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PhotoshopDisasters

Power of the Internets, part 2,567,845: Photography

From what I can glean from this discussion thread on Flickr, someone from the Young Isaac agency went trolling Flickr for photos of Columbus. When asked what YI was going to pay, she either declined to answer, or told the photographer that she was unable to pay since the project was for non-proffit, in this case the Columbus Foundation.
About two days ago, the director of marketing communications at the Columbus Foundation stepped into the thread, apparently alerted by fellow Flickr users and has promised to look into it.

The incident raises an interesting issue. With the massive boom in advanced amateur photography and the advent of sites like Flickr, access to good photography has never been easier. From the content provider end, the temptation to use free images off the internet is almost irresistible. Popular sites such as BoingBoing and Consumerist commonly use Flickr photos with the Creative Commons share-alike licenses to illustrate stories on their sites. Consumerist got in a bit of trouble doing this, and after some Digg-driven enlightenment, got religion.
There has been some backlash to this. Photographer Lane Hartwell pulled all her photos from Flickr after she noticed one had been stolen for a viral video. She also (rightfully) had the video pulled and predictably caught a lot of flack for it, from the "It's on the Internet, it must be free" crowd.

On the other hand, the digital photography boom and the internet have led to a significant increase in low-entry-barrier outlets for photographers. Micro-stock sites like iStockphoto, Dreamstime, Shutterstock, etc. are full of newly-professional, former advanced-amateur photographers. While the pay is very low compared with traditional stock photo agencies, and some of their licensing terms aren't so good, they are much easier to get into, and do provide a manageable way to monetize your photography. I did a quick search for Columbus+Ohio on iStockphoto though, and the results were not very good (~60 hits). Perhaps that's why YI started hitting up Flickr users.

ecto says I'm listening to Lookin' For Me Somewhere from the album "Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams" by The BoDeans

NEWSFLASH: Newspapers Grossly Misunderstand the Internet

...as illustrated every second of every day at The Columbus Dispatch.

Today's example: The Dispatch and two of it's photographers, Mary Circelli and Neil Lauron won awards at the convention of the Ohio News Photographers Association (try to find pictures on their site!). The Dispatch took second place for best use of pictures.

The Dispatch website article celebrates this feat by describing, but not publishing, the award-winning pictures. They also didn't publish the pictures in print, or in their hideous 'Online Edition.' Rather than taking advantage of the medium to link to or show the pictures at next to no cost or effort, the Dispatch publishes a bland, advertisement-choked (tip: Add http://adsrv.dispatch.com to your AdBlocker prefs for a whole different experience) page. Sadly, this is what they do every day with their award-winning staff and second-place picture usage. They could spend a little time and effort and make their layout not seizure-inducing and use some of those photos, but they choose ads instead.

Eventually, this all pays off

Or at least that's what I keep telling Jane, and maybe myself. Strangely, looking at the calendar for next week, all of this summer so far looks pretty easy in retrospect. All three kids that can walk have activities this week, so Jane will spend just about every waking minute shuttling them around. We think that maybe she can make it to the grocery store on Tuesday.

Add in demanding work, and Jane's 4-night-a-week class and spare time is at a premium. As much as I've been trying to not do work at home, I pulled at least one late night last week for a morning deadline, and I'm sitting here now, watching the last remnants of my old work laptop move to the new one. I was hoping to do the whole move on the clock, but it's been over a month since I got the new one and I'm sick of hauling it around.

I haven't been completely inactive though. I've gotten so sick of my digital camera that I've hauled out my old Rolleiflex and Leica and started shooing film again. The thing I haven't done much of, though is scanning the film. A pile awaits in the basement. Most of it will be going to my Flickr page, if you want to look.

Technorati Tags: 256, baby, finoula, oshaughnessy

Really quick

Because I've got to go sit down and figure out how I'm going to implement GTD. Strangely, I just found that this is some sort of cult-techie-blogger phenomenon. Of course, it has taken me ~4 months to read the damn book. The problem I'm having with getting organized right now is that I don't have time for it, mostly because I'm disorganized.

Also, I'm trying to take and publish at least one photo per day, over on the photo blog (and on Flickr). Not doing very well so far, as I've already missed a day and am getting grumpier and grumpier with the damn camera. (My excuses are always about the equipment!)

