Category Archives: Photographers

Alfred Stieglitz

Photographers

A change agent.

The American photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) took photography out of its early frou frou era and into the modern world. He was not only a fine photographer, he was also a great promoter of other artists, including photographers, painters and writers, primarily through his 291 Gallery in New York. In all things artistic, Stieglitz was on the cutting edge of the avant garde.

The Steerage, 1908

His best known image is The Steerage where, as a passenger on board the first class section of a ship to France he chanced on the image of the fourth class passengers in what was known as ‘The Steerage’ – maybe because the people were herded in there like steers. Rent the PBS documentary on Stieglitz from Netflix and you will hear how, when he first saw the crowd, he was fixated by the straw topper and the white suspenders; he dashed back to his cabin for his monster plate camera, one exposure left, and captured this stunning image – no one had moved. Twenty-five years later a young Cartier-Bresson was doing much the same, albeit with a strong dose of surrealism added, but he could bang away over three dozen times, with his pocket sized Leica. Not that he needed to.

Even in his earlier work, Stielglitz’s sense of immediacy was in abundant evidence.

The Terminal, 1893

This is the New York location where horses pulling streetcars, before the days of electrification, were changed. The photograph is electric, not just for its historical interest but also because of the sense that you are there. You can almost smell what’s happening.

Stieglitz was a class act, selfless in his support of fellow artists not least, in later life, of his great love Georgia O’Keeffe, another transformational American modern painter.

Stieglitz in middle age.

The PBS documentary is an excellent place to start if you are new to Alfred Stieglitz.

Eisie’s nurse

Photographers

A wonderful reminiscence.

Here’s a picture of the nurse whom Eisie photographed in Times Square all those years back on V-J day:

Here’s the picture:

Until the word ‘iconic’ was destroyed by overuse, this was one of the great iconic reportage snaps. He took several as the sailor was kissing every woman he passed. This was the best. From the end of the last war America won ….

Ansel Adams, photographer?

Photographers

Please ….

It’s no great secret to long time visitors here that I detest the landscape work of Ansel Adams. His picture postcard subjects, rendered in grossly over processed pretentious monochrome, leave me feeling physically ill. One of his most adulated snaps, ‘Moonrise Hernandez’ is a perfect example. Clearly taken in broad daylight (look at the shadows on the tombstones) it has been grotesquely processed to imitate moonlight. For all I know even the moon was pasted in from another image. As for his image of Half Dome, Yosemite …. well, better not to get me going.

Yet critically deprived Americans – eager for a claim to an ‘artist’ of their own – drool over his pictures and some even cough up serious coin to stick one of his monstrosities on the wall. The older and more yellowed, the more they pay. I know of what I speak, having had a close brush with death viewing the great man’s work myself. Yes, dear reader, I have held an original Adams print in my (cotton gloved) hands, which is more than 99.9% of his uncritical fans can say.

Well, if you thought his landscape work was pure garbage, be assured that his street photography makes it look good by comparison.

NPR has had the courage to reproduce twelve of his street snaps and it’s hard not to laugh once you have supressed the urge to cry at the thought that someone actually paid him for these. Just click the picture below, but maybe first get something cold, liquid and strong. You will need it.

Drink before you click.

The new AppleTV – Part III

Hardware, Movies

Adding a DAC.

Part II appears here.

The new AppleTV lacks traditional coaxial analog connectors for sound output; it comes with an optical Toslink sound output socket only. So if you want to route the AppleTV’s sound output to external speakers via an analog external amplifier/receiver lacking a digital optical sound input, you need a Digital Analog Converter (DAC). Speakers (and amplifiers, for that matter) built into TV sets are generally poor quality so bypassing them and using external loudspeaker boxes connected to a receiver ensures better sound.

There are two versions of the DAC, depending whether your sound system is 2 speakers and an optional subwoofer (2.1) or four corner speakers, a center and a subwoofer (5.1).

My Sony receiver is not that old yet it lacks a Toslink connector for optical digital sound, meaning I had to interpose a DAC between the AppleTV and the Sony. Adding a new digital receiver makes no economic sense, so I bought a Gefen DAC. There are two models.

  • For 2.1 sound – use this one. $58 at the time of writing. This is the one I use.
  • For 5.1 sound – this one. $91.

I went with the Gefen – cheaper units are available – as research disclosed it was known to work with the AppleTV.

Red circle denotes removed rubber Toslink covers. Green arrows show Toslink cable connections.
Apple Remote included for scale. Gold connectors route two channel analog sound to the receiver. iPad backdrop.

As the specifications are silent I also purchased a short Toslink optical fiber cable only to find that Gefen includes one in the box with the DAC! So save $6 and don’t buy a separate cable. Then I ran into a serious snag. I had never so much as seen a Toslink cable before and, no matter how I tried, I could not get the flimsy connector to stay in either the Gefen or AppleTV sockets. After a spot of head scratching and Googling, it transpired that the optical ends of the connector are covered with translucent rubber caps, circled in the above picture. Removing these allowed the connectors to fit at both ends. Duh! I knew that engineering degree would come in handy one day ….

