goldengod

Hey everyone!

Sorry for the unintentional posting gap this week. I’m moving places and it’s keeping me pretty busy. My computer’s all packed up and my work is determined to keep me actually working, so I’ve got no time to finish writing my half-finished posts for this week.

I’ll do my best to get something up, but please don’t be alarmed if there are no posts until the 1st or 2nd of June.

To all the new reader’s who’ve popped in through JMG-Galleries’ blog project; I’m sorry for the delay, but in the meantime feel free to peruse my most popular posts on the sidebar to your left.

Thanks for your patience, everyone.

In the meantime, might I suggest a highly readable non-photography classic: waiterrant.

Rink of Fire by C.P. Storm

You may not think that NHL superstar Wayne Gretzky has much to say about digital photography, but you’d be surprised. The best player to ever hit the ice has plenty of photography tips and inspiration for us budding photographers.

Today I’ve got a collection of inspirational Gretzky quotes and the photography tips he shares for you to peruse. Wayne may not have known that he was talking about photography at the time. He may have been under the impressions that he was talking about something called ‘hockey‘. But what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him; Onwards!

“You always miss 100% of the shots you never take.“

Come on, you knew it was coming. Yes, it’s one of the cheesiest and most overused inspirational quotes in existence, but that doesn’t invalidate the lesson Gretzky is trying to impart here. Take your digital camera everywhere and don’t be afraid to take the shot when an unexpected opportunity pops up. The first rule of candid photography; take the photo. You never know when you’re going to get that million-dollar photograph.

“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”

This one’s most relevant to photojournalists and wedding photographers. Don’t always be where the action is now. Things can move fast. Get ready to be where the action is going to be. The temptation to just line up with the other photogs can be powerful when shooting action photography. Think about where the best shots are going to be, and get there first. Just remember to grab a few ’safe’ frames as well; it never hurts to have something to fall back on.

“The highest compliment that you can pay me is to say that I work hard every day, that I never dog it. “

There is always something to be said about the virtue of hard work. With enough effort and determination, you can move mountains. Wayne is talking about the importance of hard work and focusing every day to make yourself a successful photographer.

I’m not sure what the deal is with ‘never dog it’ as an expression. Maybe he was trying to be ‘hip’ with his ‘close friends or fellow gang members’.

“Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy. “

Truer words were never spoken. I know that procrastinating will stress me out, cost me time, and waste money. I still put things off every day. People are naturally lazy and I’m worse than most.

Wayne’s photography advice here is simple; get off your butt and take some photos.

And on that note, off I go to take some photos!

Enjoyed reading this article? Digg it here and Subscribe to my RSS Feed to keep up to date with the latest digital photography tips.

(Thanks to BrainyQuote for the quotes)

I skipped lunch today. See you’re confused because the timestamps are all “Look at me! I was written early Wednesday morning!” I use my secret future technology to write stuff in the past and send it to the present. Neat huh?

Anyways, food. God-damn I am hungry. Skipping lunch today wasn’t that bright, since it’s making me talk about food incessantly instead of this week’s links. Here are six selections that have nothing to do with food:

• Sitbonzo Photographic Lighting Video – A short video from Sitbonzo providing lighting diagrams and a detailed breakdown of his most recent shots.
• Inside the Digital Dump – A short photo-essay by Natalie Behring that looks at where all our old technology goes when we throw it away.
• Hisaharu Motoda’s Neo-Ruins – Antique-looking lithographs of post-apocalyptic Tokyo.
• How to Give Your Photos a Movie-like Effect – A concise Photoshop tutorial on achieving a gritty, cinematic effect with boring photos.
• Photography 2.0 – A short post with musings on the evolution of photography. Not much to read, but I liked it all the same.
• A Different View – AJ Schroetlin is one of the few really talented and impressive Lensbaby photographers out there.

So… hungry…

Ceci n’est pas Photoshop by jurvetson

The photography sector of the blogosphere is in an uproar over a copyright controversy centering on Flickr’s most popular user, Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir. She recently found a UK site called Only-Dreemin that was selling her landscape photos under a similar name without permission or compensation.