So how's your new year going?

ecto says I'm listening to Untiedundone from the album "Boomerang" by The Creatures

More retro digital cameras

Via PhotographyBlog, Minox has introduced a 4 megapixel mini-reproduction of the legendary Leica M3.

Add this to my wish list, along with the Rolleiflex MiniDigi, which still doesn't seem to be available.

This camera, along with the RolleiFlex MiniDigi could get a pretty decent miniature replica camera collection going. With their relative uniqueness, they might actually hold their value like real cameras, but unlike any digital camera.

ecto says I'm listening toWrap It Up from the album "The Best of Sam & Dave" by Sam & Dave

Quick

Some fireworks photos are up on my Photoblog.

Nightly running battles with kids has me beat.

Work has me beat this week. Sitting here (not) doing work stuff at 11:30 at night.

I still owe my brother $50 and a weblog for his band. Remind me to tell you the story of the $50, or Molly or someone else that was there could fill in.

Ellie has sensed that this will be a very stressful month and decided that this is the perfect time to insist that she be potty-trained.

German eBay progress: I've won an item. Now to figure out how to pay for it and get it here.

Okay, off to bed!

ecto says I'm listening to Give It To The Soft Boys from the album The Soft Boys 1976-1981 by The Soft Boys

Omygod!!! It's square format!!!

Via Gizmodo: Rollieflex (or whatever Japanese conglomerate owns them) has just introduced the Rolleiflex MiniDigi.

Not only does it look amazingly like my real Rollei 3.5f, but it also takes square pictures!!! How damned cool is that? The only hokey things are the weird lever action and the fact that the viewfinder image is not inverted like a real Rollei. I'm even toying with the idea of selling off my 3.5f and all of the accessories to get one.

Getty Images on Amazon

I read today that Getty Images is selling prints of some of their photos on Amazon via a print-on-demand system.
After browsing though, I was a bit disappointed. Most of what is available is mind-numbing stock photography, but if you dig really deep, you can find some gems, like news photos of Cassius Clay, and a nice portrait of John Lennon. The National Geographic section is also nice.

Bobby's 100 Pictures

Bobby's 100 Pictures for 100s day are up. 100s day is tomorrow at school and he has a nice set of 5 11x17 pages of 20 pictures each to take to school.

Enjoy pictures of our TV, Joey and our very beige house (it came that way. We're quietly waiting for Operation Doom Scour II, the revenge of my parents).

Off to bed, long day tomorrow.

ecto says I'm listening to River of Time from the album Mixx on the Fly- Live From Studio A Volume 5 by Bill Miller

On our own

Beer and pizza night went well. We kept Adam over a little late, but he had some pizza and was happy. Bobby agreed to go to bed when I told him and Joey obviously faded early.
Today, Bobby is taking 100 pictures for 100s day at school. We're going to lay them out in 10s and print them up this afternoon.
Joey is helping Bobby and Ellie is grooving to the Beetles with me.

ecto says I'm listening to Think For Yourself from the album Rubber Soul by The Beatles

New Photos

The 256 Photos gallery has been updated with a few pictures. Aunt Maggie should take a look.

ecto says I'm listening to On The Trail from the album Oscar Peterson meets Perlman by Perlman, I./Peterson, O.

Okay, please let this be three.

Helmut Newton, and Captain Kangaroo both died yesterday. I feel like I'm writing an obit column.

Somewhere in heaven there are tall, nude blonde women rigging up lots of Ping-Pong balls in the ceiling.

ecto says I'm listening to People Who Died from the album Catholic Boy by Jim Carrol

Intro: My Photo Weblog

Well, rather than make some witty posts here, or waste your time talking about how much we're going to spend on a new furnace, or on the strange discovery of other Columbus webloggers, I went and created a Photo Weblog.
It actually wasn't that hard. A little time consuming, but not hard. I'm still thankful for having the Pro level of TypePad though, as I had to do some major noodling with my CSS and HTML documents to get it looking halfway like I wanted it to.
But hey check out O'Photo.

Discoveries

I finally fired up my old computer to move some older files over. It's amazing what one finds.
This is Jim Barrett in the swamps of southern Mississippi. We'd gone down there to pack up a photo studio that the camera store had bought out. We also decided to head to the swamps to take some pictures with Hasselblad Superwides.
Just a little personal inspiration to get a medium format film scanner....