Tag: Photography

Pope ensconced in purple

swanksalot4 Comments
Pope ensconced in purple
Pope ensconced in purple, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Office cat living the highlife, modified with CameraBag, using the Helga setting1

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I don’t really know much about Holga cameras, other than they seem popular in the digital age, probably because they introduce an element of unpredictability into a photo. I’ve heard musicians add a bit of static (or vinyl record static, more precisely) into their digital music files for the same reason. A bit of analog signal in a digital world.

I’ve never used a Holga, but several iPhone applications emulate the process, as do some Photoshop filters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holga

The Holga is an inexpensive, medium format 120 film toy camera, made in China, appreciated for its low-fidelity aesthetic. The Holga’s cheap construction and simple meniscus lens often yields pictures that display vignetting, blur, light leaks, and other distortions. The camera’s quality problems have become a virtue among some photographers, with Holga photos winning awards and competitions in art and news photography.

The Holga camera was designed by T. M. Lee, and first appeared in 1982 in Hong Kong. At the time, 120 rollfilm in black-and-white was the most widely available film in mainland China. The Holga was intended to provide an inexpensive mass-market camera for working-class Chinese in order to record family portraits and events. After the cameras began to be distributed in the West, some photographers took to using the Holga for its surrealistic, impressionistic scenes for landscape, still life, portrait, and especially, street photography. In this respect, the Holga became the successor to the Diana and other toy cameras previously used in such work. A Holga photograph by David Burnett of former vice-president Al Gore during a campaign appearance earned a top prize in a 2001 White House News Photographers’ Association Eyes of History award ceremony.

Recently the Holga has experienced a revival due to the gaining popularity of toy cameras.

Footnotes:
  1. Helga not Holga, probably due to copyright reasons [↩]

Ready for a scotch

swanksalot0 comment
Ready for a scotch
Ready for a scotch, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Or something. Jeez, brutal out there.

view larger:
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from the National Weather Service forecast for Cook County:

Tonight…Mostly cloudy. A few flurries. Very cold. Lows 2 to 6 above…except 8 to 12 above downtown. Wind chills as low as 5 below to 15 below zero. West winds 10 to 20 mph with gusts up to 35 mph at times.

Thursday…Windy. Partly sunny. Very cold. Highs 12 to 16. Wind chills as low as 10 below to 20 below zero. West winds 20 to 30 mph. Gusts up to 35 mph.

Thursday Night…Partly cloudy. Blustery. Lows 5 to 9 above… Except 9 to 13 above downtown. Wind chills as low as 5 below to 15 below zero. Southwest winds 15 to 25 mph. Gusts up to 30 mph early in the evening.

[Click to continue reading 7-Day Zone Forecast for Cook County]

Don’t get me wrong, I actually like winter, at least in December and January. By February, the thrill of winter usually starts to fade, and March and April should be spring already damn it!1

Footnotes:
  1. though rarely does Chicago actually have spring until mid-April or early May [↩]

OTB and me

swanksalot1 Comment
OTB and me
OTB and me, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

and some stranger in the foreground. No, didn’t go in, not my thing.

republished at BoingBoing:
www.boingboing.net/2009/12/08/stooper-supports-a-f.html

Jesus Leonardo is the king of the “stoopers” — people who pick up discarded betting slips at racetracks and betting parlors and double-check them to see if they’re actually winners. He makes about $45,000 a year at it, working 10 hours a day, and declares his “winnings” to the IRS.

Mr. Leonardo, who is married with two teenagers, is hardly living on the fringes. He said that stooping brings him $100 to $300 a day, and more than $45,000 a year. Last month, he cashed in a winning ticket from bets made on races at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, Calif., for $8,040. His largest purse came in 2006, when he received $9,500 from a Pick 4 wager (choosing the winners of four consecutive races) at Retama Park Race Track in Selma, Tex.

AT&T Web survey with Netscape

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AT&T Web survey with Netscape
AT&T Web survey with Netscape, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

How long ago were these browsers even current on a Mac? 10 years ago?

The link to Netscape is defunct, of course.

I tried my best to avoid using scatological comments when filling out the survey, but found it difficult at best.

Godz, do I despise AT&T aka Southwestern Bell aka SBC

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_3
Internet Explorer 3.0 was released in 1996 for Windows, in 1997 for Mac.

If you are curious, the survey link is here

www.fwcrc.com/issx/index.html?name=respondent&passwor…

We made the mistake of signing up for a Business Class VoIP service being offered by AT&T last spring, but they were not able to figure out how to actually install it before we cancelled it. Unfortunately, even though we were never actually customers, the AT&T Deathstar continued to bill us, and eventually sent their attack hounds to harass us. After many many many hours of discussion with various AT&T minions, our bill is apparently forgiven. But now they want to know how we feel about them? Ha. Seriously, we spent at least 100 hours of our time fighting with AT&T to cancel our non-existent account, after spending about 50 hours trying to set up the VoIP system. I do not how AT&T stays in business, inertia I suppose. That, and the massive investment in phone lines around the world: most American telecom providers end up leasing AT&T wires and conduits.