In the last two days I have discovered more cool web sites than I have in the previous six months. If you haven’t already stumbled upon it, stumble upon is a great way to discover new sites. I am a regular net user, and I spend a lot of time trawling the web, but it’s easy to get bogged down in habit and routine. Stumble Upon breaks the habit, and throws you out into the universe to discover sites that fit with your specified interests. User rankings also strengthen the system. Of course you also get sent to some sites that are less than amazing, but with a few hours of stumbling, you’ll have enough interesting sites bookmarked to spend the next month looking at. Truly inspiring stuff.
Archive
One of my absolute favourite modern photographers is the Dutchman Erwin Olaf. His eye for composition is truly outstanding, and the subtlety and delicacy of his work is breathtaking. OK, some of his stuff is not at all subtle - some of his “gay” work is right in your face and very confronting (and brilliant nonetheless). But some of his series have a very quiet maturity to them, and a subtlety that I think in uncommon in modern photography. Particularly the series Rain, Hope and now Grief. Go to his web site and check out “Grief” and the “Grief Portraits”. If you haven’t seen his work before, check it all out. But Grief is truly inspirational work. It’s possible I’m very sensitive to this theme as my older brother went missing over a decade ago, and I have dealt with this topic at first hand, but I think it’s an extremely accessible human condition that we can all be touched by.
As far as aspirational photographers go, he is it for me. The decor, the models, the colour, the composition, the incredible and uncompromising attention to detail - all hallmarks of a truly professional artist. And he has his little quirks that have to make you smile. Keep an eye out for electrical leads and switches. He seems to place them in the majority of his work. What they represent I have no idea, but I like them. They break up the perfect lines a little and add a touch of organised chaos to what is a very very organised scene.
To see some of his commercial advertising work, check out this site.
And Erwin - if you are ever in Australia and need an assistant for free, please, please, please give me a call. 
Technorati Tags: Erwin Olaf, grief, great photographers, modern photography
I’m one of those people fascinated by technology. Particularly with its implementation in consumer electronics. If I was a wealthy man, I would have a very, very nice sound system, a top of the line computer or three, an extremely expensive digital SLR, plus any number of gadgets (ipod, mobile etc). As it is, I’m not wealthy at the moment, and so I make do with a good computer with a decent sound system, and an entry level digital SLR.
But since I purchased my last kit a couple of years ago, my camera has been rendered obsolete by two models, and my computer is now very middle of the road, instead of the cutting edge beast it was.
This is natural enough, but the cycles seem to be getting shorter and shorter. Less than three years, and my camera is nearly laughable?? And my computer’s lifespan is only expected to be three short years. Is that OK for something that cost $3000??
Being interested in photography / web design it seems essential that we throw lots of money at our equipment. $5-7000 every couple of years doesn’t seem to be unreasonable at all. And if you want to be a professional, it’s probably three times that at a bare minimum. But it’s starting to get to me. It’s killing my love for consumer electronics. For a start I don’t have that sort of money to throw around. But more to the point, I think it’s obscene that I am virtually forced to do that. Fair enough, one must purchase the latest if one really has to be “up to date” but it’s the life cycles of these products that I think is the problem. A $2500 digital SLR should hold its value and relevancy for more than two years!
It makes me want to become a gardener or something. Technology is becoming a consumer trap, or if you don’t haqve the cash, you are increasingly left out of the game. It used to be you could save up, purchase your equipment and expect it to serve you ten or twenty years. Certainly that was the case with top notch camera equipment. But the world has clearly changed, and these multinational companies have figured out that they can lock us into these absurd upgrade cycles, and we all jump on the bandwagon to keep up to the latest and greatest.
Personally, I’m not happy with my equipment. I need a better camera. If I had a Canon 1Ds MkIII for example, I’dbe happier than a pig in shit. But even that camera, which is the top of the tree as far as digital imaging goes, will be absolutely obsolete in as little as 7 years time. Think of that. It will have been superseded at least three times in that time. It will be like a 10D is now compared to a 4oD. Ancient, and out of date. You would be laughed out of town if you brought it out in a professional context. But is that reasonable? The picture quality would be the same. And considering the 1Ds Mk III, the image quality is absolutely superb. What is the 1ds MkVI going to be like? So much better? I don’t think so. When is enough enough? When will this craziness slow down, and quality cameras made to last 20 years again? When will computers last more than 3 years? Will we ever get off this tragic technological road we have embarked upon? When will anyone give a damn about the mountains of electronic waste clogging our landfills? When will it ever end?
Sorry to say, I think I already know the answer. Today however it is just difficult to cope with. Partly I am driven by jealousy, and as I said, if I was a rich man, I would have succumbed to the temptation long ago. I am the sort of guy who could spend $50,000 on consumer electronics tomorrow. I’d love to. But not having it, and trying to live without it makes me question the whole system. Maybe in the upper markets (Hasselblad, medium format etc) it’s not so pronounced, but even there, digital backs are getting bigger each year…
Hmmm… strange world we live in.