Rebekka’s attempts to confront the site about the issue resulted in them taking down the photos, but they did not respond to requests for compensation. Considering she could prove, with evidence, at least $5,000USD of sales on top of standard copyright violation, this is pretty serious.

Being an active member, Rebekka posted about the experience to her Flickr account along with thumbnails of the stolen photos. She received an outpouring of support from the community to the tune of 100,000 views and 450 comments in less than 24 hours. That is, until Flickr decided to delete her post without warning.

Much has been written about this already, so I’m not going to go too in depth. Here is what’s been said so far:

• Yahoo Mirror of the original post on Rebekka’s Flickr
• Thomas Hawk’s first post on the incident with Only-Dreemin
• Rebekka writes about Flickr’s deletion of her content
• Thomas adds to Rebekka’s post with his own outraged thoughts
  
• Rebekka posts protest photo, Flickr mods apologize
• Flickr mods respond to community, claims that it was an “error in judgement”
• The rest of the blog-o-tron gets in on the action
• Flickr cofounder Stewart Butterfield provides an extended apology and clear explanation

One of the more interesting things this incident highlighted for me was the drastic difference in the ways people view personal rights on the Internet. Some see Flickr’s deletion as fair, since we all signed a EULA. Others see everything fall under the mythical Internet umbrella of free speech.

License Agreements and Terms of Use documents have become so draconian and prevalent in the last two decades that we no longer think of them as valid, enforceable, or even worth reading. Large portions of Internet users instead see the overall values of freedom on the Internet as being more important than the usage agreements. Legally, this makes no sense. Most users put it in the same social category as jaywalking and file sharing though; everybody does it.

I’m not the happiest with Flickr’s overall behaviour and response to this, but I’m not going to be leaving my account in protest or anything silly like that. Mistakes were made and Flickr is still the best on the block. I just hope they can avoid becoming too Yahoo-ized. If that happens, people will leave.

I have, however, abandoned my JPG Magazine account over the recent takeover by the CEO. His actions with regards to kicking the founders out and trying to rewrite the history of JPG have made me not want to participate in that community any more.

Nothing new and exciting is happening this Wednesday at goldengod central. Looks like I could only stand to be interesting for two weeks in a row. This week I’ve found a lot of interesting stuff online. I think I have enough links to write next week’s roundup already.

Here are this week’s articles, specifically formulated to suck up all your free time:

• Searchable index of 5,000+ vintage LA news photos – Boing Boing finds the best stuff. I’ve already lost a couple hours to poking around this thing. The couple dozen shots that BB picked out as interesting are worth looking at, just be careful not to get sucked in.
• Photography Related Top 5 Lists – Brian Auer of Epic Edits puts together a decent list of ‘Top 5′ lists relating to photography from Darren Rowse’s recent contest. This is at the top of my to-read stack.
• Gerd George: My Models – A clever bit of advertising for a photographer with a unique approach to selecting models.
• The Blind Photographer – A haunting gallery of photos taken by the blind as part of a year-long project. This is immensely interesting to look at.
• Dan Heller on The Photographer’s Dilemma – Dan Heller uses the frame of the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma to elaborate on the state of current microstock photography sites. He focuses on smugmug and their upcoming entry into the field. Longer read for a blog post, but totally worth it.

Now, to read those top 5 lists…

Thoughts of a Dying Athiest by Andrew Ferguson

This blog post is an entry for Jim Goldstein’s “Favorite Photo and Background Story” photography blog project. More details can be found at JMG-Galleries.

This photo was taken back in January 2006, less than a month after I got my first DSLR; a Canon Digital Rebel XT. I was hanging around with my friends Jon and Ian, talking and playing videogames. Around one in the morning, we decided to experiment with my new camera. No, not that kind of experimenting. Bloody perverts…

Anyways, we put the camera on a tripod and hooked it up to my computer for the first time. After thinking about it, we decided to black out the room and do long exposure shots in full dark.