After that it was plain sailing. I switched off the TV’s speakers, connected the AppleTV to the Gefen and routed my two RCA coaxial cables from the Gefen DAC to the Sony receiver. The DAC comes with a small power supply so you will have to search out yet another adapter to make it fit your already overburdened power strip. The red LED on the DAC confirms it’s getting power but in practice you will hide it out of the way.

The sound is excellent, the Sony receiver’s volume control is set at half way through the scale so clearly the amplifier is being adequately driven by the DAC and, equally importantly, not overdriven. The TV remains connected using an HDMI cable (for video) and the orange cable you can see connected to the AppleTV is for wired internet. I use wired in preference to wireless as the AppleTV sits right next to my broadband modem and I always prefer wired to wireless, having grown up in a world where men were men, cars had carburettors and the word ‘digital’ was not in common use. The small cable routed to the front bezel of the AppleTV is the optical sender from my IR blaster.

Check the Comments to this article to learn how the HDMI and Toslink sound outputs interact.

I have to add that until now I have always thought the USB connector to be one of the worst designed on the planet, and just slightly better than the Firewire800 one. Well, it must now take the runner’s up place to the Toslink one which, though keyed, is so small that you have to look awfully hard for the keyways, for some reason only fits one way (nonsensical for an optical signal) and will leave you scratching your head because of those little rubber covers about which the instructions are silent.

We now enjoy premium quality video and sound from the new AppleTV and greatly enjoy watching our photo slideshows with the help of this handy little device, as well as listening to our music and watching Netflix and iTunes movies.

The new AppleTV – Part II

Hardware, Movies

AirPlay and more use tests.

Part I appears here.

Here I examine the working of AirPlay, Apple’s update to the use of remote sources and speakers for playing music files.

At this time AirPlay only works for routing sound files, but Steve Jobs has promised that routing of video files will be added before 2011. In Part I, I mentioned that optimal control of the infra red sensor in the AppleTV for use with remotes results from the use of an IR blaster. This small device replaces the AppleTV’s sensor with a much less directional and more sensitive one and works for all IR controlled devices. Simply stated, once you have an IR blaster installed you can pretty much point a remote in any direction and it will work the hardware it is aimed at, however imperfectly. Just ask our 8 year old. I use this one and it’s excellent.

The alternative is to load Remote (free, from the AppStore) on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and use the mobile device to control your AppleTV using wifi, provided you have a wireless network in your home. Thus approach does not require any line of sight to the device you want to control as it uses radio waves.

I downloaded the latest version of Remote and installed it on my iPhone and found that it was very quick to set up and easy to use. The screen shots which follow are from my 3G iPhone.

Fire up Remote and you are asked for the Library you want to use. Mine (“Tigger’s Library”) resides on the HackPro in my home office.

Checking that library as the source, the next two screens ask where you want the sound routed.

In the above, ‘Computer’ refers to the speakers connected to the HackPro. I simply chose ‘AppleTV’ and the music is routed to the speakers connected to our TV. Note the useful provision of a volume control in the second screen, above.

And that’s about it. It’s that simple. This approach allows centralized or distributed storage of music (and, soon, video) files which can now be output to any connected device on the network.

Cover art from your remote server is also fully displayed on the iPhone, thus:

A masterpiece of male chauvinism from Mick and the Boys.

More use tests:

I have now watched several movies using AppleTV as the streaming device. Some were from Netflix, both in SD and HD, and some were purchased from the iTunes store $4.99 or less) also in SD and HD. At no time did any of these exhibit any stuttering or distortion in either video or sound and all loaded and started playing within 30 seconds or less. The AppleTV remains only barely warm to the touch, even after a two hour HD movie transmission and even a child could use the on screen menus. In fact Winston, our 8 year old boy, has proved that to be true. The appearance of the menus using Netflix is identical to that for the iTunes store.

Conclusion:

The AppleTV is unlikely to become the sole device for consuming sound and movies in the home, primarily owing to the dunderheads who run movie studios. They prefer to have a large slice of nothing in royalties than a small slice of something, having convinced themselves that the $0.99 cent pricing of songs in the iTunes Music Store has cheated them. Meanwhile, they conveniently avoid noticing that without iTMS music would be pretty much dead as no one wants to pay $10 for a CD which gathers dust in the home, is hard to access and contains many tracks you do not want. They are now making the same error with movies, on the principle that if your competitor’s candle dims, that brightens yours. I have never known that to be true in any field of human endeavor. You try and explain it to them.

After its previous failures with the AppleTV, Apple seems reluctant to even show the device on its web site and you have to search for the related home page, which can be found here. I can’t even find it on the specifications page, but the power consumption, even when working, does not exceed a couple of watts, which explains why there is no on/off switch.

The elegant and intuitive movie rental page.

However, as a device with a superb user interface which finally avoids the heat, poor performance and price issues of its predecessor, the AppleTV is going to find itself in a lot of Christmas stockings this December at the $99 asking price. I know I will be buying a half dozen or so with just that destination in mind.

In Part III I address the use of a Digital to Analog Converter to convert the AppleTV’s digital/optical sound output to analog for usew with traditional amplifiers and external speakers.

Disclosure: Long AAPL common stock and call options.