Wednesday 22 August 2007 @0:49
Cover design for the book.
This month, I became a published photographer. Some time ago, Mark Zachry happened across my Australia photos and contacted me about the possibility of using one of them for the cover of an academic book he was co-editing. Mark is a professor of technical communication at the University of Washington, and the book is Communicative Practices in Workplaces and the Professions: Cultural Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and Organizations [Amazon] [B&N] [Baywood]. I received a gratis copy of the book at my office address today.
My original photograph.
This is not the first time my photographic work has been used by others; I’m aware of various event tickets, business cards, and presentations. But this is (as far as I know) the first time one of my photographs has been displayed on Amazon and B&N. If you do “search inside” at Amazon and click one page past the cover, you’ll find my photo credit at the bottom of the page. That’s somewhat exciting.
Incidentally, commercial use such as this is not permitted by the default license, so don’t start treating my site as istockphoto! To reproduce my photographic work commercially, you must seek specific permission (as Mark did). If the thrill of having my amateur work appear on Amazon wears off, I may start raising the fee. 
Friday 16 March 2007 @10:27
I’m a latecomer to this fad, but here’s my entry into the transparent screen phenomenon that was all the rage. It’s far from perfect. But it’s true that the final image is not a composite; photoshop trickery is needed only to create the desktop background image. And even that was fairly simple-minded in my case, because I don’t know how to use any of the perspective tools in Gimp. 
This reminds me: I can’t stand when someone observes an act of amateur creativity and says “he has too much time on his hands.” I guess it reflects the Protestant work ethic: idle hands are the devil’s tools and all that. But in my estimation, it tends to be said by people who spend much of their leisure time parked in front of the boob tube. Who are you to judge that reruns of Friends are more worthwhile than making an Earth sandwich? Personally, I want to live in a world where everyone has the time and inclination to pursue whatever creative outlets strike their fancy.
Thursday 22 June 2006 @11:05
Human-cropped 1:1
Some meandering trail of web surfing brought me back to Flickr today, and I wondered whether anyone else is bugged by the square thumbnails — see my post from 5 June — or whether a distaste for machine-cropped 1:1 aspect ratios is just my private obsession.
I found a much more poetic diatribe by Glenn McDonald. He says he prefers an extreme horizontal 3:1 ratio, although I found little evidence of that in his (quite beautiful and well-narrated) galleries. But his explanation of what is happening with Flickr is bang on:
Cropping 4:3s and 3:4s to 1:1 symmetrically is technically trivial, and although it’s aesthetically unreliable in the abstract, the vast majority of amateur photographs are center-weighted, so it usually turns out OK. Actually, the vast majority of amateur photographs are also probably framed too widely, so a little universal symmetrical cropping almost certainly improves more Flickr pictures than it damages.
He goes on to describe how ubiquitous square thumbnails in galleries will shape our own perceptions of what we want, leading ultimately to square-format cameras, and tools that make it even harder to process non-square scenes. One day, even 4:3 will seem ‘extreme’.
This self-reinforcing dependent vogue for square photography is, I think, a machine gain and a human loss. Worse, it’s a sparkly machine-gain that humans are lining up to lose.
He concludes with a rousing appeal to designers and developers to make our tools less sparkly — keep the flaws conspicuous, and we’ll be more likely to address them.
We make our tools in the easiest shapes, and then we accommodate their limitations, and then we hone them to perfect their limits, and then we forget that this is not how we wanted to live.
Monday 5 June 2006 @17:34
Flickr is pretty popular as a social photo management application. I end up visiting it at least weekly, although I’ve never put my own photos on it. One thing that bothered me about Flickr from the very beginning is that they use square thumbnails all over the place. That is, they ignore the natural aspect ratio of your photos, and cut a square segment out of it for use as the thumbnail.
Occasionally, the effect is somewhat disturbing. I guess it’s natural to see people’s heads cut off in amateur snaps, but what about the photo all the way to the right? Is it a tile plaque in the washroom of a deviant sex club? Or something altogether more innocent? Click through to find out!
