Photography

I’ve been an amateur shutterbug for years.

Andy Rosen: Early punk photos

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Jim Kerr, Simple MindsI came across an article in today’s Seattle Times about Andy Rosen, who’d taken a lot of photographs of the early punk scene in London — and is just now starting to showcase a lot of never before seen photos on Flickr.

Rosen had a successful photography career from 1976 to 1984, completely embedding himself in the early punk-rock scene in London.

He began as the bands were starting up, and by the time the punk-rock scene exploded, he had a real in. He lived with some of the musicians and was friends with some people who became musicians.

But back then you needed money and more than a card reader to see your shots, so a lot of Rosen’s film never got processed. It got boxed up and stored at mum and dad’s. That includes all the photos he finally uncovered and developed last year, and sat on until now.

Dave Gahan, Depeche ModeThe collection he’s put up so far (and, apparently, he’s just getting started), is amazing. Simple Minds, Depeche Mode, Bauhaus, Siouxie Sioux, The Sex Pistols…tons of shots that have never been published before.

On top of that, he’s set up a weblog where he’s recounting some of the stories behind the photos — the photo shoots themselves, his relationships to the subjects, how he was able to get the shots he did. Tons of incredible documentation of the time and the musicians.

For instance, a very early performance by The Clash at a small Boxing Day 1979 gathering with about fifty family and friends in attendance:

Joe Strummer, The ClashAt the time the Clash were just another punk band – better than most but definately not the Rock Stars they were to become. Funny thing was I shot about 10 rolls of black and white and decided not to develop them. Money was tight in those days – so I would sometimes just not bother processing the film if I felt the band was not worthy of the expense. Looking back on it what an idiot I was. Years (two decades) later I stumbled on a whole bag of unprocesed film I had left In london at my mum and dads. There they were clearly labaled THE CLASH. I excitedly processed them and to my amazment I relaized I had captured a precious moment in Rock And Roll history – which might never have been seen. A band in all their innocent glory – playing to fifty people – moments before they were to etch themselves into punk history as one of the most prolific Punk Bands ever.

This is great, great stuff. Thanks for sharing all this, Andy!

Lens Lust

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The other day, I had a customer come in looking for a specific lens — Canon’s 85mm f/1.8. It wasn’t one we had in the store, so as we started placing the order for the lens, we got to talking. Turns out she had a Digital Rebel XT, and she said that she had “a lot of photographer friends on the internet” that had recommended this lens to her.

“Do you have a photolog on the ‘net or anything?” I asked.

“Actually, I use a site called Flickr.”

I grinned. “Nice…I’m on there too.”

“What’s your name on there? It would be funny if we knew each other.”

“djwudi.”

Her eyes got a little big, she grinned, and held out her hand. “I’m Myla Kent!”

We’d been watching each other’s photos for some time now, and it was fun to actually run into each other. We chatted for a bit, and she even gave me a very nice compliment, remarking that she was surprised that I didn’t have a digital SLR after I mentioned that I was still using my little Canon A95. “They don’t look like point-and-shoot photos.” Hehe — yay!

Last night during a slow point at work I got a little curious, and found a similar lens to pop onto the store’s Nikon D70s (my current dream camera) — Nikon’s 50mm f/1.4 (about a 75mm after the digital conversion). Oh, wow…such a nice lens. I spent a good half hour shooting randomly around the store and experimenting. Man that lens has a nice shallow depth of field. I want!

Heh.

I can’t even afford the camera, and I’m lusting after a $320 lens to add on to it.

Someday…

iTunes “Lucky” by Girls Under Glass from the album German Mystic Sound Sampler Vol. I (1989, 4:07).

Think of the Children!

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Tangentially related to my being asked to delete photographs I’d taken of children last 4th of July, a rather absurd situation from New York: a woman was ticketed for sitting on a park bench because she didn’t have any children.

It’s an only in New York story. A woman was given a ticket for sitting on a park bench because she doesn’t have children.

The Rivington Playground on Manhattan’s East Side has a small sign at the entrance that says adults are prohibited unless they are accompanied by a child. Forty-seven-year-old Sandra Catena says she didn’t see the sign when she sat down to wait for an arts festival to start. Two New York City police officers asked her if she was with a child. When she said no, they gave her a ticket that could bring a one thousand dollar fine and 90 days in jail.

The city parks department says the rule is designed to keep pedophiles out of city parks, but a parks spokesman told the Daily News that the department hoped police would use some common sense when enforcing the rule.

The spokesman told the paper that ticketing a woman in the park in the middle of the day is not the way you want to enforce the rule.

Yes, of course, pedophilia is a terrible thing. But this approach of assuming anyone who so much looks at a child that isn’t theirs is a pedophile is paranoid to the point of ludicrousness, and incredibly offensive to boot.

(via Joel Blain)

Best Viewed Large

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I have to admit to a certain curiosity about the tendency for so many people to add “best viewed large” to the descriptions of a photo they’ve uploaded to Flickr. Two things are constantly popping into my head when I see “best viewed large” added to a photo:

  1. Is there really any photo of decent quality that won’t be “better” (that is, clearer, easier to distinguish fine details, and showing less JPEG distortion) at a larger size?

  2. How long (assuming it hasn’t happened already) before someone uploads a picture of a penis with this phrase tacked onto the description?

Chances are, if I like a photo enough, I’m going to see if there’s a larger resolution available whether or not someone tells me to; conversely, if a photo doesn’t interest me, I’m not likely to try downloading a larger version just to see if it magically gets better.

All in all, it seems a little silly.

iTunes “Under Pressure” by Queen from the album Classic Queen (1981, 4:03).

No Cameras at Bumbershoot?

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According to the Bumbershoot website:

What is the camera policy at Bumbershoot?
Cameras are not allowed at Bumbershoot—please leave them at home.