Technorati Tags: upgrade, digital madness, consumer electronics
If you have lived in denial, then there is no nowhere to hide. Led Zeppelin’s comeback concert, which over 20,000,000 attempted to get tickets for, has confirmed that indeed, they were and still are bigger than The Beatles, Elvis, or anyone else you could care to mention. The world has spoken! Led Zeppelin rock! No other band in history could have pulled off a reunion concert like they did (I didn’t go, but I’m going by the unanimous reviews), after 27 years since the band’s drummer John Bonham died and caused the dissolution of the best rock band the world has ever seen.
But they are back! BRING ON THE WORLD TOUR! The fans are clamoring. Come on Percy, you know you want to! Jimmy is dead set keen. As are the millions of fans worldwide who never got a chance… I was 15 in 1980 when Bonham died. It was one of those moments like when Lady Di died, or The World Trade center was attacked. I remember it vividly. I was devastated. I knew immediately that the band would stop. But now Jason Bonham keeps their integrity intact. It is a joyous thing for him no doubt. As was reported, when they all gave final bows the other night, Jason came in front of them and turned and genuflected before them. He is a great a fan as any of us. And from all accounts, he did his Dad proud. I’m sure he did. Jason knows the Zep catalog better than Jimmy himself.
Forgive my rambling post, but I am personally just so buzzed that this band did what so many bands before them have failed to do. Integrity has always been of the highest importance for Led Zeppelin. That’s why they were so disappointed by their previous tow disastrous reunions. They were not well planned or thought out, and dented their credibility a lot. Now that has been restored. Robert Plant has just made his best album in ten years at least (with Alison Krauss), and now Led Zeppelin are back, blowing people away and gaining a whole new generation of fans. It makes me smile, it really does.
I have been thinking more about workflow. I am a DAM and a DNG convert, and have been slowly trying to turn these approaches and tools into an efficient system. There are several workflow solutions, and it would appear that one of the most popular is the Bridge / iView Media Pro (now Expression Media) combination.
This approach seems to work well, particularly when used in conjunction with dng files. So far, so good. You can rate and tag all your files, and process them in Camera Raw, and then convert them to dng’s with its built in full size jpg preview, and then you have a very useful catalog. The way I see it is that you have an excellent workflow, but one that is of primary benefit to your raw files. But what about the work that’s done in Photoshop? You really need to have a secondary catalog for your master files, but can you get the same benefits from iview or Expression Media from tifs or psd files as you can with dngs? Obviously it makes sense to keep a master file for files where you have cloned stuff out or used layer masks or adjustment layers to improve the image. But master files take up a lot of room. 16bit layered files can fill more than 200MB each. What about taking the dng / camera raw approach a step further and somehow writing all the adjustment layers into the dng in a non destructive way? That way, you wouldn’t have this separation between a raw file catalog and a master file one. Is anyone following? I must admit this is just something I woke up with in my head this morning, so it’s not exactly really well considered, but there are not a lot of photographers whose work can be completely done in camera raw. If you can, well great. But for those who have a collection of raw files (or better, a collection of finely tuned dng files), as well as a collection of master files incorporating lots of adjustment layers and other corrections, then there is this issue of integration. I can’t see how the Bridge / iView Media Pro workflow really incorporates the master files. I suppose you just need a second catalog for them, and that catalogue might be just as useful as the raw one. I’m thinking here of the automated processes that you can get from Bridge or iView / EM, like web galleries, slideshows etc. Efficiency is very important for digital photographers. Understanding how to implement a good and efficient workflow is critical to that goal. These musings are just a way for me to work through the issues as I see them. Maybe I’m just not seeing clearly enough yet. I find the whole DAM thing to be a tad complicated. Hmmm…
Technorati Tags: DAM, workflow, camera raw, efficiency
Now tell me you could do that in the old days of film. Digital certainly has its advantages, and the ability to cut loose with the shutter is one of the main ones. If you take 1250 shots in two days as I just did, and assuming you are at least a reasonably proficient photographer (as I’d like to think I am) then it’s not that hard to come up with 2-300 really nice photos. That’s a ratio of somewhere between 1 in 6 and 1 in 4. In the old days, when you couldn’t afford to take so many shots, you might have, in the same circumstances, taken about 250 shots. The difference being that then, having to take a hell of a lot more care before pressing the shutter, the ratio would have invariably been a lot higher, possibly 1in 3 or 1 in 2. Still that would at best give you 125 great shots, compared to the 320 odd I rated as 2 star (I’m currently very frugal with my rating stars - I want some room for when I get better, you see :)).
So, what was the occasion for taking so many pictures? Well, I shot my first child care center. I did the photos for my daughter’s day care, and in fact I actually took closer to 1500 shots. I just didn’t count all the group shots, as you stand there taking 30 or 40 shots just to get one where they’re all smiling and have open eyes (and even then you have to be very lucky). But I spent two full days shooting the kids while they played, ate and slept. It was a real hoot. Kids are just so amazing to be around - their energy is incredible, and their perspective on life is a real tonic to a cynical 42 year old such as myself (OK, pat on the back time, it’s my birthday today - I’m getting old).
