Socio-Technical Perspectives on Digital Photography

Scientific Digital Photography Use by Marine Mammal Researchers

Eric T. Meyer, PhD

Oxford Internet InstituteUniversity of OxfordUnited Kingdom

eric.meyer@oii.ox.ac.ukhttp://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/meyer

ASIS&T presentation for the ProQuest Doctoral Dissertation of the Year AwardColumbus, Ohio, USA, October 27, 2008

Source: Image from NOAA, Image ID: sanc0602, NOAA's Sanctuaries Collection

Dissertation completed in 2007 at:

School of Library and Information ScienceIndiana University, BloomingtonUSA

Switching from Film to Digital cameras

Several possible results• Simple substitution resulting in minor elaborations?• Greater efficiencies and ‘better’ science?• Unintended consequences (both positive and negative)

with implications throughout the domain?

Photography Domains

Meyer, E.T. (2008). Digital Photography. In St. Amant, K. and Kelsey, S. (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Computer Mediated Communication. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.

Socio-Technical Interaction Networks (STIN) Strategy

Identify a relevant population of system interactors Identify core interactor groups Identify incentives Identify excluded actors and undesired interactions Identify existing communication forums Identify resource flows Identify system architectural choice points Map architectural choice points to socio-technical

characteristics

Sources: Kling, R., McKim, G., & King, A. (2003). A Bit More to IT: Scholarly Communication Forums as Socio-Technical Interaction Networks. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 54(1), 46-67.

Meyer, E. T. (2006). Socio-technical Interaction Networks: A discussion of the strengths, weaknesses and future of Kling's STIN model. In J. Berleur, M. I. Numinem & J. Impagliazzo (Eds.), IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, Volume 223, Social Informatics: An Information Society for All? In Remembrance of Rob Kling (pp. 37-48). Boston: Springer.

Marine Mammalogy

Source: All images from NOAA, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration

Photo-identification

Dolphins

Photo-identification

Humpback whales

Photo-identification

Humpback whales

Origins of photo-identification

“The original seed of the idea…came from talking around the campfire… It was one of these fun things where ideas come to fruition independently due to synergism and the overall status of the sciences. In the 50s, I don’t think anyone would have really come up with that idea... I remember telling [a prominent scientist in 1971] about this idea of photo-identifying, and he said, ‘Don’t do it. It is not worthwhile. You’re barking up the wrong tree. You can’t do it, you’ll be disappointed. The only way to do it is to catch them and brand them.’ But, of course, they use photo-identification now very successfully.“

Respondent discussing development of photo-id methods in the 1970s

Source: National Geographic January 2007: http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0701/feature2/index.html

Methods

Multi-site case study ‘Following a thing’ (Marcus, 1995)

Participants

Data in the field

Matching techniques on screen (manual and automated)

DARWIN

NOAA-Mizroch

DIGITS

Matching techniques on paper

Research Questions

20

Photo-ID process: film

Field photos

External lab film developi

ng

Time = relative size of arrow (thick=longer time)

Printing or sleeving Labeling Organizin

g

Identification

Analysis

LEGEND

In field

At lab

External to project

Shot logs

21

Photo-ID process: digital

Field photos

Download, backup, initial

organizing

Printing (in some cases)

Labeling and

organizing

Data entry

Identification

Analysis

Time = relative size of arrow (thick=longer time)

LEGEND

In field

At lab

Summary logs

22

Photo-ID process: changes

Field photos

Download, backup, initial

organizing

Printing (in some cases)

Labeling and

organizing

Data entry

Identification

Analysis

Time = relative size of arrow (thick=longer time)

LEGEND

In field

At lab

Summary logs

• Quick feedback• Less loss of data• More time at end

of long days• Storage issues

• More photographs

• More complex info systems

• Database designers

• IT staff• Skilled users

• More animals• Larger catalogs• Better health

• Instant feedback• Efficiency• Better coverage• Less selective

shooting styles

• Less detail• Less tedium

Dealing with the digitals

Rita Price: But the other thing we do, years ago when we first started the digital stuff, I’d get an external hard drive and we’d back everything up on the external hard drive. Plus, we’d make CDs of everything. So, the problem was, you know, before all I had to do was make a label and put it around the film. Now, I’m processing and batching and renaming and trying to find all these, okay now it’s 07CA001 (for roll “1”), ‘D’ for digital, 00 for Orcinus Orca, 001 for frame 1; and it’s just like, “Oh my god.” And me being not raised up with computers and stuff…I mean it was a cool tool and everything like that; I loved it. But all of a sudden when we got back to the ship we’re processing all this stuff and you’re looking at a couple hours worth of work…. And all of a sudden my computer that I had initially was [working] all night long [on] the batch rename or converting to .tiffs or something; I can’t remember which one it was. It took forever, you know? I’d wake up in the middle of the night and I’d see the thing flashing that it got stuck, and I’d have to…oh god! [laughing]

So anyway. That’s kind of the deal with the digitals.

Research Questions

Sharing

Dr. Marcia Parrett: It just it’s complicated – so, right now I have two data bases; one on my older data from 2003 back, which was all of the data collected on film, and now I have a new…database that’s all the data collected on digital.. So, this spring, I’m actually going to [location]…and we have a collaborative agreement where we share data back and forth and we’d kept it pretty much in the same format except we need to get more on the same page and we’re going to work with their computer guy up there at the end of May and really get our databases uniform. Maybe then, it won’t be all…the data won’t be the same but they’ll be the same format.

Idiosyncratic systems

The standards issue

Robert Newton: And if you don’t have a really good filing system standardized, that doesn’t change every time someone thinks it might be better done a different way. So I’m kind of waiting, I guess, to see it really stabilizes with a naming protocol and a filing protocol that is not going to wander every time someone comes up with a new software for digital pictures. That happens frequently and you’ll get, people send us pictures off a camera and they’ll be in files maybe a Canon software, or a Nikon one. And you can convert them all to jpegs and fart around with them but, basically, I don’t want to be a film processor.

Organizing digital photos

Organizing digital photos

Field-based system?

Grid

Boat-based

Automated matching

Database

Cameras

GPSPeriodicuploadautomatically

Analysts fromdistributedorganizations

Combine with other data:

Environment, ecology,

oceanography, etc.

EnvironmentalData

Ruggedizedtablets

Eric T. Meyer, PhDOxford Internet Institute

University of Oxford

eric.meyer@oii.ox.ac.ukhttp://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/meyer

Presentation available at: http://www.slideshare.net/etmeyer

Special thanks for support from:

Howard RosenbaumNoriko HaraPnina ShachafBarry Bull

Rob KlingMichelle Osborne

Source: Image from NOAA, Image ID: anim0840, NOAA's Ark - Animals Collection

Oxford e-Social Science Project