Photography – Page 5 – B12 Solipsism

Sick Of All This Repetition was uploaded to Flickr

December 1, 2018 eggplant0 comment

Hubbard’s Cave, Interstate Highway underpass, Chicago

For reference for those who haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing it during rush hour traffic:
www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2009/09/23/what-is-hubbards-c…

embiggen by clicking
https://flic.kr/p/2ddoMRL

I took Sick Of All This Repetition on March 16, 2015 at 07:53AM

and processed it in my digital darkroom on December 01, 2018 at 03:49PM

Stop Being Influenced By Fools was uploaded to Flickr

November 30, 2018 eggplant0 comment

Fulton Market

embiggen by clicking
https://flic.kr/p/2caNda7

I took Stop Being Influenced By Fools on March 16, 2015 at 07:52AM

and processed it in my digital darkroom on November 30, 2018 at 07:58PM

Kodak Ektachrome is Now Shipping

September 25, 2018 Seth Anderson0 comment

PetaPixel reports:

After nearly two years of building up anticipation, Kodak Alaris has just announced that it has started shipping Kodak Professional Ektachrome E100 film worldwide. If you’ve been dying to get your hands on the film stock again, you’ll be able to very soon.

The new Ektachrome will initially be available in 35mm film rolls in the standard 36×24mm film format. It’s a daylight balanced color positive film that features “clean, vibrant colors, a neutral tone scale, and extremely fine grain,” and it’s “well suited to a wide range of applications, such as product, landscape, nature and fashion photography,” Kodak Alaris says.

(click here to continue reading Kodak Ektachrome is Now Shipping.)

Cool. I find myself gravitating towards Ektachrome emulation often. If I ever fixed my Nikon D8008 35mm, I’d for sure use this for color shooting.

I Mean It Sometimes – Explored on Flickr

August 31, 2018 Seth Anderson0 comment

I Mean It Sometimes

An iPhone snapshot that I mistakenly converted to DNG in Lightroom when importing, so I went ahead and processed it using the Photoshop workflow I usually use for photos taken with my Nikon – using the Photoshop Raw tools, DxO Software’s Color Efex 4, Alien Skin’s Exposure X3, and so on.

Turned out ok, though I’m not all that happy with the skies being as washed out as they are.

Flickr’s algorithm liked it apparently.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Let Your Light Shine was uploaded to Flickr

July 29, 2018August 2, 2018 eggplant0 comment

Paddleboarders, Lake Austin (or whatever this body of water is called these days)

embiggen by clicking
https://flic.kr/p/28eRDkF

I took Let Your Light Shine on October 29, 2012 at 01:06PM

and processed it in my digital darkroom on July 29, 2018 at 06:57PM

((stupid IFTTT triple posted this photo. Doh!!))

Unspoken Tensions

July 29, 2018 Seth Anderson0 comment

Unspoken Tensions

Taken on May 16th, 2018, processed in my digital darkroom July 27th, 2018.

I flipped the image 180º to accentuate the angle, make the photo more dramatic. I also like how the cloud wisps turned into what looks like melted steel in the sky.

Double click the image to embiggen.

SmugMug snaps up Flickr photo service from Verizon’s Oath

April 20, 2018April 20, 2018 Seth Anderson0 comment

Old Skooler

USA Today reports:

Flickr has been snapped up by Silicon Valley photo-sharing and storage company SmugMug, USA TODAY has learned.

SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill told USA TODAY he’s committed to breathing new life into the faded social networking pioneer, which hosted photos and lively interactions long before it became trendy.

SmugMug, an independent, family-run company, will maintain Flickr as a standalone community of amateur and professional photographers and give the long neglected service the focus and resources it deserves, MacAskill said in an exclusive interview.

…

The mostly free Flickr was founded in 2004 and played a central role in the cultural and social life of the Internet. Friendships were forged on Flickr as people shared photographs and others commented on them.

Overshadowed in the smartphone era by the rise of Facebook and Instagram, Flickr suffered defections to rival services but held onto a core loyal following of shutterbugs despite product and policy misses and the hacks of Yahoo, as well as encroaching competition from Google and other massive photo services.

