Theories of Emergence in Alleys
Two More
The iPhone worked very well while I was in London. It roamed on several local networks and data was nearly the equal as in the US. I got a little paranoid about how much roaming data I was using, fearing the per kb cost, so I kept usage down, turning off background mail updates. There were virtually no open WiFi networks in London, but in the hotels it was nice to have what really works as a pocket tablet computer for web access.
The top image is a grove of birch trees just outside the Tate Modern in London. I walked along the Thames to the Tate Britain to see their first ever major photography exhibition. While the focus was historical and social, it’s always a thrill to see real photographs rather than just web representations. There were a number of modern prints of old negatives and one or two prints from “scans” of original prints.
It’s been said many times, but it can’t be said too often. Subject matter always trumps technical quality, unless the subject matter is itself technical quality. I always leave photography exhibits looking for photographs with better “subjects” and more “meaning” in the image. There’s a limit to the value of formal asthetics in photographs.
Light and Lines on the London Streets
I had a quick trip to London and brought the Leica M6ttl and C41 process black and white film. I just got the scans back today and have to say that this time I’m a little disappointed in the scan quality. It may be that the light was a little harsher or I created denser negatives by rating the film at ISO 320 instead of 400. Certainly I pushed the grain level down compared to the last set, but the contrast seems very high for unprocessed jpegs.
What the iPhone Saw on the Lawn
After all of my protesting and rationalizing about how I would not buy an iPhone for now, I went ahead and bought one. I’ll use it as my business phone, with the Blackberry supporting with rapid corporate email, calendar and EVDO modem support.
This is my first cell phone camera, so on my run today I brought the iPhone and stopped a few times to grab some shots. I can’t say that I expect to produce work with it, but as a sketch book, as here, it works well enough. No problems with auto white balance or exposure. I understand it’s fixed focus, so it’s interesting how the foreground tree is well detailed but the background woodpile here doesn’t hold up as an object. This may be due to the low pixel count.
My biggest complaint is that phone number recognition needs improvement. The Blackberry translates foreign numbers perfectly, allowing me to dial numbers wherever they appear- email, calendar appointments, web pages. The iPhone recognizes US numbers on web pages or in mail messages. There’s no recognition in the Calendar App. That means that when I have a telecon, I need to write the number down from the appointment and switch to the phone and dial. Or I can get the web view of my calendar from the Outlook Web Access site and click on the number to dial. If it’s US, but not if it’s international.
Of course this is related to the lack of copy and paste capability. With a simple copy function, I’d be able to move the number into the phone app. I loved the Newton’s clipboard- you’d highlight text and drag it over to the side of the screen where it stuck until you dragged it back in to use it.
But it’s a 1.0 product, and I trust these refinements will come soon enough.
alec soth – blog » Blog Archive » That 70’s Show
alec soth – blog » Blog Archive » That 70’s Show
Szarkowski included a large selection of this ‘synthetic’ photography in the book. But anyone looking at this work now, 28 years after its publication, will likely agree that much of it appears ‘flimsy’ and dated. All of that solarization just looks silly.
I believe that it’s always been this way. When one looks back on contemporary accounts of art, maybe of most cultural endeavors, most of it looks dated and unimportant. Out of each large movement only a small number of workers, and a small number of their works will be “remembered”. These works will be cited over and over as “important and representative of the time”.
Of course, one reason for this is that much of the derivative work is re-expression or simple repetition of the insights of the few. That’s the way culture works. Some times the “important work” is the best repetition, not the original thought which may have been a less clear example of the culture of the time.
The other important reason is that cultural memory, like human memory, is limited. We summarize our own stories into personal myths and incidents. We summarize cultural history into key events and seminal works.
What’s been fascinating to me is that very often the important works recognized years, decades and centuries later are often unimportant when they are created. While some great artists and thinkers achieve recognition during their lifetimes, many others labor in obscurity. And poverty unless they have a good day job.
Memory is retrospective and explanatory. It tells the story of how we got here and rationalizes what we’re doing now. That means that the events and works in the past that seemed important before may turn out to be, at least for now irrelevant. They may be forgotten forever. Other events or works, that seemed trivial or mysterious at the time, become very important in retrospect when used to explain the now. It’s odd that history should change as we change if you assume a linear progression of events and ideas. When you see the world as a complex network stretching into the past, the unpredictability of the past is no different than the uncertainty of the future.
Winning the War One Week at a Time
Micro Persuasion: Turn Your iPhone into a Mobile Nerve Center
However, the iPhone doesn’t go far enough by itself. You can make it go even further with these free undocumented techniques I have implemented over the past few days. It will turn your iPhone into a mobile nerve center that allows you to keep essential information at your fingertips. These tips can be used by themselves or in conjunction with the GMail Nerve Center techniques I wrote about in February.
I’ve won another week of the war against buying an iPhone. I’ve gained a bit of appreciation for the Blackberry as I’ve looked at how far I can push it’s functionality toward that of iPhone. At this point my mental equipoise is at waiting for my Verizon contracts to expire in Feb/March and keep the Blackberry on Verizon for business mail and EVDO modem use and move calls over to AT&T and the iPhone. The iPhone “ecosystem” seems to be developing rapidly, but I can’t see giving up push email and full on the go highspeed internet access. Perhaps, as John Gruber suggests, my next iPod will serve as my iPhone. The multimedia and wi-fi browsing without the cellular service. A nice complement to the Blackberry.
Sad to be writing about this so much and to even be wasting so much mental energy on it, but there must be many others who like me are committed Blackberry users who want the phone and browsing interface of the iPhone.
The View Over the Mailbox Provided No Comfort
The Road Goes On Until
In this suburban landscape shot, right on the road outside my house, I used on camera flash to pick out reflective elements in the scene. I’m learning more about the quarter tone levels control in Aperture. The controls overall are less direct than using curves in Photoshop, but in some ways may be more integrated, working on the RAW file itself.
I wonder whether Aperture will ever add local tonal control at all? Without burning and dodging, it’s hard to call it a digital darkroom, after all. But if I can get roundtripping working better, perhaps I can stick to local changes in Photoshop, avoiding the levels that slow Aperture down so much and spoil the integration of the two programs.
Just One Tree
I took a short walk in the neighborhood tonight with the D80, this time with the 50mm f/1.8, thinking the extra stop would be useful as the light faded. As shutter speeds started dropping below what I can hand hold, particularly on a walk when I pause and shoot, I put the on camera flash into action. I dialed the flash compensation down by between 1.5 and 2.5 stops. It was enough to isolate foregrounds in the light and bring the shutter speed up to 1/30th.