Google Image Search
Did you know that you can now search with Google by image? There are four ways to search by image: 1) Drag and drop, 2) Upload an image, 3) Copy and paste the URL for an image, 4) Right-click an image on the web. The title link takes you to Google's step-by-step guide and video. The big question is: Will it prove useful? Not to me, it didn't.
posted by Unknown @ 1.7.11
4 comments
4 Comments:
Interesting. The copy&paste and URL methods didn't seem to work at all - but using "upload" from local filestore triggered a search ok.
Tried a few well-known public statues.
A nice clear view of Cellini's "Perseus" gave a successful match to "Loggia dei lanzi". However a similar clear view of the copy in Trentham Gardens gave no match. The "visually similar" suggestions for the latter were way off target - and did not include any of the much-pictured original in Florence.
A clear view of Astrid Zydower's "Orpheus" at Harewood House was a success - giving several matches.
Carl Milles "Orpheus Fountain" in Stockholm also failed.
All these pictures were originally extracted from Flickr so at least a hit on the original might have been expected.
Most of the "visually similar" suggestions had no obvious compositional or subject similarity. Yet there are many much-pictured statues that would have been potentially similar.
A possible tool to help identify statues where the author has given no location information and the subject is not obvious. However on these results the jury is still out.
Hi, Kris
I'm glad you had some success with it. Hopefully Google will refine this potentially useful tool. So many statues have foreign names that visual recognition is the only way to track them down. I have a photo of one superb statue in a French graveyard with only a number instead of its artist/title,
Have you come across this website?
http://www.scultura-italiana.com/
By the way, I'm changing my ISP and having problems with my new email address on Outlook Express. London Art News is fine, but my new email address refuses to send any mail! I'll contact you as soon as it's sorted out.
Some titles, even in English, have no significance. Brookgreen Gardens have two sculptures that might be titled "boy with squirrel".
At the right viewing angle Walker Hancock's sculpture obviously fits its eponymous title.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51366706@N00/373632002/
However Chester Beach's sculpture's title of "Sylvan" is not obvious.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ripleymb/4422610620/
It sometimes takes years before serendipity provides the sculptor/title for a Flickr picture.
The following example had several cases of serendipity over a period of several weeks earlier this year:
The Academy of Architecture catalogue for 1908 (Googlebooks) has a picture of Richard Goulden's "Ambition of youth" for the Carnegie fountain in Dunfermline. A picture in the online Carnegie College magazine shows it after it was moved and restored in 2010. However the renovated Alhambra Theatre also has a modern? copy in a 360 degree pan shot of the foyer. A totally separate 1936 casting is seen in an old picture about the ISC, Windsor. Even that rare attribute is known, the amateur model's name (or rather - one of the two models).
It would have been useful (albeit optimistic) for the Google Picture search to have found all those instances - which are all closely related to the story of the sculptor himself.
Even better would have been recognition that the same figure was used for the Dover War Memorial - with the pre-war victory laurel being poignantly replaced by a flaming crucifix. That modified figure also appears in the Newhaven cemetery where Richard Goulden is buried.
PS. Tried Google Picture with a few pictures of this statue. It managed to find the identical source picture of the ISC one - plus another unknown use of that picture. The "Visually Similar" were nothing like it in composition or subject. So it has some potential.
Hi again, Kris
I see you've been giving it a good workout, so it must be potentially a useful tool. I need to find that French cemetary statue to see if Google can give me some details. It is really annoying when you find the work of a master, but you don't know who it is.
Still working on Outlook. Once I get my address book saved off, I might try an update. Outlook Express is a bit old and creaky.
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