Traffic has shrunk from its heyday, but Flickr says it has more than 75 million registered photographers and more than 100 million unique users who post tens of billions of photos. In March, Flickr had 13.1 million unique visitors, up from 10.8 million a year earlier, according to research firm comScore.

(click here to continue reading SmugMug snaps up Flickr photo service from Verizon’s Oath.)

Hmm, that’s potentially great news. I’ve used SmugMug for selling prints in the past,¹ and of course, I’m a multiple-visits-daily user of Flickr ever since I was a beta-version Flickereeno.²

Yesterday as I drifted off to sleep I even had the germ of an blog post idea about Flickr’s long term future. I assume Flickr is profitable, and gets quite a lot of traffic, but nothing has been changed there for a long, long time. I’m not sure what Verizon’s plans were, or if they had decided upon them.

So I’m cautiously optimistic this will be good synergy.

And I especially liked this:

And, in an industry that dangles free services to suck up people’s personal information to target ads, SmugMug has catered to people who are willing to pay for privacy and storage, offering four levels of subscriptions to appeal to everyday shutterbugs and professional photographers alike.

MacAskill says the SmugMug model works for the business and his conscience because it aligns his incentives with his customers. “We don’t mine our customers’ photos for information to sell to the highest bidder, or to turn into targeted advertising campaigns,” he said.

After revelations that 87 million Facebook users had their personal information pilfered by Cambridge Analytica, a British political firm with ties to the Donald Trump presidential campaign, consumers are having second thoughts about trading their data for a free service.

(click here to continue reading SmugMug snaps up Flickr photo service from Verizon’s Oath.)

Footnotes:

without much success to be honest [↩]
circa 2004 [↩]

Hearing Voices With No One Around was uploaded to Flickr

April 4, 2018 eggplant0 comment

Broken windows are metaphors, right?

Fulton Market somewhere…

embiggen by clicking
https://flic.kr/p/HEYHwN

I took Hearing Voices With No One Around on October 10, 2013 at 11:38AM

and processed it in my digital darkroom on April 04, 2018 at 02:01AM

Wouldn’t Give Me The Time Of Day was uploaded to Flickr

April 4, 2018 eggplant0 comment

Chicago

embiggen by clicking
https://flic.kr/p/24HQQgy

I took Wouldn’t Give Me The Time Of Day on October 13, 2013 at 09:46AM

and processed it in my digital darkroom on April 04, 2018 at 02:11AM

Become Someone Better was uploaded to Flickr

April 4, 2018 eggplant0 comment

Storm grate, downtown Chicago somewhere

embiggen by clicking
https://flic.kr/p/HF1mim

I took Become Someone Better on October 19, 2013 at 08:46AM

and processed it in my digital darkroom on April 04, 2018 at 02:19AM

Atget’s Paris

March 30, 2018 Seth Anderson0 comment

Atget’s Paris

An acquaintance flattered me and compared a photo of mine to Eugène Atget’s work, so I had to learn more. In school, and in my life, I’ve studied the painting masters, visited art museums all over North America and Europe, but I haven’t filled in the photography part of my art education as thoroughly, yet. A friend suggested I consider Berenice Abbott next; I plan on doing so.

I have not studied Atget’s photographs extensively, yet, simply browsed this quite intriguing book. There are a lot of contemporary photographers¹ documenting urban environments who have been influenced by Atget, whether consciously or unconsciously. Photos of store fronts, workers, mannequins, streets, etc.

This was the photo of mine that initiated this exploration, btw, a snapshot taken with Hipstamatic/iPhone. I printed a 10”x10’” version on metal and hung it in my hallway.

Dreaming My Dreams

Footnotes:

professional or amateur [↩]

Thomas Jefferson Pumping Station was Explored

March 29, 2018February 4, 2020 Seth Anderson0 comment

Thomas Jefferson Pumping Station (Lincoln Square, Chicago) – click to embiggen

A photo I took a while ago¹, and processed a couple of weeks ago made it into Flickr Explore. Maybe because I made a Sally Hemmings “joke”?

As far as the image, I was not happy that my Photoshop skills are not proficient enough to straighten the door correctly. But, hey, explored!

This is a beautiful door for a pumping station, and it looks to be recently painted.

