Author Topic: History of the most viewed image in the world (Read 1903 times)

Francois · « **on:** April 09, 2014, 11:06:46 PM »

You'll definitely be surprised when you discover what it actually is and on what camera it was actually shot!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVXY8OEZAEQ

FrankE · « **Reply #1 on:** April 10, 2014, 02:11:25 AM »

great story, thanks for posting. Hurray for the RB67 and Velvia….(and film)….

zapsnaps · « **Reply #2 on:** April 10, 2014, 12:43:08 PM »

'The most viewed image in the world'? What!? You mean it's not one of mine?

Francois · « **Reply #3 on:** April 10, 2014, 01:18:36 PM »

I must admit I was a bit disappointed to learn that too

This got me thinking a lot about images in general. Isn't it a bit paradoxical that the most viewed image isn't one of Ansel Adams, or Walker Evans. It's not one in an advertising campaign, not is it one from the news media. I never thought of the desktop wallpaper as something worth noticing... yet I think this is the power of this image: you don't notice it yet you stare at it for hours on end...

Paul Mitchell · « **Reply #4 on:** April 10, 2014, 01:41:05 PM »

S'funny I always thought it was this one...

http://www.popartuk.com/sport/tennis-girl-pp32602-poster.asp

SLVR · « **Reply #5 on:** April 10, 2014, 02:57:48 PM »

Maybe there should be a NSFW warning with that...

zapsnaps · « **Reply #6 on:** April 10, 2014, 03:09:41 PM »

Re tennis girl: Wow! Did you see that? They had white tennis balls in those days.

Ed Wenn · « **Reply #7 on:** April 10, 2014, 08:36:23 PM »

Fascinating, François. Many thanks for posting that clip.

Francois · « **Reply #8 on:** April 10, 2014, 08:51:28 PM »

You're welcome

Phil Bebbington · « **Reply #9 on:** April 11, 2014, 07:40:09 AM »

I'm with you, Paul. But, perhaps we are men of a certain age.

mcduff · « **Reply #10 on:** April 11, 2014, 12:30:51 PM »

Haha, ya Phil that poster was in every guys dorm room, many moons ago. It has a bit of a story too. It sounds like she was not compensated at all for her work as a model for that poster that seemed to be reproduced a billion times.

Regarding the bliss photo: I never really liked it and usually changed it as a background - perhaps because my house was being bombarded with the Teletubbies at the time! ;-)

But it was an interesting vid to watch. I always assumed it had the bejesus photoshopped out of it (which incidentally correlates to me not liking it as an image). I also don't fully buy that it was not tweaked much as it is a crazy saturated image. Now he mentions Fuji but I don't think he mentions the film - does anyone know of a fuji film that would be _that_ saturated without a lot of curve tweaking?

Francois · « **Reply #11 on:** April 11, 2014, 03:46:05 PM »

It's definitely that Velvia look...
But also consider that it was scanned using turn of the millennium equipment. That possibly didn't give it as much subtility as today's gear.

Late Developer · « **Reply #12 on:** April 11, 2014, 03:52:17 PM »

"Most viewed" perhaps. But surely not by choice.

Francois · « **Reply #13 on:** April 11, 2014, 09:13:00 PM »

Well... you can always change it on XP.

I've just installed Win7 Starter on my rickety old Windows machine and you can't change the background on that one.

zapsnaps · « **Reply #14 on:** April 13, 2014, 08:51:24 AM »

As for film type, I'm with Francois - it's almost certainly Velvia, by the green tones. I think it may have been rated at 32, rather 50, which is what I used rate it at around the millenium. Scan it using the technology of the time and I reckon it's about there.

I also agree with another point made in this thread - it's not viewed out of choice. If this wasn't the default start-up picture, would it have been more popular than the great 20C images which come to mind more intuitively? I doubt it. Like most, I've seen it loads of times, but never actually looked at it once until reading this thread. And now I've looked at it, it leaves me cold.

zapsnaps · « **Reply #15 on:** April 13, 2014, 09:00:09 AM »

ps: one other point. Most (viewed) does not mean best. The most purchased car brand, isn't the best. I also don't want to drink the world's best selling beer/Scotch/wine. It occurs to me that 'most' often means appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Anyone long to own the world's best selling camera?

tkmedia · « **Reply #16 on:** April 14, 2014, 01:00:10 AM »

best selling camera..... An Argus brick perhaps? Maybe a brownie? later... k1000? AE1?

zapsnaps · « **Reply #17 on:** April 14, 2014, 04:12:10 PM »

TK MEDIA: - you have me there - I would quite like to own an Argus C3 Brick! But not it I had to swap it for my Leicas or Blad.

hookstrapped · « **Reply #18 on:** April 15, 2014, 12:42:48 AM »

Most viewed owing to a corporate monopoly equals most innocuous image imaginable

Francois · « **Reply #19 on:** April 15, 2014, 01:59:03 PM »

Quite true...