So, there’s no public photography allowed at Bumbershoot this year?

The best word I can come up with for this is ludicrous.

Anyone out there have any more info? What’s the deal here? And how are they going to be enforcing it?

(And anyone feel like getting together on one of the days and blatantly defying the ban?)

(via Seattle Metroblogging)

Interestingness

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I’m probably one of the last people to actually make mention of this, but the big news in the Flickrverse over the past few days has been the introduction of two new features: tag clusters and ‘interestingness’.

Tag clusters are a great addition, analyzing photos by all the tags associated with them and then ‘clustering’ them with other photos with similar groups of tags. This allows for distinguishing photos of feline tigers from operating systems code named tiger, even though they both share the common ‘tiger‘ tag.

‘Interestingness‘ is much more vague. Here’s how Flickr explains it:

There are lots of things that make a photo ‘interesting’ (or not) in the Flickr. Where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing. Interestingness changes over time, as more and more fantastic photos and stories are added to Flickr.

In a sense, it works in a somewhat similar method to Google’s Pagerank system, using community interaction with the photos to determine what’s catching the communal eye at any given point. Page views, number of comments, how many people have marked a photo as a favorite, and the tags and groups a photo is assigned to seem to play a part in how ‘interesting’ it is deemed. Obviously, this isn’t a qualitative ranking of the photo itself, and shouldn’t be seen that way, but it’s a very nifty way to go bouncing through the Flickrverse and discover photos you might not have found otherwise.

Each user has now gained a list of their top 200 ‘most interesting’ photos as determined by the system. I was somewhat amused to check mine and find that of my top five, only one of them is actually a picture that I’ve taken — the other four are screenshots or satellite photos from other sources. I think I’ve got a lot more photos that are a lot more interesting than those — but then, a computer algorithm is only going to do so well at figuring this stuff out.

Here, then, are my current top five ‘most interesting’ photos:

Satellite view of the line to view Pope John Paul II laying in state. Punk Love I - Innocence Quicktime 7 rocks! Steve Jobs is Willy Wonka. Or something. My walk to work

And, for entertainment purposes, my current ‘least interesting’ photos (though these change more frequently, and as the ranking only counts 200 out of the 3492 photos I’ve uploaded so far, I guess they still count as pretty interesting…programmatically, at least):

Jake, Chris, Samantha, Jeff, Manuel, Josh, Seattle Weblogger's Meetup, Seattle, WA Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WA Gay Pride Parade, Seattle, WA Blowing Bubbles, Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WA 'Electric', Art Rage Studios, First Thursday Art Walk, Seattle, WA

iTunes “Somebody” by Veruca Salt from the album For the Masses: A Tribute to Depeche Mode (1998, 4:05).

Quick Black and White viewing in OS X

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A quick Mac OS X tip for photographers that I’ve found to be really handy in instances where you’d like to get an idea of how those color shots from your digital camera would look like when converted to black and white.

When you have your latest photos displayed in iPhoto (or whatever photo management software you use), just go to System Preferences > Universal Access and click the Use grayscale checkbox.

Simple Black and White previewing in OS X

Your entire display will switch to greyscale mode, and you can flip through your entire photo album to get an idea of which shots work in black and white and which don’t without having to tweak each photo that might work one-by-one. Obviously, it’s probably simple desaturation and not the same quality you’d get using Photoshop’s channel mixer or some other fancier technique, but it’s quite handy for a quick overview to narrow down which shots are the best candidates for black and white work.

iTunes “Running Wild” by Soup Dragons, The from the album Hotwired (1992, 4:02).

You dirty pedophile…

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I was having a good day wandering around Myrtle Edwards Park for the Fourth of Jul-Ivar’s festivities until someone sicced the security goons on me. Apparently a parent had decided that since I was taking pictures of kids playing in the surf at one of the small beach areas, I was some creepy scumbag who had to be brought to heel.

One security guy came up to me and pulled me aside, telling me that there had been complaints that I was taking pictures of children.

“Were you taking pictures of children?”

Well, yeah, I had been, along with quite a few other things. Knowing this was a battle I wasn’t about to win, I offered to delete the photos.

“Can I see your camera?”

I pulled up the picture display and scrolled to the most recent shots. Sure enough, there was the damning evidence — pictures of fully-clothed children, playing in the surf on a public beach during a public festival. He keyed his intercom and called another security guard over to look at the shots.

The two of them flipped through the shots, shaking their heads. Obviously, I was Bad People and had to be Brought Under Control. After watching me delete all the offending photos from my camera, they explained to me that while they couldn’t really prevent me from taking pictures, they would certainly be keeping an eye on me if I chose to remain in the area. “We’ll be watching you.”

That being quite the mood-killer, I figured it was best just to leave.

Now, before anyone accuses me of being too self-righteous, what bugs me the most isn’t that some parent might have been a little alarmed about some strange man taking pictures of their kid. What annoys me is the “guilty until proven innocent” mentality that prompted them to run to security instead of approaching me and either asking what I was doing or, if I’d taken any shots of their kid, to delete them. The same mentality that made the security personnel treat me as if in their minds, I was there for the sole purpose of taking pictures of children to go home and masturbate to (regardless of the many other shots of landscapes, water, Mt. Ranier, the Seattle skyline, and the tripod slung over my shoulder for fireworks shots later on in the evening). The same attitude that finished the little interview — after I’d voluntarily deleted all the shots, with them looking over my shoulder — with the warning that, “we’ll be watching you.”

So, I’m back at home. I’ve got a ticket to watch Batman in about half an hour, and then I’ll see if I feel like wandering back down there to try to get some shots of the fireworks or not.

Happy Fourth of July everyone. You know — independence, liberty, freedom, and civil rights and all that.