January 6, 2007
Ice storm in the U.S.
Absolutely incredible images of the aftermath of an ice storm taken by Mike at ExtermeInstability.
Mike is a professional 'storm chaser' and has many many fantastic images on his site. Hopefully he won't mind me using the image above to link to his site - but Mike if you read this and want me to take it down - let me know! Good job on capturing these beautiful images.
Also be sure and visit another site with some more fantastic shots - Windswept Chase Tours
Posted by dottie at 5:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 9, 2006
Digital Photography back on the cards!
I finally went and got my digital camera (Canon EOS 300d - you know, Didigtal Rebel to the Yanks) repaired. Yay!
It cost me over €360! Boo!
But it works great now and has a six month warranty! Yay!
Unfortunately when they were 'replacing the lens helical assembly' they tore up the rubber grip on the telephoto lens! Boo!
Fortunately the agent who handled the repair (well, they sent it to Canon) was pretty sheepish when I told them about it and will sort out some solution! Yay!
So now all I have to do is to learn how to take photos again! Boo!
But I will probably take a course on how to do this properly! Yay!
So watch this space for badly framed, questionably exposed, unfortunate subject mattered photographs! Boo!
Comments
Emmet Savage
Mark
I’ve spent a small fortune on digi cameras over the last 2 years and at last have found a fantastic every-shot-looks-good 10.2M pixel compact. I picked one up on eBay.co.uk with a 2Gb card for about £200. It’s no larger than mu mobile phone. Check it:
http://exilim.casio.com/
Posted by dottie at 8:00 PM | Comments (1)
July 31, 2006
Family photo drawer is converting to the digital era
Every house has one. Go on, admit it. You know what I mean - a drawer stuffed to the brink with photos of dodgy clothes, questionable hairrcuts, smiles, tears, forgotten friends, and dearly departed. Precious memories all.
I just got myself a scanner, a Canon 4200F. Not the best scanner in the world but hopefully good enough for the task. Most importantly it has a film scanner.
We have many slides and film negatives at home but no photos (or very old faded photos) to go with them.
I know it is going to take ages to scan, edit and safely store all the images but I am really looking foreward to rooting through a drawer, literally stirring up memories in their tangible form as photos, but also tingling memories of the days when the photos were taken, possibly.
There are many years and quite a few beers between then and now :)
Posted by dottie at 6:48 PM | Comments (0)
June 28, 2006
It's art, stupid
Jill Greenspun, an exploitave photographer - sorry 'artist', is threatening the livelihood of photographer Thomas Hawk who criticised her through his own private blog
In short Thomas Hawk sees Jill Greenbergs work as abusive to children.
From what I can gather Jill photographs kids in order to highlight her own (and presumably our) feelings about George Bush and the second Iraq war.
The kids she photographs go through a little bit of attitude adjustment before Jill starts snapping. Apparently she first strips them of clothing* and then offers them a lollipop only to snatch it away from them when they become sufficiently attached. This of course starts anything from immediate tears to a full-on temper tantrum.
The removal of the lollipop is marginal - what makes this, for me, so abhorrent is the fact that she then continues to goad the child by not allowing his parents to comfort the child, parent who, by the way, are standing by 'monitoring' all of this...
Of course the child gets very distressed and this is the moment that Jill chooses to strike.
In the legitamate criticism that has followed, Jill and her cronies attempt to shield themselves from reproach by explaining that all this is done in the name of art. Further, Jill's husband claims that this 'technique' is used to upset children all the time for films, photo shoots in the advertising industry etc. Which kind of undermines the whole 'its just art, stupid' claims - they are just a bunch of money grubbing cynics after all.
This is wrong on so many levels. For a start, anything that is classed as art is open to criticism, good, bad, constructive, dammning or otherwise - art is a two-edged blade. Second, what about the children? They have no choice in all of this. Who knows what kind of freak gets his kicks from seeing upset children - you could just as easily argue that they are facilitating niche pornography as you could argue that the images are 'art'. NOt that I think for a minute that there is an iota of an intention to objectify these children - sexually that is...
The bottom line is that exploiting children is just plain wrong - portraits are one thing, but what Jill is doing is fundamentally different.
Even worse is that fact that Jill and her husband, and presumably any supporters she has, have started contacting Thomas' employers in an attempt to get him sacked, claiming he is mentally unbalanced, with severe emotional problems and that he doesnt know anything about children (Thomas has four children).
They have even threatened libel proceedings and thrown in reference to U.S. first amendment rights, conveniently overlooking the fact that their attack on response to Thomas is an attempt to infringe his First amendment rights.
Think about that for a minute - because these people don't like the criticism levelled at them, they want the critic to shut up and are apparently stopping at nothing to make that happen.
To try and throw some light relief (or maybe heavy sarcasm) on the whole affair I have some suggestions for some 'art' that can be photographed and hung on walls
- punch old people - to highlight the helplessness and lonliness of old people in our society
- burn homeless peoples cardboard box shelters - to highlight the division between the rich and the poor
- loot, pillage and rape an entire rural village - to highlight the co-opting of rural communities by commuting urbanites
Best of all, its all worth it no matter what the cost because someone, somewhere will be touched by what you do and understand the world a little bit better - just like you do.
* note: the images are not sexual in any way
Posted by dottie at 1:52 PM | Comments (0)
September 1, 2005
I rock!
Photofortnight - 'Garish' theme
I won! yay me!
Posted by dottie at 4:00 PM | Comments (0)
August 13, 2005
Photo fortnight
This is a great site set up by some Irish ex-pats living in the US. The idea is that every two weeks a new theme is chosen and you have two weeks to find a photograph something that fits the theme, no archive photos allowed.
Then folks can vote on your photo - which is displayed with your name taken off.
I have a photo in for the 'Garish' theme. I'm quietly confident... that it won't win ;) I dont care though. I will be entering each theme (or at least trying) using it to improve my camera skills.
Wish me luck!
Posted by dottie at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)
August 3, 2005
Fabulous Flickr photos
Flickr has just introduced a new feature to its list of services. It is a list of interesting photos. Its automatically produced.
Flickr uses some sort of algorithm that combines the viewings of a photo with the number of people who tag it for themselves and come up with a short list of interesting photos.
The thing is people may eventually just want to check out the interesting photos - forget about cruising the tags (choose a random word and search for it on Flickr - interesting :D ) just give me the good stuff.
I had a look at it earlier and wow are there some great shots. The problem is that this will create a huge gap between photos that are listed as interesting (generating ever more views and tags) and those that didnt quite pass the muster.
Is this a good thing? Possibly. What better editorial process is there than the visceral response from seeing a photo and being able to give feedback straight away.
But the problem is that if everyone is looking at the list of 'interesting' photos produced by Flickr then who is looking at and tagging the photos from the original photosets in the first place?
Will this unwittingly create an 'elite' of photographers who happened to get in on the first (few) waves of ineterest of the 'interesting' feature leaving other equally talented photographers out in the cold simply because of dumb luck? Are we about to see an amateur photographer get jump started as a professional because someone thought his photo of a sunflower was cool?
Excellent - sunflowers, sunsets, naked girls and kittens. I'll be in my darkroom if you need me....
Posted by dottie at 7:56 AM | Comments (0)