Nikon D7000

35.0 mm f/2.0

ƒ/6.3
35.0 mm
1/160
250 ISO

Footnotes:

2013 [↩]

The New York Times Is Not A Fan of Flickr

March 22, 2018 Seth Anderson0 comment

Facebook Sucks

In the middle of a mostly pointless article about how there is no worthy competitor to Facebook, so why bother leaving, Bryan X. Chen writes:

Remember Flickr? The Yahoo-owned site is the closest thing either [Instagram or Facebook] has to a competitor, and it’s like a graveyard of people’s digital memories before they abandoned it for Facebook and Instagram.

(click here to continue reading Want to #DeleteFacebook? You Can Try – The New York Times.)

Hmm. That is not my experience. Perhaps there are less selfies and photos of one’s meal on Flickr¹ but I still spend more quality time on Flickr than either Facebook or Instagram. I haven’t uploaded many photos to Flickr recently (I’ve been updating my curated photo gallery instead – check it out) but for an example, my Flickr photos were viewed 1,760 times yesterday. Not exactly burning up the internet, but much more active than my Instagram account. My complaint about Instagram is that it is intentionally too limiting – you are encouraged to see what is newly uploaded in a constant stream, but keeping up with what people share is futile. With Flickr, one can create thematic albums, limited only by imagination. For instance, I have an album of photos that I’m considering printing for my next gallery show²; an album of bridges; and album called, “Our Crumbling Infrastructure”. Or my “Least Interesting Photos”. Not an Instagram option.

Instagram 8 logo

Instagram also looks horrible on an iPad, you’d think by now they would have made an iPad version. Flickr looks good on any device. Don’t get me wrong, I have complaints with Flickr, and worry that Verizon³ is going to cut Flickr loose, but compared to Facebook or Instagram, I much prefer Flickr.

Anyway, if you are looking to reduce the amount of personal information Facebook has of yours that they can sell or give away to Robert Mercer’s psych-ops organizations like Cambridge Analytica, here are two articles which do a better job explaining your Facebook options than the NYT does. There are other articles, so not only was the NYT instructions second rate, they also were about a week too late.

Buzzfeed’s Nicole Nguyen wrote on Tuesday:

But Facebook and its network of apps, including Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, are important communication lines for a lot of people, so deleting your account might not be a realistic option. You can, however, dial back your use and reduce the amount of information you give the site. Here’s how.

Break your habit and limit your use of the platform.

Just by signing up for the service, you’ve agreed to let Facebook track your activity and constantly collect data about you. By reducing the time you spend on the site, interaction with posts, and content you upload, you are also reducing the amount of data Facebook is gathering from you. And remember, this data collection applies to Facebook — and everywhere you’ve signed in with Facebook, including Facebook-owned Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as, to a lesser extent, third-party websites like Spotify.

Log out of Facebook before browsing the web.

Non-Facebook websites use what’s called the Facebook Pixel, a small piece of JavaScript code that tracks your browsing activity across the web and tells Facebook what you’re looking at when you’re not on Facebook’s site and apps.

Any page that has a Facebook Like button installed most likely uses a Facebook pixel. Even pages that don’t have a Like button can have a pixel. This means it’s possible that Facebook knows most of your web browsing history.

(click here to continue reading If You’re Not Ready To Delete Facebook, Here’s How To Limit The Data You Give It.)

And the EFF⁴ has good instructions for disabling the Facebook API:

You shouldn’t have to do this. You shouldn’t have to wade through complicated privacy settings in order to ensure that the companies with which you’ve entrusted your personal information are making reasonable, legal efforts to protect it. But Facebook has allowed third parties to violate user privacy on an unprecedented scale, and, while legislators and regulators scramble to understand the implications and put limits in place, users are left with the responsibility to make sure their profiles are properly configured.

…

Of course, you could choose to leave Facebook entirely, but for many that is not a viable solution. For now, if you’d like keep your data from going through Facebook’s API, you can take control of your privacy settings. Keep in mind that this disables ALL platform apps (like Farmville, Twitter, or Instagram) and you will not be able to log into sites using your Facebook login.

Log into Facebook and visit the App Settings page (or go there manually via the Settings Menu > Apps ).

…

From the same page, click “Edit” under “Apps Others Use.” Then uncheck the types of information that you don’t want others’ apps to be able to access. For most people reading this post, that will mean unchecking every category.