Yearly Archives: 2013

The Luncheon

Paintings

The most photographic of painters.

A friend in London is visiting the Manet show at the Royal Academy and sent over a clandestine snap of The Luncheon. The image below is the real thing.


Manet: The Luncheon, 1868.

Has there ever been a more purely photographic vision in oils? Manet’s genius was that he snapped the image of the haughty, wealthy young diner departing the feast in his mind, only later transferring it to canvas. The modern photographer is spared both the need for genius and of the skill in rendering something similar. Manet used what looks like the equivalent of 24mm lens vision here, albeit using a large aperture to render the waitress blurred.

The no less special The Railway from the National Gallery is also in the show.

Are your images being stolen?

Hall of Shame, Photography

It takes a thief to catch a thief.

It seems incongruous that the arch-thief in American commerce, Google, should have crafted a tool which helps photographers seek out illegal use of their images.

It’s called www.images.Google.com and you have two choices to search for your image on the web:

  • Upload a copy of the image to Google
  • Input the URL for the image

Now the first approach has to be lunacy. Like giving a fresh needle and loaded syringe to an addict. So I opted for the second and searched for my wolfhound picture:


Absent a couple of non-commercial Tumblr illict reproductions – hardly of concern – one cropped up where the schmuck who stole my picture was using it to advertise his tweed clothing on eBay.UK (shock news that eBay might actually be involved in providing a conduit for theft).

So I wrote to the son of an unmarried mother in simple terms:

You may wish to use the thieves’ tool to catch thieves yourself.

Follow-up Feb 16, 2013: The thief has now taken my image off his site. May he rot in hell.

On the pier

Photographs

Concrete rules.


Municipal Pier, Fort Mason.

As is clearly visible, the south side of the pier is crumbling and falling into the water, hence the railings down the middle, preventing access. The sea air attacks the steel rebar through the porous concrete, the resulting rust causes expansion and breaks up the concrete. If this neglect continues the whole thing is doomed.

Nikon D3x, 105mm pre-Ai MF Nikkor at f/5.6.