Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
I’ve been an amateur shutterbug for a long time. This tag is primarily for posts about photography and the associated tech.
Every so often, someone contacts me after finding one of my photos and asks permission to use it for one project or another. Here’s another: exhibit design firm PPI Design and Fabrication used this photo as part of an exhibit at the newly-opened KidsQuest Childrens Museum in Bellevue.
Prairie and I were able to stop by the museum this morning to find my photo…
“Trust (Never)” by K.M.F.D.M. from the album Glory (1994, 4:36).
After having some recurring problems with the Gallery software that we’d been using for the Hanscom Family Gallery, I decided to throw in the towel and talked dad into putting his Flickr account to use.
I’m so glad I did.
He’s been going through and scanning in a lot of old pictures that he and mom brought back from Florida after her parents died last year, and putting them up. Such great stuff in here!
Mom’s parents, my grandparents, Harold and Arline Ward.
My grandpa teaching swimming — probably at the YMCA, if I’m remembering correctly.
Mom in about 5th grade, dressed up as a clown for Halloween.
“La Vie Boheme B” by Original Broadway Cast from the album Rent (1996, 1:53).
One of the (few) downsides to my little Powershot A95 is that as a point-and-shoot style camera, it’s a touch limited as to what it can do — a standard 3x optical zoom, a fixed lens so no other lenses can be attached, no threads for filters…little things like that. Very normal for a point-and-shoot, of course, but at times, a wee bit limiting.
However, one of the nice things about the A95 is that it is possible to attach some accessories to it. Canon’s Powershot cameras include a detachable ring around the lens assembly that, when removed, reveals a mount point. Canon also supplies a few accessories that can attach to the mount: an adaptor tube, which can then have either a wide-angle or a telephoto lens attached to it. However, as the A95 is a couple years old, these items aren’t incredibly easy to come by anymore.
Last week sometime I stumbled across LensMate, a local company that makes aftermarket adapters for the A95’s mount in both 52mm and 37mm sizes. I went ahead and ordered the 37mm adapter (since I knew my work carried some 37mm filters and accessories), and it arrived in the mail yesterday.
I took the camera in to work so that I could make sure the adapter worked with the filters I wanted to pick up. It did (no surprise, but nice to have it confirmed), so I got three Quantaray filters: a UV Haze, a Neutral Density, and a Circular Polarizer.
Since 37mm is a standard size for camcorder lenses, our store carries a few accessory lenses originally designed for camcorders. Since they’re the same thread size as my new adaptor, I started experimenting with those, and as it turns out, we’ve got a set of a .5x Wide Angle Lens and a 2x Telephoto Lens that fit perfectly, so I started playing with those to see how well they worked. Verdict: not bad, and I may want to pick the set up after my next paycheck.
Then things started getting silly.
One of the questions I had while watching the Macworld ’06 keynote popped up when Steve was demoing the new ‘Photocasting‘ ability in iPhoto 6. He clicked on the Photocast RSS feed, iPhoto popped right up, and the photos appeared in the album.
“What would happen,” I wondered, “if you tried to subscribe to a Flickr RSS feed as if it were a Photocast?”
Admittedly, it’s not quite the same as an official (iPhoto-created) Photocast would be, as Photocasts can (optionally) include the full-resolution photos. As the Flickr feeds only include the small size photo, the resulting album is populated only with small (~240×180) photos, certainly not any resolution suitable for printing. Also, my understanding is that a Photocast would include however many photos were in the album selected for ‘casting; the Flickr feed only includes the last 10 photos.
Still, it does work; the only real differences are simply differences in how the RSS feeds are created (number of items and resolution of the included images).
Perhaps Flickr could include an option to enable Photocasting — if not for entire feeds, then perhaps for individual sets — and allow a choice of what size photo to embed into the Photocast feed, and/or how many photos to include (last X, entire sets, etc.). Then, clicking on a set’s ‘Photocast’ link or icon would allow iPhoto/Flickr users very nearly the same Photocast functionality as iPhoto/.mac users do.
It’s at least worth tossing the idea out there, I’d say.
Update: Found in this spirited discussion of the Photocast feeds on Brent Simmons’ weblog is an announcement from John Evans that he’s created a Flickr to Apple Photocast (Phlickr) feed converter.
It will take a feed from flickr and rework it a little so that it uses the large images and contains the comment of the photo as well. It is an Atom 1.0 feed that seems to validate on the feeds I have tested, it also includes most of the extra apple stuff debated here. If I can work out the date format I will add that too, and myabe the tags can be retrived and added so they appear as keywords.
To use just paste any feed from flickr into the box and hit the button, the feed should just open up in iPhoto, if not it will just be a regular atom feed with all the relevent enclosures so it will work in NetNewsWire or whatever your reader is.
I just tried it, and it worked fine for me.
I 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.
The 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:
At 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!
Every so often, someone contacts me after finding one of my photos and asks permission to use it for one project or another. A few of these haven’t gone anywhere, but here’s one that did: landscape designers The Berger Partnership are using this photo on their website detailing their work on renovating Cal Anderson Park.
“Ikons” by K.M.F.D.M. from the album XTORT (1996, 4:11).
My Lens Lust post of a week or so ago has touched off a slight Nikon d70s vs. Canon Rebel XT debate in the comments. For the curious photo buff, here’s why I’m lusting after the d70s instead of the Rebel XT.
“A Question of Time (Remix)” by Depeche Mode from the album A Question of Time (1986, 4:05).
Found via Arcterex:
If you worry about equipment, you’re an amateur,
If you worry about money, you’re a professional,
If you worry about the light, you’re a master :o)
“Drift Away” by Nylons from the album Best of the Nylons (1993, 4:07).
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…
“Lucky” by Girls Under Glass from the album German Mystic Sound Sampler Vol. I (1989, 4:07).
I’ve spent much of the afternoon and evening continuing to work on scanning in old photos that I’ve had lying jumbled up in various boxes. Quite a few have been scanned in and uploaded to my Flickr account. They haven’t been done in any particular order — roughly chronological, but it’s been a bit hit-and-miss here and there as I come across mis-ordered sections — but to make things at least a little bit easier, I did end up creating a ‘Narcissism’ photoset that has all the pictures of me collected together and presented in chronological order.
Other bits that may be of interest to various people: Royce, who’s been in my life since fourth grade; City Lights, the first (though very short-lived) public DJ’ing gig I talked my way into; and The Lost Abbey (possibly NSFW, though not very), my first major (regular, longer than a couple months) DJ’ing gig.
More will come as I get time — I’ve only made it up to 1995, and I’ve got at least a few from ’96 and ’97, and that doesn’t even go into the three rolls from Gig’s that are sitting here too. For now, though, I need to do a little housework and get dinner in the oven before Prairie gets home and Hope and Peter show up to watch Lost.
Update: Prairie’s pointing out that when I said I needed to “get dinner in the oven”, I meant that literally — she’d actually made the dinner. I was just putting it in the oven so it would be ready in time for everyone to show up. It’s not like I’m actually cooking or anything here…. ;)