We blocked off my windows with a 12′x6′ Memoirs of a Geisha cardboard display I had along with a double-layer of garbage bags. I had a single flash, an old Vivitar 283, but it couldn’t be used on-camera since the voltage would fry the Rebel. We set everything up, pointed the camera at a blank space on my wall and decided to take turns setting up shots.

All three of us would work to set up the props or lighting, with me handling all the camera stuff, until it looked good. Once the shot was done, we’d move on to the next person’s setup. Of all the photos I took, this one worked out the best. We had a great time taking these photos and wound up playing with the camera til the sun came up.

It’s a thirteen second exposure with a single flash fired. I used a bright red t-shirt as a really amateurish ‘gel’ for the flash and fired it from below and to the right of the camera, resulting in the vignetting effect. In total I took about 6 frames and this is the third or fourth.

It’s my #5 Most Favorited photo on Flickr and my top rated for interestingness. Full EXIF data can be seen on its Flickr page linked at the top and more images from the same series can be seen here. Just please keep in mind that this is us goofing off at 3am less than a month after I began to shoot using a DSLR, because some of my shots are crap.

Both props in the photo were sitting around the house and each has a bit of story behind them. The handcuffs are normally used to cuff a large black briefcase to my wrist. I don’t keep anything valuable in it; I just think it’s funny. Bouncers at clubs on Granville have asked me “is that the football?” jokingly when I passed.

The mannequin hand comes from a mannequin at a party I attended. The party had a Clockwork Orange theme with droogs as waiters and a number of mannequins in the milk bar. I found the hand on the floor and asked one of the droog-waiters where I should put it. He shrugged and said ‘Keep it’, so I did.

My favorite photo rotates often; I flip-flop at a John Kerry level. Today, this is my favorite. What’s your favorite photo that you’ve ever taken? Post links in the comments and I’ll go visit them or join me in participating in Jim’s project!

Flickr Contacts by Striatic

I’m being added more and more often to people’s Flickr contact lists. Normally, this is awesome news! People love my photos! Unfortunately, I’m finding that a lot of these people are what I call “serial adders.”

Serial adders have always been a minor irritation on social networking websites. They are the kind of people who have 90,000 friends on MySpace, but only read their own page. They aren’t concerned with anyone else’s content, just improving the exposure of their own and bragging about how many ‘friends’ they have.

Serial adders on Flickr seem to expect a reciprocal ‘add’ after they’ve added you. I’ve had more than a couple get mad at me for not providing it. After using the web for long enough, you start to expect a certain amount of outrageous behaviour. You learn to shrug it off.

I’ve been noticing that the problem of serial adders seems to be getting worse lately on photography communities like Flickr. Out of a dozen friend requests I receive, eight to ten of them will be people I’d classify as serial adders.

Characteristics of a Serial Adder

• They won’t leave any comments on your photos or favourite anything.
• They will have one of those irritating badges in their profile advertising how many contacts they have; it’ll be at least four digits long.
• Their photographs will be mediocre, but each one is submitted to dozens of communities.
• Sometimes they’ll be ballsy enough to send you a ‘wut? y didnt u ad me?’ email sounding upset if you ignore them.

Adding contacts and getting exposure for your shots is one thing, but some of these people take it too far. This behaviour borders on what I’d consider spam tactics.

Thomas Hawk recommended always adding someone back if they add you as a contact in his post Top Ten Tips for Getting Attention on Flickr. Tip #9 talks about how this should be expected behaviour and it doesn’t hurt anyone.

I think over-networking the contacts list in this way will hurt the usefulness of the feature. It will make it meaningless. You can’t get exposure by being on someone’s contact list if they’ve got 30,000 contacts! Who’s going to dig through that and look for you?

I add people as contacts all the time, but I only add someone if I like their photography enough to favourite or comment on a photo and check their stream regularly. Sometimes I’ll add someone prominent, such as Violet Blue or Warren Ellis, without any comment love.

If you’ve taken the time to comment on one of my photos and add me, I will make the effort to head over to your Flickr and return the compliment. I see it as basic Internet etiquette, but serial adders aren’t concerned with being polite. They just want attention.

Has anyone else noticed these serial adders cropping up on Flickr lately? Do you add them back? Do you care? Sound off in the comments!

