Vincent Laforet

Vincent Laforet has become famous for his photos with unusually small depth-of-field. Here's a video about it. And here's an article of his regarding the future plight of the professional photographer (hint: it's buyer's market).

Update: the article has a reference to the wedding thing we have touched upon:
"To be frank, it's quite possible to make more money these days as a top wedding photographer than it is as a top advertising photographer... if you're lucky enough to be making more than $10K a wedding, I'd say it's going to be pretty darn close. While few make that much per wedding, it's a realistic goal, as the top wedding photographers in the country make between $20K to $50K per wedding and up."
Fifty grand for the photographer alone! That's when you know you have too much money.


It is funny that we are familiar enough with miniature/model photography and the inherent short depth-of-field that we instinctively feel that photos like this are of miniatures.
It can be done with a large format camera, but also with a tilt lens. Article.

Update:
"At the time people thought I was reckless for leaving such a coveted staff job. The NYT job was a union job - with incredible benefits, a staff car, and company gear and it was often described as a "guaranteed job for life." Unless you committed a felony, or broke an important ethical rule, "they can't fire you," I was repeatedly told.
A few weeks ago I was at The Times to judge the Sports Shooter Student Portfolio of the Year and when I came out there was a strange feel around the newsroom. That day was the day that The New York Times was having it's first layoffs in the newspaper's history, that's right until then, there had never been a single layoff at The New York Times. People were being called in the editors' offices and being told they were being let go - this after not enough people had opted to take a series of buyouts. This was fundamental change in what we were taught to believe in - what ever happened to that "job for life." Well that dream, that comfortable "cloud" and the idea of a staff job, is becoming a distant memory these days - no one is immune - not even The NY Times. "

Below is one of my favorite Vince Laforet pictures. It's awesome.

Brooklyn bridges, 1908

Another amazing BW photo, but this one very detailed.
Thanks to Shorpy.


Here is another fantastic one:

The original is even bigger (and more detailed) than Blogger allows.

Memorial/sky photograph

I quite like this photo, taken with a Diana camera by my friend Nicola Quinn from the English South.
(I think prints are available.)


Funny coincidence: last night I had a dream I was photographing the sky.

Direct to DVD/blue-ray/download

I'm pleased that direct-to-DVD is becoming a market. I guess soon it'll be called "direct-to-DVD-and-Blue-ray-and-also-download-rental-and-purchase", and it will be a huge market itself, sitting between the TV-series market and the theatre market, but perhaps one day be bigger than either.

I think it can produce many high-quality things, both by small and big producers, to set at various places in the Long Tail, including the fat end.

One example of a good product is the new four planned DVDs of Futurama of which two are released yet, I've watched the first one, Bender's Big Score, which was top notch, and I've bought the second one, The Beast with a Billion Backs.

The thing is that something like the Blair Witch, which had a super-low production budget, can now also be released for a very low budget, unlike theatre release which is extremely costly. With today's technology, a small group of of talented people can produce a fully professional film (either live action or animated) and release it too, for a budget a tiny fraction of what was necessary a few years ago. And there are even new ways of promotion, like YouTube. It's all very cool.

Camera order cancellation

As I half-expected, that order on an insanely-cheap camera via Amazon UK I placed a few days ago did not get through. I just got a mail from the seller:

"First of all we would like to thank you for ordering from Foto Koester.
However, we are afraid that the order placed must be cancelled.
The huge different in price compared to our competitors is the result of an account manupilation by a third party.
Together with amazon we have already taken the appropriate action in order to avoid such accidents."

That's understandable, I guess. Perhaps somebody hacked it just to get himself a cheap camera.

Web comic

Web comic "Questionable Content". I like it.


I can't recall, and for some reason, Search refuses to reveal, who linked to QC this morning (I have a habit of opening web pages to be read later). It turns out QC is pretty famous and one of the few webcomics earning their maker a living. Good on him.

Associated Press protectionism

Associated Press protectionism.

Trying to force bloggers from quoting articles and linking to them? That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard. That's like a supermarket owner trying to intimidate the customers into not talking to their friends about the store. If AP is not able to benefit from free traffic, then they are doing something horribly wrong.

Clone Wars CGI movie

Clone Wars CGI movie.

It looks nice. But looking at the trailer I'm thinking that after thirty years... I'm pretty much over light sabers and ray guns, donchaknow? I can't get enough of eye candy of big imaginative cities and space ships, but the battle scenes... yawn.

42 days and hand over your flash card

42 days and hand over your flash card. [Thanks to Mike Reichman for the link.]
"... memory cards, cameras and mobile phones, PDA's, laptops - anything containing digital information, as well as letters, notebooks etc. will be able to be removed and kept by police for up to 4 days even though no offence has been committed.
"Police, PCSO's and public are already quite capable of forcibly and wrongly insisting that cameras require a licence or that photos of people in the street require permission or that photographing children is illegal. The addition of a hazy certainty that cards and photos may lawfully be confiscated on demand seems sure to significantly worsen this already toxic mess."

