Category Archives: Photographers

Jason Hawkes

Photographers

An aerial photographer.

Consulting my rational side, I can only conclude that nearly all air flight is a waste of time and resources. One third involves visiting Aunt Minnie in Florida when she could be simply dialed up on a webcam. Another third involves boondoggles passing as conferences where we try to create team spririt or some such nonsense when we should be focusing on teaching individuality. And the remainder is spent on business meetings which would be better conducted at the local video center, saving vast amounts of time and money. But for a world which largely values motion over action, flying is just the ticket.

But there is a very special niche which I exempt from criticism, and that’s aerial photography. Which of us has not pointed his camera at the window when coming in to land for the occasional snap? Though, as with most things, to do this well you have to devote yourself to it and that’s Jason Hawkes’s avocation.


The Empire State Building at night.

While much of this Englishman’s work is done in Europe, he has a new book named New York at Night which amply illustrates the difference between the amateur snapper and the dedicated specialist.

For more, check out his web site. Hawkes uses just two lenses on his full frame Nikons, 14-24mm and 70-200mm zooms, with a gyroscopic stabilizer. While the Kenyon range of stabilizers is expensive, they can also be rented for a reasonable sum.

And while you are perusing his superb images, think also how much better a world without flight would be. No Holiday Inns or Hiltons, no Las Vegas, no 9/11, cheaper gas, less noise, less pollution, fewer traffic jams, more productivity, more time spent with the family instead of being busy being busy, more trains, and on and on.

George Tice

Book reviews

A photographer from New Jersey.

One of the more treasured books in my photography library is this small monograph on New Jersey photographer George Tice (b. 1938). Tice is perhaps best explained in his saying “If I were given the choice of traveling to China or Missouri, I’d probably pick Missouri. I want to be known as an American photographer.”

It shows in his work which is calm, restrained and clearly imbued with a love for his country. There is none of that denigration of the worst that can be America so often seen in Cartier-Bresson’s pictures taken on this side of the pond. Rather, there’s a gentle, insightful approach of one who clearly loves where he is.

One of my favorites is of the interior of a seemingly deserted barber’s shop in Paterson, New Jersey, whose window sign proudly proclaiming ‘Joe’s Barber Shop’ is missing several letters (p.53). There’s no need to replace them, you can hear the proprietor thinking. Every one knows where the local barber shop is. It’s been there for ever, after all. A lovely memory of the best that small towns bring.

The book remains available from Amazon and you can go there by clicking the picture above.

National Geographic Traveler

Photographers

A source of inspiration.

I was leafing through (OK, flicking through, on the iPad) the current issue of National Geographic Traveler, much inspired by some of the great photography, when I came upon this truly stunning image.

A face of rare warmth and beauty. No surprise that it was taken by master French photographer, Eric Lafforgue, profiled earlier in these pages.

You can read electronic versions of the magazine on your desktop, laptop or iPad for the princely sum of $11.50 for one year’s worth, and have an endless source of inspiration. They are accessible through Zinio , a well supported site and iPad app. Forget the poky iPhone’s screen, for it cannot begin to do the work justice.

Five years old today

Photographers, Photographs, Photography

This blog, that is.

Daniel Boorstin, Librarian of Congress, said “I write to find out what I think.” I find I am like minded. Setting down ideas each day is a helpful process which, I suppose, is why I write this blog.

So it comes as a signal pleasure to relate that this journal is five years old today.

First post date …. for UK readers, at least.

Those five years have seen a revolution in the technology of photography, exemplified by my own experience. This photographer was a Leica devotee of some 35 years’ happy use back on June 15, 2005, with some serious Rollei medium format gear on the side. Today the hardware consists of a Canon 5D when the very highest quality ‘medium format’ quality is called for and a Panasonic G1 for street happy snapping, with the diminutive Panasonic LX1 in the glove compartment. Not a film camera in sight, these all having moved to collectors’ closets over the past five years, neatly paying for most of the digital gear in the process. Now while digital gear has all the charisma and charm of a cold war era Soviet politician, unlike that bear of old it does produce consistently, at a quality level superior in every way to film and getting better daily. What’s not to like? OK, so you no longer regard it as an heirloom to pass down to your nearest and dearest, as it will be unrepairable electronic detritus five years hence, but it is so cheap and so competent that the result is a win for the user and the maker. Confirming what I wrote, to much opprobium, on July 5, 2005, Film is dead. And so is Kodak.

