Featured on the Flickr Blog!

By Eric

Wow, a photo of mine was featured on the Flickr Blog yesterday! I feel extremely honored they chose a photo of mine and it can forever be seen via this permalink. However, this experience has sparked my curiosity as to just how many people follow the Flickr Blog vs. the number of users Flickr has. In the 3 short hours my photo was featured on flickr.com it received roughly 100 views an hour, but after it moved from the Flickr home page to the #2 spot on the blog (still in a highly visible spot) the number of views has slowed to a trickle. Anyone interested in photography really should follow that blog as well as fluidr.com. Fluidr is a great way to view Flickr’s Explored photos of the day/week/month.

HDR Hell

By Eric

High Dynamic Range (HDR) has been a hot buzz phrase in the world of photo geeks for at least two years now. For the most part I don’t mind it, I usually just ignore the over-saturated mess and go on about my business. However, the other day I uploaded this photo taken from my KTM 990 Adventure on Flickr. Afterwards I decided to browse photos other people had taken of that motorcycle. First I came across this photo. It’s wonderfully done, has a beautiful back drop, and the photographer used off camera strobes to light the subject. All-in-all a class A photo. Then I came upon this HDR photo of a KTM 990 Adventure. Holy crikey, WTF is that I thought. I was about to shrub it off then I noticed it had over 20 favs in only 120 views! For those that don’t use Flickr, that’s an extremely high percentage. That made me curious so I went back and looked at the stats of the nicely done photo; only 160 views and 2 favs!

I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, and I know art is subjective, but good grief. It’s as if people are totally ignorant as to what actually requires skill. You can put all the dynamic range you want into a photo and it won’t help a bit if the photo is boring or poorly composed to begin with. I’ve seen NASCAR t-shirts with more artistic integrity than this, this, or this. For god sake, some of these look like airbrushed license plates from the county fair. This reminds me of the early days of Photoshop when graphic designers Read more »

Respect The Walmart Photo Police Authority

By Eric

I learned a valuable lesson yesterday. If you are a somewhat competent photographer make sure you sign a release letter before attempting to make prints at Walmart. I took this very basic photo of my niece for her dance recital program. I then gave the photo to my parents on a thumb drive because they wanted a print of it. To Walmart they went. All was well until they tried to check out. Then the Walmart photo police refused to give them the print. Furthermore, instead of politely telling them that the photo looked professionally made and asking them to procure a signed letter of release they accused my parents of trying to steal the photo and make illegal prints of copyrighted material. After harassing my parents for 10 minutes about it my father said to just cut up the photo, he no longer wanted it. Instead of doing that the manager of the Walmart photo center then calls me personally and asks me how I took the photo. Then asks me if I can fax them a release on my letterhead. After explaining to them that I am not a professional photographer, nor do I have stationary, and that I took that photo in my parents living room with a white quilt and two strobes they finally begrudgingly gave in and let my parents have the print.

Long story short, carry a copy of this photo release form with you whenever making prints at Walmart.

The Handwriting Is On The Wall For DSLR’s

By Eric

I finally got my hands on a Panasonic G1 today. I didn’t get to test it for long, but 20 minutes with it was long enough to confirm my belief that Micro Four Thirds style cameras are the future of the amateur photography market. This is by no means a detailed review, there are plenty of sites that do that. I’m just going to point out some of the things I liked about it and speculate on the future of the system. 

What I Liked

The first thing I noticed when framing up a photo was the size of the electronic view finder. Compared to a cropped sensor DSLR, such as a Canon Rebel, it is a HUGE view. It easily seems as large as the view in a full frame DSLR even though the camera itself is much smaller than a Nikon D60. Plus there is so much info in the view finder for you at all times. Traditional SLR’s can’t compete in this area for obvious reasons. After taking a photo you don’t even have to take your eye out of the viewfinder to see a review of it. And what an image review it is, better than any LCD I’ve seen on any SLR. It feels almost like reviewing your image on a 20″ monitor. If you’re used to seeing your images on a 2.5″ LCD or smaller then you’re in for a real treat. Read more »

Why Am I Here?

By Eric

I’m sitting here watching the wrap-up of Obama’s inauguration, but for some reason I’m once again thinking about space and time. Why am I here right now? The universe is over 13 billion years old. The chance of me being alive during any natural era of human history on earth is so small that I can’t wrap my brain around it. It makes more sense to me to believe that I was really born billions of years ago and this current reality is nothing but a simulation of a normal human life at the zenith of our natural evolution. The real me is simply sitting somewhere in a galaxy far, far away plugged in to a simulator living out a normal life to pass time.

I am 31 years old. That means I am a member of the last generation to spend their entire adolescence in a pre-internet world. 31 years from now we will have designer babies, cloned organs, and regenerative medicine. Beyond that we will have robotic bodies that in-theory will have unlimited lifespans. Beyond that we should be able to develop a way to transcend our physical bodies all together and upload our consciousness to a secure location. From that location we could choose to live out virtual lives any time, any way, and during any era we choose. All of that should take no longer that 300 years, and some such as Ray Kurzweil feel as though it will take much less time than that. Long story short, this era of human history has had to of already happened.

Of course this is probably just my feeling of self importance getting the better of me. The Obama’s of the world are the real humans; you and I are just neural net bots programmed to fill that simulated world for them. Sleep tight.