The auto-cropped square thumbnails bug me because I happen to think the aspect ratio is an essential part of the photographer’s statement. I do actually take the time to crop and otherwise post-process (some of) my photos, which is one reason it can take so long for me to get them published. But still I think it’s worthwhile. Here are some before/after examples…
Before: a pretty scene, but my parents are so far away!
After: they are more recognizable, but without losing the feel of the surroundings.
Before: just some people milling around, but there is no clear subject.
After: I chose the subject in post-production.
Before: I kept the shutter open and successfully blurred a jogger across the center of the frame… but the wires overhead severely detract.
After: not only are the wires cleaned up, but the cinematic aspect ratio emphasizes the motion.
I wonder whether any of the Flickr enthusiasts are the same who complain about the aspect ratio of TV movies or pan-and-scan DVDs. Don’t get me wrong: as an amateur web designer myself, I fully understand the convenience of square thumbnails. You can stack them into very neat grids. You can design little user interface widgets around them without having to fret about a wide variety of image sizes. But in my opinion it’s really worthless if your thumbnail does not accurately represent the image itself.
8 June 2006 update: Serendipity! A useful article on cropping for impact (with good examples) just appeared at the Digital Photography School.
Sunday 21 May 2006 @14:11
Last week we took several days off to visit the Outer Banks and Cape Hatteras, in North Carolina… a short but welcome getaway after the semester. My parents rented a house there for a week, to celebrate their anniversary. The drive was just about ten hours, down the eastern shore of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, and over the Chesapeake Bay bridge/tunnel.
Before this trip, I guess I had never looked too closely at a map of NC. The cape sticks rather far out into the ocean, and is shockingly narrow. We drove through Kitty Hawk and Nag’s Head on the way, and Hatteras is very close to Roanoke Island, the site of the (lost) first English colonization effort in the Americas (in 1585).
We split time about evenly between sight-seeing and just relaxing. I brought the laptop and some papers to read, and actually had a chance to do some work. I don’t necessarily believe in the dichotomy of all-work weekdays and all-play vacations. My work and leisure are largely intertwined; I think that’s typical for academic careers. But it’s always nice to work in a beautiful and peaceful setting, of course.
The house was cute, with two full baths, three bedrooms (one with a pile of bunk beds for kids), a large kitchen and living space, a loft with futon, balconies, and partial views of the ocean to the east and the sound to the west. Most of the house was up one floor on stilts, as is typical (and sensible) in this region. In fact, the ground-level foyer even smelled a little musty from previous flooding.
The first thing we did was walk up the Hatteras lighthouse. There are many lighthouses on the cape, of course, but this is probably the most famous. Just do a Google image search for “hatteras” and you’ll see what I mean. It was a piece of cake compared to all the cathedrals we ascended in Paris last year, with their uneven, worn stone stairs. Just remembering them makes my ankles ache again. 
We also visited Roanoke Island, where we saw a silly play featuring Queen Elizabeth I and her half-sister and predecessor Bloody Mary Tudor. The idea is that they emerge from their tombs at Westminster Abbey every night and continue to pick on one another. The actresses played well off of one another, and the dialogue was fun, with a few nuggets of history thrown about.
Anyway, now I’m back in New York, and ready to contemplate some research problems with increased vigor.
Wednesday 26 April 2006 @19:06
His painting.
My photo.
His painting.
My photo. Could you tell which was which?
I’m pleased to present these watercolor paintings by Dannny McLaughlin. Back in 2004, he left a comment on my web page about my 1998 trip to Ireland. Then, he got in touch with me to see if he could base paintings on two of my photographs:
I came across your web site when I was googling photos of chickens (I’m working on a painting) and thought your photographs were great. I am writing to seek permission to use a couple as subjects for future paintings. The two I have in mind are from your 1998 trip to Ireland: “Twin boats on the Galway River” and “Cobblestone courtyard and farm equipment at Bun Raìthe Folk Park”. I am just passing the beginner stage, getting to the point of showing my work. These two photos have the composition and subject matter that I look for when I go out with my camera. I don’t know how this all works legally, but I did not want to infringe on any copyright(s) you have.