The software front here has enjoyed a rock stable combination of OS X on various Macs accompanied by Lightroom which is now in its third iteration, though the changes at the margin are becoming …. marginal. A robust pair that never lock up and continue to make me wonder, as I have for the past decade, why anyone valuing his time would use the fraud that is Windows.

Processing hardware has been less of a joy, not helped by a litany of failures from Apple’s awful hardware, with only the iPhone being distinguished by its reliability, likely accompanied by the too-new-to-say iPad. Mercifully, I saw the light a while back and built my own HackPro from inexpensive PC parts and it has been running totally glitch-free 24 by 7 since put into service. It’s as fast as just about any overpriced MacPro on the planet and a fraction of the cost, not to mention infinitely upgradeable for low outlay. The advent of OS X for Intel CPUs made this possible so it was not a practical proposition until fairly recently. Every self-respecting photographer who demands the very best in performance from his processing hardware should consider building one of these, avoiding Apple’s overpriced, short lived desktop and laptop jewelry like the plague.

Mention of the iPad does not require much of a stretch to pronounce that the PC is Dead. The form factor and user interface of this device will come to dominate content consumption and creation over the next five years in much the same way digital imaging has come to dominate photography over the past five. Our children will ask why anyone in their right mind ever used a keyboard, one of the few remnants of antiquity in modern societies. Get ready to say goodbye first to your clunky, overheating laptop and, eventually, to your desktop gear.

No mention of hardware can be complete without lauding HP’s now discontinued DesignJet 90 wide format printer, which makes fade free prints in sizes up to 18″ x 24″ without complaining and does so at very modest cost. It made possible my one man show a while back and I bless it daily. A tool which does exactly what the maker claims – makes superb prints. It remains a great value on the used market though I suppose that, with the advent of cheap large screen TVs, I ought to add the the Print is Dead and the ecosystem of the world can only benefit.

On the personal fulfillment front, or whatever the current psychobabble calls it, photographic life has been eminently satisfying, seeing the production of two books of photographs and a one man show in April 2007. Lots of hard work and lots of fun.

This journal has also been lucky in featuring the work of many outstanding current and past photographers, and you need only click the drop-down menus above (‘Photographers’) to see their work. If I were forced to name five who have most affected me and my work they would be Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, Penn, Porter and Horst. All are profiled on this site.

And finally, there’s the list of stinkers which you can see by clicking here. These range from jerks like ‘Anonymous’ who posts idiotic comments here, to unscrupulous photographers who think nothing of turning tragedy to profit by false means, conflicted ‘journalists’ who laud gear after first making sure future free loaners are guaranteed, and modern day crooks like Google who are robbing us of our privacy while jealously safeguarding their own. This will not change, for there are fortunes to be made, as these miscreants have learned, from human gullibility. This blog remains totally revenue free (meaning I make nothing, zilch, nada from it – even my modest book sale profits go to charity) with no click-through earnings of any sort, so you can expect it will remain outspoken, skeptical and fearless over the next five years.

Celebrating five great years.

Thanks for stopping by this last half-decade and I hope we are both around five years’ hence.

Plex

Movies, Photography

A front end for the home theater.

Much as I am trying to simplify life with one remote, and the L5 Remote for the iPhone makes a huge step forward in fulfilling that goal, I have long been experimenting with a like approach to consolidate the front end for use of my TV.

If, like me, you rip your DVDs to external hard disk drives, then I’m afraid AppleTV or a MacMini running FrontRow do not work. For whatever arcane licensing issues that are involved, neither technology supports the TS/VOB file format resident on a DVD and I’m not about to spend half of my remaining years converting all my movies to a format Apple’s software supports. Further, I like the idea of storing movies in their native format as everything else is a compromise and, who knows, one day maybe 100″ LCD screens will become affordable and that original format will look great, whereas an iPad/ATV version will not. Plus storage is cheap, so I’m not about to start compressing my movies to save on a few bytes of space.

