid of those pretty easily And then there are some which are two versions of the same photo and you pick the best one the one that s got the best colour that captures it best And then u have to take them and get them printed out I m not sure why we got them printed out just for nostalgia s sake or sth like that 00 19 33 09 One of the things that we use quite a lot is to rotate then because irritatingly the DC doesn t do that It can t tell that you ve got it that way up or the other way A lot of our photos have been rotated I don t think either of the last two have been edited any further 00 20 05 16 PHOTO 3 That s the Nazca lines and we had to do a lot of editing the original photo is here somewhere So that was the original photo and it s out of the window of
112. y bought their current camera did not typically consider usability and image quality criteria when choosing a camera model and bought their camera based on recommendations by friends or even received a camera as a gift 4 3 2 Incomplete knowledge and trial and error Another problem that stood in the way of achieving better photographic results was that many participants had little or incorrect knowledge about the way digital cam eras and photo editing software works Apart from changing camera modes one way camera manufacturers allow some creative control over the photographic pro cess is through manual control of the shutter time aperture value or both However modifying these settings requires an understanding of the inner workings of a digital camera which inexperienced amateur photographers do not possess The shutter is the thing that lets through the light that kind of falls on the image and the amount of light so you can set it to fast closing or slow closing If you have a fast shutter when it s really dark that s better and I think if it s you should put it longer or that s for anyways any of the both maybe I don t really know what a shutter is For those participants who did use some of their camera settings there were cases where they could not accurately describe how these features work and how they affect capturing the image I do the white balance thing sometimes I don t know what it

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