We announced Sony’s reveal of the PlayStation 5 last week but seems some individuals will be have a budget rethink all the same after a reported Image shared on Flickr crashed hundreds of Android smartphones.
San Diego-based scientist Gaurav Agrawal has emerged as the photographer behind the controversial image that caught headlines for crashing many Android phones recently.
Just like many freelance photographer would do, Agrawal took that image at Saint Mary Lake in Glacier National Park, Montana, back in August last year of a sunset landscape which he later uploaded on Flickr without knowing the fact that it would become viral — for just about all the wrong reason.
Who is Gaurav Agrawal
Indian-origin photographer. He started his journey with landscape photography as a hobbyist — perhaps by hijacking what was initially the interest of his wife.
He got his first camera phone as the instrument to capture scenes in his frames back in 2006. But that was just a beginning.
Afterwards, he got his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, has been selected as a part of National Geographic photo assignments. He said that one of the photographs he took at the Salton Sea of the Great White American Pelicans was even selected as the cover page of the yearly calendar of the Audubon Society of North America.
Furthermore, he has won various photo competitions earlier, including one at the University of California, San Diego, where he did his post-doctoral work.
But then, his smartphone crashing image might just have skyrocketed his popularity in the tech world with renowned YouTubers and major tech sites all detailing on his beautiful and awesome-esque image.
What image did Agrawal upload to Flickr?
Just as we stated above, the image was of a Lake in Glacier National Park, Montana captured using a Nikon DSLR and uploaded on Agrawal’s Flickr profile on September 16, 2019.
However, before sharing publicly, he explained on Flickr that he used the image editing tool Adobe Lightroom through which he changed the format to ProPhotoRGB.
Before you get super confused on what ProPhotoRGB Image formatting is and probably asking yourself
According to PetaPixel, ProPhotoRGB is a newer color space and default work extension for Adobe Lightroom edits that has a much wider gamut than normal sRGB and is
more in line with modern digital cameras.
Smartphones won’t even be able to decode and display the colours…
However, sRGB has a relatively narrow gamut but is designed for consistency and compatibility for all photos shared on the Web.
This ProPhotoRGB image extension isn’t supported by some Android devices and, thus, resulted in issues with several phones.
What has Agrawal said about the recent developments to his photograph?
No doubt, the crashes with that single photo have ultimately made Agrawal to switch to another format from now on but he had a lot to say to the public on his controversial image.
However, people weren’t even aware that the image was captured by Agrawal until he gave an interview to BBC earlier last week.
He told Indian news site, Gadgets 360, that the original source of the image wasn’t public as it was mainly shared by a third-party wallpaper site that didn’t credit him and was circulating the image without any due credits.
Agrawal told Indian news site Gadgets 360 that he got to know about the crashes users faced from his image from some of his followers on Flickr.
After receiving comments and messages on the platform, he searched the term “Android crashing wallpaper” on
Google to understand the issue.
“I would have been very disappointed if something like that would happen to me,” he said. “There were some websites touting conspiracy theories that it may be a targeted attack by China or Russia.
In the midst of a trade row between the United States and the Chinese, this made it even more unsettling.
“It was alarming to say the least,” Agrawal, 41, told Gadgets 360 in a conversation. “I felt sympathetic to people who may have lost their data and photographs due to the crash.”
Bottom Line
The crashes with that single photo have ultimately made Agrawal to switch to another format from now on.
Furthermore, he’s planning to expand his photography reach by joining Instagram — alongside maintaining his Flickr profile that has over 10,600 followers.
“I deeply care about my viewers and look forward to their appreciation as well as constructive criticism,” he said.
Though iOS devices were not affected, they always seem to have their way
The accidental Android crashing wallpaper issue could have escalated quickly had conspiracy theorist been allowed to have their way.
However, if you find yourself amongst the crew that went ahead to check out the photo on your smartphones, you now have a new tech budget to handle.
Originally Posted On NaijaTechGuy
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