Having tried various front end applications which attempt to deliver all your content through one common interface, I have returned to Plex, one of the few which is written specifically – and only – for the Mac. The app is free and I have it running on my MacMini, attached to the TV. Before explain what Plex can do it is important to point out that it cannot accept encrypted cable company feeds delivered through a set top box, meaning you still have to switch to that input to watch TV. Also, it cannot access the iTunes Store for purchase of movies though there is an app for the Amazon Video On Demand store which is in alpha release. I have tried it and it works well, so it’s a good workaround for those occasions you want to rent or buy a movie rather than wait for Netflix.

Plex’s appearance can be varied using any number of downloadable ‘skins’, and I have opted for the ‘Alaska’ variant in the following snap of the home screen (literally a screenshot as I cannot figure out how to do this otherwise, OS X’s screenshot capability being rendered inoperative by Plex, so pardon the mediocre quality):

The Plex home screen.

While the L5 Remote folks figure out how to get the Apple Remote’s functions transferred to my iPhone (I have had no luck so far), I am using a downloaded Plex driver for the Apple remote (current aluminum model) which works well with the application. You can also use a wireless mouse which works even better, but neither approach obviates the need for yet one more control device.

My movies are all stored on a bunch of external servers and it is a moment’s work to tell Plex where to find these, using the built in Browse function. Thereafter, Plex can be asked to download movie cover art and synopses, which takes about thirty minutes per hundred movies and is about 80% correct – I had to manually change the remaining 20% as Plex looked up the wrong data. It’s a function of how accurately your movies are named, Plex suggesting that you shoud append the movie’s date in parenteses in the title. The approach I adopted is faster – download and fix the bad ones.

The Movies screen with clickable thumbnails.

Click and hold the Menu button on the Apple Remote and you have the option of looking at the synopsis:

Plot synopsis for a movie.

Movie quality delivered by Plex from locally stored movies is identical to the usual way of playing the movie in VLC or your app of choice.

Switch over to Videos and you can see some of the apps I have downloaded:

The Netflix streaming movie app is highlighted, two of my local movie file servers appear above.

The Netflix interface is far superior to that delivered by the OS X Netflix app – easier to navigate and easier to use.

Go to Pictures on the Home page and there are several photoblog apps from well known photographers and news media, downloadable through the Plex App Store, all waiting to be displayed in glorious color on your big screen TV:

The NYT’s excellent ‘Lens’ app is highlighted.

What’s so exciting about this product is that all content – movies, iTunes, iPhoto, photoblogs, etc. – is delivered through a common interface which is both very responsive and needs the simplest of remotes. The Apple Remote runs all of $19. If you don’t like the look of the interface there are lots of choices out there, including one which emulates AppleTV/Frontrow. I don’t much care for that one but you can almost certainly find something that works.

If you use a Mac to deliver content from multiple local and remote sources to your TV I recommend you take a hard look at Plex. The price is right, as in ‘free’. If your friends use Plex you can even access their libraries using Plex media Server though I have not yet tried that. The next thing I need to do is send a donation to the hard working programming team at Plex, which proves the power of distributed programming, if any proof were needed.

Update on the Apple Remote:

Plex works beautifully with the Apple Remote – either the original white plastic one or the current aluminum version.

The $19 Apple Remote.

This is a quite extraordinary feat of industrial design. While the down button is too close to the Menu and Pause buttons for those with large hands, the amazing thing about this device is that there is not a seam in sight, the only openings being the battery cover (CR2023) and the plastic cover for the IR emitter. It reminds me of Dr. Who’s spaceship the Tardis, which is famously bigger on the inside than on the outside! How did they get the components in there?

With the downloadable Plex driver the Apple Remote works beautifully with Plex but it argues with my core principle which is to have one remote do everything. So I tried programming the L5 Remote using the Apple Remote but so far without luck. Then it struck me that a Rube Goldberg approach might work so I programmed my RCA Universal Remote in ‘learning’ mode using the Apple Remote, then used the RCA to ‘teach’ the L5 Remote. Success!

I have corresponded with the L5 Remote folks on this (they stated that they have no such problem with the earlier white plastic Apple Remote) and they are looking into the issue once they have their hands on the new aluminum Apple Remote. Clearly it’s unrealistic to expect them to have tried each of the thousands of remotes out there, but the Apple Remote is a special case owing to its likely ownership by a significant percentage of Mac users. I’ll provide details when I have them and meanwhile want to add that my enthusiasm for the L5 Remote remains undimmed, especially given how responsive the manufacturer has been.

Meanwhile I am down to just one remote for everything – the L5!