Spot the ball

Do you remember those 'spot the ball' competitions of a few decades ago? They were the forerunners of more contemporary search puzzles such as Where's Wally? And I've found, on my shelves, one of those Where's Stig? books, an offshoot of the old Top Gear BBC series, full of intensely crowded scenes in which you have to discover various objects and characters, the Stig among them. My copy dates from 2010. Clearly I needed cheering up at that time!

Anyway, the principle is the same. There's a scene, and within it are one or more hard-to-spot things. It's usually not very easy to find them, but then that's the point of the puzzle. It passes time pleasantly and not too frustratingly. I don't go for puzzles nowadays, because I've got other things to fill my time with. But I'm not knocking them; and now I've got Where's Stig? out, I'm going to leaf through it, as the scenes are fascinating, almost works of art, and certainly very amusing.

So here's a puzzle scene for my readers. 

I've been scanning my prints of Brighton, photos I took there in the 1990s. These are now old enough to have some historical value, and might be interesting to various kinds of people, such as local historians. For instance, my old shots of Brighton's West Pier, which was allowed to fall into terminal decay, and eventually destroyed by storm and fire in the early 2000s - although the gaunt iron skeleton of its outermost part remains to this day, a shameful reproach to the City council. One of my Flickr albums is devoted entirely to the West Pier, including my December 2002 shots of its collapse and death in the wind and crashing waves.

Well, here's another Brighton scene, a calmer, sunnier one. It's a black-and-white photo I took in 1993. It shows Bartholemew Square in The Lanes. Look at it carefully, and see if you can spot what makes it the kind of shot that deserves a 'Restricted' rating, according to Flickr, the online photo-hosting website.

If you read my last post, you'll know that Flickr objected to one of my recent street shots in London. This shot.

A telephone kiosk with a striking poster stuck to its door - the subject of my photo - and around that poster, numerous fliers offering the scantily-clad services of certain ladies. In that instance, I could easily see why Flickr - as self-appointed guardian of public morality - might want to be careful about hosting such a picture, even though they mistook its real point. They got it wrong, but I saw no point in arguing. It remains unpublished.

But that picture of a square in The Lanes? What could possibly be amiss with it?

Flickr let it be uploaded, but sent me an immediate message that, in their view, it should be labelled 'Restricted' - or rather, that was the view of their automatic 'Moderation Bot'. (Click on these images to enlarge them)

To be fair, they did say that I could review the bot's opinion and amend the 'safety level' to something more appropriate, so long as I bore Flickr's standards clearly in mind. I adopted this course, and changed the rating of the shot to 'safe'. Because it was.

Flickr's bot had picked up something in my photo that set the alarm bells ringing. Have you spotted what it might be yet? 

As is usual in black-and-white shots, the picture is strong on patterns and shapes. I'm guessing that the bot thought it recognised something dodgy - the vertical columns? The distant pizza restaurant?  

My best guess - derived from Flickr's pouncing on the fliers on that London telephone kiosk - is that the bot 'saw' what it thought was a bulging pair of women's boobs. Look for the word 'GALILEO'S' on the left edge of the picture, and let your eye shift rightwards to the end of the gable, where there are two round white objects close together. They are in fact lamps on stalks, attached to an iron upright. But the bot may have 'seen' something else. 

My second-best guess is that the lady who is crossing her legs on the seat in the lower right corner of the picture somehow aroused the bot's antipathy. Dear me! I'd better stop crossing my own legs in public, just in case a bot spots me doing it. I don't want to get fellow-photographers into trouble if I appear in their shots, apparently flaunting my age-withered limbs to bad intent.

This latest intervention by Flickr has really stirred me up. I take lots of pictures of graffiti and street art. Will these get me constantly in difficulty with Flickr? Will I have to self-censor, to be on the safe side?

Sigh.