Of course, I was thrilled that someone found inspiration in my photos. I agreed, provided that he would send me photos of his work and allow me to post them on my web site. Later that year, he sent me these pictures. I’m just now getting around to posting them on my site. Thanks, Danny, and best wishes with your paintings.
To anyone else seeking to create derivative works, please contact me! These are explicitly allowed by my creative commons license, provided that you give attribution and share alike… see the “some rights reserved” link at the bottom of this page. Occasionally others contact me from small-scale commercial or not-for-profit ventures; in these cases, other licenses can be negotiated as well.
Wednesday 26 April 2006 @17:21
My first gay pride parade… and I marched! Here are the photos and the story, in the form of correspondence that occurred between myself and a friend. This was first published on the web in August 1998.
More…
Tuesday 25 April 2006 @19:41
In May 1998, I went with my family for a two-week vacation to England and Ireland. Ireland was particularly beautiful and—I hope you agree—quite photogenic. Here are the photographs I brought back, accompanied by text from a journal my brother Ben kept during the trip.
This story was originally published on the web in August 1998, and ported to the new site format in April 2006. Not all of the photos are shown in this post. Click one, and follow the arrows to see all of them.
More…
Monday 24 April 2006 @9:52
Tower bridge
In May 1998, I went with my family for a two-week vacation to England and Ireland. Here are the photographs I brought back, accompanied by text from a journal my brother Ben kept during the trip.
This story was originally published on the web in August 1998, and ported to the new site format in April 2006.
More…
Saturday 15 April 2006 @11:51
This was originally published on the web in spring 2001. Click on the photos to enlarge them, and to find links to additional photos from this set.
In August 1996, I took a solo trip to New Orleans. Although it was my first visit, I felt like I already knew the French Quarter and the Garden District, from reading Anne Rice novels—especially the Witching Hour series and The Feast of All Saints.
This trip was also a kind of personal coming out experience. Not that I did anything wild—I managed to miss Southern Decadence by a week—but it was a chance to explore a gay community on my own, far away from home. One hot afternoon, I stopped for a drink at a gay bar (Oz, shown here) and wrote coming out letters to a few of my old friends.
The first place I stayed, Lafitte Guest House (1003, rue de Bourbon) was charming and elegant: beautiful rooms with antique furniture; breakfast on a silver tray. I’ve been dying to return there for some special occasion. I stayed for three weeknights, as the weekend rate was a bit out of my price range. For the weekend, I moved to Ursuline Guest House (708, rue des Ursulines), which was comfortable but not nearly as elegant.
This post highlights the architecture, ambiance, and music of the French Quarter and adds a few scenes from the Garden District and Algiers Point, across the river.
During my trip, I walked the streets of the French Quarter day and night—I had most of the street names memorized! I loved the feel of the place, especially the painted houses, shutters, and balconies. New Orleans, especially the French Quarter, is one of the greatest places I’ve been to linger over a delicious meal, wander down to the river at dawn, or just sit in the park and watch the people. Bar-hopping is easier on Bourbon Street than anywhere else because each building has so many entry-ways (when all the storm shutters are open).
Great music is everywhere; linked here are pictures of just a few of the street musicians I ran across. There is always someone playing in front of Cafe du Monde, it seems.
“Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
And miss it each night and day…
“Miss the moss-covered vines, tall sugar pines
Where mockingbirds used to sing
I’d love to see that old lazy Mississippi
Running in the spring
“Moonlight on the bayous
Creole tunes fill the air
I dream about magnolias in June
And I’m wishin’ I was there”
Twice, I took the streetcar to the Garden District. Mostly I stared longingly at the mansions, but a visit to Lafayette Cemetery was also a must. The Garden District Book Shop carries many autographed Anne Rice books.
link
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