Metaphotographs: On represnting digital photo collections

Photos are an important means of sharing and reviewing personal history. As an individual act, photo browsing contributes to the formation and reinforcement of personal identity. As a social act, such as a visual aid for storytelling, it deepens social ties by introducing new personal information and strengthens the bonds of friendship through reminiscing over a shared past. While individual photographs are the primary sources of this information, there is information within the collection itself that tells a broader story of the photographed past. This story includes details about dates, people and events. It shows which of these reoccur within the collection and highlights prominent forces in a person’s life. This information is often lost or hard to find in current forms of digital photo collection management. As photo collections grow larger, it will be harder and harder to see “the big picture.” We present Photo Khipu, a visualization tool for photo collections as a fun and aesthetic way to make this information salient and enhance an individual’s story as told by their photographs. The visualization acts as “photo” of the collection in its ability to represent the story found within in a visually stimulating manner. In that way the visualization is a “metaphotograph.” Study participants reported that Photo Khipu allows them to easily “flip” through their collections. Also, despite abstracting away the thumbnail, goal‐directed browsing is “surprisingly easy” when a memorable color is used to represent the photo. Participants requested the ability to customize their metaphotographs suggesting a need for creation and editing tools.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Bongen, Kora A.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Karahalios, Karrie G.

• Photography
• Visualization
• Metaphotogaphs

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2010 Kora A. Bongen

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/18235

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/18235