In any family, herd, pack, pod, etc. there’s always someone to lean on. These young Bison calves (Bison bison bison) were having a good time in a Yellowstone National Park meadow. Clearly one was trying to lure the other into some activity other than resting by leaning on him/her.
Here’s to family and those you can lean on. Have a great weekend!
Bison Calves (Bison bison bison) - Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
The 28th episode of EXIF and Beyond has been released (duration 1 hour 9 min.)
David Riecks a professional photographer and metadata expert is well known for his Controlled Vocabulary keyword database, has played an active role in developing industry metadata standards, and was a founding member of the Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines coalition (UPDIG) and serves as the Chief Technical Advisor to the Picture Licensing Universal System coalition (PLUS). In this episode of EXIF and Beyond David discusses all things metadata: basic information, tips, resources, trends & predictions and licensing standards.
If you’re interested in trying out Borrowlenses.com, the sponsor of this podcast episode, they’ve extended a special introductory offer to my blog & podcast readers. When placing your order enter the discount code “JJJ5” sans quotation marks to obtain a 5% discount on your first rental.
Listen To The Podcast
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An often unspoken component of photography is image selection. How and why are certain photos chosen over others when reviewing results of a photo shoot? I’ve received questions on this in the past and D. Travis North (Self-Editing to Concentrate Your Workflow – Part 1) has asked me to share my insight to this topic with Kevin Oki (Editing and Workflow – Part 2) as part of a multiple-blogger series.
There are three primary areas of evaluation that factor into my image selection process: Creative Execution, Sharpness and Comparison & Selection. Below are examples and detailed thought surrounding each: Read more…
For Part 2 of my review of the Think Tank Shape Shifter camera bag I thought I’d try something new… a video review. Demonstrating or highlighting components and qualities of the bag just seemed to flow better on video than in writing. Quite a few people contacted me about the bag after posting part 1 of the Shape Shifter review. I’m pretty certain I’ve answered the questions I’ve received, but if I missed something don’t hesitate to ask.
In the event you haven’t had enough of the discussion around Free here are some interesting links that I’ve found or have been pointed out to me by my blog readers. With all the “free” information out there its time for you to determine if Chris Anderson is selling the Emperor’s new clothes or not.
In the lowland rainforests of Costa Rica it’s not an uncommon sight to see Chestnut-mandibled Toucans (Ramphastos swainsonii) and more times than not you’ll hear them long before you see them. They’re extremely loud and like to travel in small flocks. If you see one you’re bound to see a second. They are fascinating animals and as I have time I’ll dig up some audio recordings I made one morning at sunrise of Toucans calling each other. No need for an alarm clock when in the rainforest particularly with Toucans in the neighborhood. Two things I’ve learned about Toucans…
1. They’re opportunistic and will feed on not just insects, lizards and frogs, but on birds as well. Apparently they’ll follow other birds to steal their food source or raid their nests to eat their young. I wonder if Kellogg knew that when they made a Toucan the mascot for Fruit Loops?
2. In the journal Science it was just announced that a team of researchers has finally discovered the primary purpose of their large bill… to stay cool. Apparently Toucans can regulate the flow of blood to their bill to stay cool through out the day or to conserve heat as needed. With a bill that makes up 30% of their size it’s the largest radiator system in the animal world. Read more about this on the BBC web site Hot secret behind toucan’s bill (with a thermal imaging video).
A Pair of Chestnut-mandibled Toucan (Ramphastos swainsonii)
One of the more interesting concepts that a creative can easily lose track of while reading “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” is before going through the decision process of how to employ “Free” tactics, one should assess if they’re aiming to take part in a market of abundance or scarcity. This is quickly glossed over in Chris as he’s all too eager to speak to the market of abundance because this is how he sees the majority of products online. Art on the other hand excels in a market of scarcity, particularly fine art. If Monet had painted the same impressionistic painting 1000 times, the value of some of his most famous paintings would be quite less than the tens of millions of dollars they fetch at auction today. While the creation of digital photography is considerably quicker than creating a painting an artist can still control the number of reproductions or manage which markets that photo is displayed & sold with in. When one displays a low resolution version of an image, painting, etc. it doesn’t preclude that you’ve opted to take part in a market of abundance, although there are many online who argue otherwise when issues of copyright infringement arise.
Here is where I find so many people on the Internet become confused. Chris is all to eager to perpetuate the widely held belief that “Information Wants to be Free”. While this may be true for many types of information, its not true of all.
As a creative are you in the market of information or art? Read more…
One of the strongest arguments made in Free is that in a competitive market (namely the Internet for sake of discussion) all prices are driven towards Zero or Near-Zero Marginal Cost. In economic terms I completely understand the principle, but as a creative I find the notion disconcerting on multiple fronts.
Back in 1993/4 I was a research associate in a genetics research lab at my alma mater, the University of California at Santa Barbara. In those days experiments had a lot of downtime, upwards of 3 hours, as we waited for DNA to run on an agarose gel. During this downtime a lot of time was spent surfing the web and checking email, but the experience was quite different to today’s standards. Email was checked through a UNIX account via vi editors (command line based email) and surfing the web was done by Lynx a text based browser. There were no photos, videos, or anything graphical in nature to see. Compared to what we’re used to today it was certainly the dark ages of the Internet.
One day a co-worker wanted to show me something mind blowing and we went upstairs from our lab to a computer and used the first web browser, Mosaic. It took upwards of 5 or 10 minutes to load a small photo on the very fast university network. It took so long in fact that I quickly lost interest. It took a while before I revisited using Mosaic, but I did begin using it regularly and eventually transitioned to the earliest form of Netscape.
The significance of this story is that the web owes its adoption to the creative content that fills it. As a photographer I find it very satisfying to know that photography had a huge influence on the adoption and transformation of the web. At the same time I find it alarming that its so widely believed that the content that fueled the early web is now so commoditized that its worth very little to nothing. Read more…