So in the last few days I have been rating and rating, and sorting and renaming, and in the end I hope to do a small exhibition and a whole lot of prints to the parents. It’s a lot different from the line them up against the wall type of shooting common to school shoots, but I wanted to get real shots of the kids, and not just bad portraits.
I will post some shots when I get some releases from the parents. There’s a lot of privacy issues obviously, but I hope to get model releases for most of the shots, so I can use them in folios and web sites and what have you.
But yeah, I just wanted to point out that good photography is not always about skill. You obviously need the technical skill to capture the light in the way you want to, but apart from that, throw a digital camera at kids for two days running, chances are you will come up with some absolute crackers. I did.
Technorati Tags: digital vs film, children’s portraits
With computers, the bottom line is that you can’t have enough backup. I have learnt this many times over the last 14 years. But I still keep learning it…
On Saturday my daughter was allowed her half hour on my computer to look at kids websites / games. She was on the Danish Radio web site when she called out to me that horrible phrase “Daddy, your screen is all blue”
Upon rebooting, there was a distinct clicking noise coming from the box in the vicinity of the hard disks. “Uh oh” I thought as I tried to remember when I’d last done a thorough backup. I had a long computerless weekend as I waited until Monday for the computer shop to open. I took it in, already knowing deep down that my disk had crashed and that I’d lost whatever I hadn’t backed up. I was guessing about 3 weeks.
I wish I knew how to shut them up. One of them is up in a tree outside my window, grunting like a …. well, grunting like a koala on bloody heat. Or is it the male that gets all noisy? I forget. Either it’s a horny male trying to get some action, or it’s a lusty she-bear trying to entice the horny male over to her tree. In either case I think I am in for a restless night. The racket they make is quite difficult to sleep through.
I saw a show on TV the other night that described how the Australian koala population was riddled with sexually transmitted diseases like chlamydiae, and the like, so maybe they are just a debauched species. I’m just jealous.
Some people claim ignorance when it comes to politics. Mostly I think it’s self chosen. They don’t want to know. It’s all too difficult. Or is it that they don’t know themselevs and what they believe in. After all, everyone has political beliefs. It’s impossible not to. Politics is how you feel about social justice, freedom of the press, national security, economic structures. Sure we mightn’t all have a really deep understanding of these complicated subjects, but we will have an idea where we stand on many of the issues if we just took our time to think about it.
Take Australia right now. A federal election is due to be called at any minute. We have had a conservative government in power for over a decade. We are experiencing an economic book, based on the resources sector, and unemployment is at an all time low. Sounds good doesn’t it. But it’s all spin as far as I’m concerned. The unemployment figures are as rubbery as water, and 2 hours a fortnight in a casual position is classed as a job. Any job security we ever had is gone, and now we have individual workplace agreements where the worker has to bargain (with what leverage I don’t know) with the employer directly. A typical AWA is all overtime and loading gone, and 2cents an hour in compensation. Yeah right.
And sure the economy is booming, but where is that money going? To the wealthy investors of the mining companies. They talk about trickle down economics, but I tell you in the real world, the trickle runs out long before it gets to the bottom end. In the real world living costs have increased about twofold while wages have gone up maybe 10%. The dream of home ownership is now firmly that - a dream for anyone but the wealthy. We have the most arrogant government we’ve ever had in power, and it’s time they WENT!
So watch the next election with interest. Kevin Rudd is likely to become the next Prime Minister of Australia, and this is because the majority of Australians can see through the amazing lies the government has been peddling for the last decade. Yes, we have been slow to wake up. But it’s happening.
Technorati Tags: politics, “Australian politics”, Labor, Rudd, election
I am thinking of writing a book. It would have a pithy title like “A Deconstruction of the world in 29 chapters”. One chapter for each letter of the alphabet. Yeah, yeah, I know the English alphabet has only 26 letters, but the Danish one has 29, so why not use it A would be for Alienation. Which is often how I feel in relation to the world in general. Maybe it’s just a habit I’ve fallen into. I know there are many different types of people in the world, but watching the news, going shopping in the mall, people seem all to focussed on shallow things, on clothes and looks and material possessions. Not that I don’t also focus on those things, but I feel as if this is all many people have in their lives. That they don’t think about and discuss more important things. Like ethics, love, compassion, good communication, forbearance and the like. I don’t get it when people say that they are not interested in politics for example. Sure, it’s a grubby realm to be sure, but politics is about the structure of our life. How can you not be interested in the structure we live our lives in? Maybe thinking I was different all my life has been a real negative, because it has certainly made me less socially adept than I would like. But if I had to quickly name two albums that represented what I felt about this issue, I’d choose Roger Waters’ Amused To Death, and The Cure’s Head on The Door. Go figure…
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