SightPhoto Blog

Here are some brief links to interesting stories of note:

A recently released study by the Consumer Electronics Association (www.CE.org) had several interesting findings. First, more than 90 percent of digital camera owners consider the camera to be their primary picture-taking device, despite the availability of many convergence electronics, like cell phones and video cameras. Second, less than half of consumers surveyed archive their digital photos, or are even concerned about potentially losing their digital media files.

Beware of sending especially good photos out to have prints made. Your photofinisher might suspect you of being professional, or something. A story in the Austin American Statesman tells of a conflict between photofinishers trying to abide by copyright laws by not printing the illegally scanned work of professional photographers, and advanced amateur photographers who just want a nice 8 x 10 from their latest shoot.

With the blurring of lines between amateur and professional photographers, William Ewing discusses what distinguishes emerging young photography stars. A new book he helped edit, "reGeneration: 50 Photographers Of Tomorrow," was the result of a search through photography schools for distinctive new voices. Among his conclusions: "The traditional genres that have dominated art photography for a century are now largely passé. The nude, the classical portrait, the sublime natural landscape - all have been largely dismissed, or are fading away as meaningful categories."

Glad to recently receive a review copy of Shelter From the Storm, which showcases the New Mexico photography of Kirk Gittings. It's in part a retrospective of a productive 25 plus years of landscape and architectural photography by this accomplished craftsman. But, the collection of photos is more than a scatter-shot portfolio; the theme of man-made structures and their relationship to the environment is what makes this a much more thoughtful body of work.

Gittings was first attracted by the remains of ancient Puebloan civilizations, stone structures gentlty melting into the surrounding landscape. He moves forward in time, looking at abondoned churches and ghost towns, before applying his skills to modern Southwestern-style homes. Having this collection of architectural studies juxtaposed was slightly disconcerting: I began looking at the present-day homes of the well-to-do with an anthropologist's eye, and began wondering what life would have been like amidst the graceful stonework of the ancients. It's a welcome journey through the eyes of a talented photographer.

Nothing like a new toy. I got my Lensbaby today. I'd been intrigued by ads I saw in magazines and after studying their website, decided to pony up my $99 for one of the "original" Lensbabies. So, what is it? It's a nifty primitive lens on a bellows that allows you to play with the focusing plane to your heart's content. The inventor, Craig Strong, was looking to bring Holga-like effects into the digital age. To my eye, the results are reminiscent of the glass plate era, when optics weren't quite as good and depth of field harder to achieve. At any rate, here are a couple of quick snaps I did this evening:

A fellow Keith and good friend (Keith Philpott, that is) sent me a link to a Czech site devoted to pinhole photography, on which the author, David Balihar, details his recreation of a classic pinhole camera, the "Dirkon." The Dirkon, made from stiff paper, is a functioning pinhole camera which uses 35mm film -- and the fun part is, it looks like a 35mm SLR, also. The author includes some examples of photos he took with his Dirkon, which served to remind me how surprisingly good the photos from a pinhole camera can be.

There's also a link to World Pinhole Day on the above site. Sorry to say, the most recent day, April 24, 2005, just passed without me having a chance to participate, but there's always next year. In the meantime, there are tons of (surprisingly good) pinhole camera photographs done by participants from around the world -- who were obviously more hip to the (whole) pinhole thing than me.

Hugh Symonds sends along notice of his website (www.hupix.net) which features a portfolio of nature images -- studies of water and leaves -- "created using Sharp GX20 mobile phone." These images give a good name to cellphone cameras, devices that were initially portrayed as being for geeks who wanted to sneak photos of babes. The market will determine whether this particular convergence make sense or not, but certainly the quality of the photos cellphone cameras can take is getting better all the time.

Soon, you'll have to expect that anyone wielding a phone also has a camera, and it seems those in authority haven't quite figured out how to deal with this phenomenon. The International Herald Tribune had an interesting story recently "The digital world crosses a forbidden line" which said that despite a prohibition on photography as Pope John II's body lay in state in St. Peter's Basilica, many of the Italian "cellulare" snapped photos of the occasion using their cellphones. One commentator said this was the modern equivalent of past pilgrims, who might have taken away a piece of cloth from a saint's body. Interesting to see if these digital relics last as long as a treasured square of cotton.

From the time Kodak introduced the Brownie in 1900, a camera that made photography accessible to the masses, literally billions of images have been snapped. Most of those images came home in a paper envelope, got passed around once at a family gathering, then were forgotten in a shoebox or a drawer.

The combination of the Web and the digital camera has changed all that. Picture in your mind all the images reduced to packets of digital information, flowing out over the internet as attachments to emails, or being shared on sites like Shutterfly, Flickr, etc., etc.

A couple of noteworthy Web projects tap into the stream of photos in unique ways. Montage-a-google lets you put in a search term -- Colorado, or poodle, let's say -- and the applications pulls back 20 images from the Google index, arranging them into a cool collage of images. (Okay, after I wrote "poodle" as an example, I figured I better actually try it -- the results made me kind of nauseous, so consider yourself warned).

Another fascinating project, 10 by 10, takes an hourly snapshot of the current images and words flowing from the news services. For a moment, the river of time is frozen, and can be examined -- both a compelling and disturbing experience.