Photographs – Page 4

IDC White Paper: The Digital Universe

Image of Report Cover In an earlier blog I mentioned the IDC report, The Digital Universe, about the explosion of digital information. It was commissioned by EMC Corporation and is available free on their site, here. They also have a page on related information which includes a link to “Are You an Informationist?” and “The Inforati Files”.

The PDF of the IDC White Paper includes some interesting points:

Between 2006 and 2010, the information added annually to the digital universe will increase more than six fold from 161 exabytes to 988 exabytes.

Three major analog to digital conversions are powering this growth ‚Äì film to digital image capture, analog to digital voice, and analog to digital TV.

Images, captured by more than 1 billion devices in the world, from digital cameras and camera phones to medical scanners and security cameras, comprise the largest component of the digital universe. They are replicated over the Internet, on
private organizational networks, by PCs and servers, in data centers, in digital TV broadcasts, and on digital projection movie screens. building automation and security migrates to IP networks, surveillance goes digital, and RFID and sensor networks
proliferate.

Is it time to rewrite “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” to think about about “The Image in the Age of Networked Distribution”.

fd’s Flickr Toys

fd’s Flickr Toys is a set of utilities that work with Flickr. I like the On Black tool which creates a link that puts a Flickr picture like Shoulder on a Black Background. You can then put the link into the comments or description.

Cootes after the storm

Well I got myself a Flickr account for the photos I take. I’m tired of hand coding albums.

Here is a set of photos I took on a hike in Cootes after the storm we had this week. Snow has smothered the hills so softly that everything is pushing back through.

UK Entrances to Hell

The catalogue of UK Entrances to Hell is a collection of images of strange dark entrances (usually boarded up.) There is now a Flickr group too. Remember the safety rules:

Rule 1: It may be an obvious thing to say but NEVER try to go inside an entrance to Hell.
Rule 2: Always approach an entrance on your stomach.
Rule 3: Don’t shout at the devil (not even with good news).
Rule 4: Wear rubber gloves for 3 or 4 days after your visit.

This site came up when I googled “go to hell”.

Haefner: Kite Aerial Photography

Kite Photo Rig Kite Aerial Photography is a photography site by by Scott Haefner that includes 360 degree panoramas taken from kites. Haefner is a professional photographer and site designer whose site also describes the equipment needed to kite aerial photography. The site itself, along with its companion on his Ground-based Photography, is an example of a well designed photo site. Thanks to Shawn for this.

Escape Route

Escape Route is a “photographic travelogue” which shows a 3D itinerary or 2D itinerary of locations for which there are photos. The itineraryies are mapped onto 3d or 2d globes space. There are neat animations for when you collapse from 3d to 2d. I’m so intrigued by the navigation interface I haven’t really looked at the snaps. Thanks to Drew Paulin for this.

ARIA:

ARIA is an MIT Media Lab project from the Software Agents
that can do continuous retrieval and ranking of images based on typing. To me it suggests a more humble approach to agents than the “send off and forget” type of agent discussed in the 90s. This is more the “autocorrect” type of assistant. This is from Matt Patey.
Continue reading ARIA:

Wooster Collective

The Wooster Collective: A Celebration of Street Art is a collective blog (“clog”) about street art that I got lost in. Thanks to Geoff T. for this.
Continue reading Wooster Collective

Massive Change, the Show

We went to the Bruce Mau show on Massive Change: The Future of Global Design at the Art Gallery of Ontario. After being disspointed in the web site (see Massive Change and Overrated Sight) I was more favorably impressed by the show. The first thing my wife noticed standing in line was how young the people coming were – it seems to have reached a demographic that doesn’t come to galleries. The show itself is didactic – there is lots of text to read and to listen to and most of it is earnest in an improving way. What is impressive is how they have taken what is essentially an essay and turned it into an exhibit that seemed to work for the 20-something crowd. The points are illustrated and exhibited in interesting ways like the room of images showing the ways we visualize our world.
One side of me wished I could afford to turn a course into an exhibit like this. Imagine if you could exhibit a class and then assign the show as a field-trip alternative to the lecture. Hmmmm….
Another annoying feature of the show was that it treated everything as design. In many ways it was about politics and the environment. To think that design in anything other than the weak sense of creative solutions is the key is hubris. In a sense everthing human is designed, that is what we call intentional behavior aimed at a new outcome. In a stronger sense design is a subset of such practices and politicians are not designers.
Continue reading Massive Change, the Show

lomography: photography without education

don’t think, just shoot

The lomographic Society International is dedicated to a style of random and immediate photography. The site is fascinating, even if the results are intentionally pedestrian, everyday, and strangely composed.
See THE.10.GOLDEN.RULES_. It is like automatic writing with a Russian camera.
Note that word is a commercial trademark – a company has pushed the technique and their LOMO camera which is available for sale on the site. This camera in turn has been licensed from a Russian company that originally made them. See Lomography: Information From Answers.com. I love the name and idea, but smell a cult.