TTL points to this Tim Ferris post about the situation in the US.
"Tomorrow, July 8th, could mark the beginning of official condoning of warrantless surveillance of law-abiding citizens in the US, not to mention foreign nationals. I am not an alarmist and believe in qualified surveillance with process — this is different. I’ve done the homework."

The new puritans

Under an older post, Philip commented:

... one of my least favorite phrases: "everything has changed".

I live in the US, and I've noticed that this is the excuse that the new breed of Puritans uses for all of their ridiculous restrictions. (Maybe it's the same old breed, but they don't call themselves Puritans anymore.)

Sadly, the media tell us when something is offensive, and everyone works themselves into a tizzy over it, even if it wasn't offensive at all. Then we look differently at our friends and neighbors. It makes no sense.

A quick example: I have three children. I'm an actively involved parent, helping out at school fund-raisers, actually attending their award ceremonies, etc. At a recent event, my kid was getting an award, and I was there with my camera taking pictures of his proud moment. A friend of ours has a daughter at the same school. This lady had forgotten her camera, and asked if I might take a few pictures of her daughter getting her awards, and email them to her. Of course I was happy to help out.

After the event, the school principal (a matronly Puritan if ever there was one) approached me and asked me to be careful in future not to take pictures of any kids except my own. I asked something like "Huh?" There were, of course hundreds of kids around. How would you NOT get at least twenty into any picture you might take?

She said that it might make the other parents nervous to see a man that they didn't know with a camera. "Times have changed." was the catchphrase she threw in to justify her request (which wasn't really a request at all, of course).

Oddly, she didn't go to the dozens of mothers who were there and give them the same talk.

American society is infected with some kind of sick paranoia in this area, and I'm not sure I know what the cure is. It's all of their weird behavior towards body-image, extreme fear of nudity, not trusting one another . . . If I was a conspiracy nut, I'd start to think that the government and the media were in cahoots to keep the public divided, brainwashed and confused, but I'm not that nutty.

Think of the children! I think of them growing up in the midst of all this insanity -- their Puritan (or confused) parents teaching them not to trust one another. What does the future hold for them?

A wedding price

The average cost of a wedding in the UK is twenty thousand Pound Sterling (at present rate, $40,000). Twenty thousand pounds for a one day celebration! Are people totally frikkin' insane? Think of the eduction or the leisure time you could buy for that kind of money.

Bert added:

I remember, ages ago, a colleague who invited all of his coworkers (half a dozen or so, including me) out for lunch, and without any apparent reason.

Of course we were curious, and questioned him during lunch as to what occasion we were celebrating. He told us that he had been happily married ten years and had just finished, on that very day, paying off the expenses for his marriage.

He explained that, in the Polish tradition, all wedding expenses are at the charge of the groom. I'm sure the groom's family usually helps out, openly or not, but poor Larry's family just couldn't afford it. And since he had married "above his condition" (is this the correct expression?) and there was no way that his family could lose face to the other side, well, poor Larry got in debt for 10 years...

This is what makes me sick of this marriage business. I would find it pretty normal, even sweet if the goal was to make the day truly special for the newlyweds. But by subtly playing the "yours vs theirs" card, the whole marriage business manages to inflate everything out of control. Of course, one could argue that if the people involved were smart, this wouldn't happen. But pride is such a deeply rooted human emotion...

Indeed. We can blame "the industry" or "society" or this or that person or group. But the fact is that we all are participants.
For example, I can despise a wedding planner for his obscene fees, but if it was me, doing what I liked, and people were willing to pay such fees, would I really say no? I doubt it.

Two men and a spook

Just had a little spook: two men rang my doorbell, one of them I couldn't see under the front awning. The other said very friendly-like if I could let them in because they wanted to surprise my upstairs neighbor. I let them in, and I went to see them as they went up the stairs so they at least knew I'd gotten a look at them.

I noticed then that the one who had spoken was dressed in a slick grey suit and had an expensive watch, around here signifying a specific sort of person. And my neighbor, a very nice and helpful guy, is also the subject of persistent rumors of connections to the grey areas of society.

Well, I could now see the second man, and he was nigh two meters tall and almost as wide, just muscle, and had a shaved head and a broken nose... He attempted to give me a smile and a friendly nod, but these didn't look like expressions he was used to.

I thought "Oh dear, what have I done".

My worries were not eased by heavy footsteps from above and noises like an argument. I was thinking I should go up and knock on his door with some excuse to check on the situation.

But then a couple minutes later I could hear the usual carefree laugh from my neighbor, so I'm guessing it's all right after all.

Update: this particular neighbor is the only one who several times has had somebody come around, with him away or not, and ask me to let them in. So just now I went up to him and asked for a general policy on this. He told me to generally not do so (though it's been OK those times I've done so, fortunately). Which is nice, because now I can say to people that it's his request that I don't do it, so I'm not the one being the a-hole.

Anonymous said...
Sounds like a great neighborhood. I'd get a gun. Or else at least hit the gym. Aren't you nigh on 2 metres yourself?

Yep, I'm pretty big, but not so fit as this guy looked.

This was an exception, it's not a bad neighborhood. More like average, I guess.