Related Posts

• Strobist: Flickr and the Future of Commercial Photography
• Pileus: The Flickr Umbrella
  
• Polar Rose – A Photo Search Engine
• How To Find Great Free Photos for Your Blog

Shovel & Bucket by Carol Esther

Silicon Valley news site Valleywag is reporting that Myspace has (finally) purchased Photobucket. The News Corporation owned social network made the purchase less than a month after blocking the use of the service on their pages.

Myspace claimed the reason for the partial block was due to ‘technical difficulties’, but it’s no secret that Myspace jealously guards its userbase from plugins trying to make money off their magical goose. Myspace’s creation of it’s own video player, its own Digg clone, and now the acquisition of a photo-sharing service shows that they’re serious about keeping other companies off their turf.

There’s no word on the financial details, but Valleywag tosses a $300 million pricetag around in the article. Despite their low revenue, I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s not like Rupert Murdoch is hurting for cash.

Photobucket isn’t exactly a front-runner in terms of functionality or use by serious (or even semi-serious) hobbyist photographers. That market is dominated by Flickr, with other sites like Zooomr quickly catching up. It remains to be seen if MySpace will decide to leverage their userbase and make a strong push for the hobbyist photographer market online.

Wednesdays seem to be the days that things happen in my world. Last week was observing a professional photo shoot for the first time, and this week I’m embarking on my first Photowalk. While I’m out and about, enjoy these links:

• The Biggest Man on the Field – Thomas E. Witte of SportsShooter.com writes about his experience photographing a high school football player born without legs. Good read, and he goes into some detail on his process of licensing the images, which is always helpful.
• Use Classical Art to Modify your Photography – This one’s been making the rounds so you may have already seen it. Essentially you can use the colour palettes from classical art to achieve interesting effects on photos.
• An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar by Taryn Simon – Taryn takes us on a brief tour of restricted spaces. From a US Customs ‘contraband room’ to a nuclear waste storage facility. There’s some good stuff here, it makes me want to buy the book.
• Seen in Vancouver – The latest addition to my RSS Reader. A daily photo from the city of Vancouver, drawn from user submissions to a Flickr pool. Simple, elegant, and local.
• How To Be a Better Photographer: Video Tutorial with Kris Krug – Digital Photography School is hosting a 46-minute tutorial video with Vancouver fashion photographer Kris Krug. It’s well worth checking out.

I’m headed out this afternoon on a photowalk with (coincidentally enough) the aforementioned Kris Krug and a whole host of other locals. I’ll write about the experience later on in the week. For those waiting for a post about the photo shoot I went to, the article is still being cleared by the company.

Lions Gate Bridge by Kris Krug

Looking for an apartment in Vancouver is such a pain in the ass. Go to your bookshelf, pick up your copy of Dante’s ‘Inferno’, and flip to the bit where they define the ten circles of hell. If the tenth circle isn’t labeled “house hunting in Vancouver”, I will replace your obviously outdated copy with an new one, free of charge.

Seriously, trying to find a decent place to rent in a town with a 0.7% vacancy rate is murder. Never mind the fact that we’re the most expensive Canadian city to live in now, just *finding* a place is hard. You can worry about being able to afford your new shoebox later.

I’m scouring craigslist and sometimes making use of housingmaps. I’m finding that if you pay enough attention to craigslist and know the city, housingmaps can get a bit useless after a while. It’s still amazing for a quick snapshot of what’s available in the city, though. I recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a place.

Other than craigslist, most other classified sites with Vancouver apartment listings seem pretty weak. I’m considering picking up a weekend paper out of desperation. Another thing I’m considering doing is pestering my readers. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll do that right now. Here are my criteria:

• Available June 1st
• One or two bedroom
• Rent under $900/mo
• Preferred neighborhoods: Commercial Drive, Broadway & Granville, Downtown
• No basement suites
• Cats allowed
• In-suite laundry or balcony are big pluses

If you know of anything, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me via the contact page or leave a comment ASAP. Sorry for the rant, but I’ve been neglecting the Vancouver category and this is driving me bonkers.