Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Mexican photographer's images of the blind win $50, 000 Grange Prize

Mexican photographer's images of the blind win $50,000 Grange Prize
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2009/05/26/grange-prize.html

The Grange Prize
http://www.thegrangeprize.com/grange-prize-home


The Grange Prize, launched in February of 2007, is a unique partnership
between the Art Gallery of Ontario and Aeroplan. It brings together a
public institution and a private enterprise whose common goal is to engage
the public in a dialogue about contemporary photography.

Each year, The Grange Prize recognizes the work of Canadian and
international contemporary photographers, awarding $50,000 CAD to a winner
chosen through an online public vote from among two Canadian and two
international artists.

The winner of The Grange Prize is announced at an awards ceremony held at
the Art Gallery of Ontario each spring.

The Grange Prize works each year with a different partner museum in a
country other than Canada. This partner museum launches the Prize in that
country, and helps garner public interest and enthusiasm for the four
artist candidates. All four artists participate in residencies as part of
the Prize program, and are featured in exhibitions both at the AGO and in
the partner country. The Grange Prize partner museum for 2009 is Centro de
la Imagen in Mexico City.

In 2009, the AGO entered into a cultural partnership with the Mexican
government. The Consulate General of Mexico assisted The Grange Prize in
establishing the curatorial panel and facilitated the relationship with
Centro de la Imagen. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico will also
ensure that The Grange Prize is promoted through their embassies and
consulates around the world.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Monitor Calibration and Profiling

NOTE: Many articles about monitor display calibration exist online, but please be informed that some writers don't distinguish between CRT and LCD monitors when they expand on any given technique. While both monitor types often use the same calibration techniques, some techniques are unneeded or cannot be performed on many platforms that carry LCD monitors.


LCD monitor tests
http://www.colorwizzard.com/lcdtest/index.html

  These tests require Internet Explorer 5.1 or higher, browser options must be set to allow for JavaScript and cookies support.

LCD monitor test images

Welcome to the Lagom LCD monitor test pages. With the test images on these pages, you can easily adjust the settings of your monitor to get the best possible picture quality. Additionally, there are a number of test images that can help you to judge the image quality of a monitor. You can check the images on this webpage or put them on a usb stick and try them in the computer store like I did when I created these test patterns. These test images are much more revealing regarding monitor shortcomings than ordinary photographs.
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

Monitor Calibration and Profiling
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibration.htm

How to Calibrate Your Monitor
In order to see images the way they were intended to be seen, your monitor might need to be calibrated. If you're a web designer, digital photographer, or graphic professional, this is especially important. You don't want to spend hours choosing the perfect subtle color scheme only to see a mis-matched mess on someone else's monitor or coming out of a printer. Here's how to calibrate your monitor so that what you see is what you get.
http://www.wikihow.com/Calibrate-Your-Monitor


Pantone
Digital designs demand accurate on-screen colors. Even the most advanced monitors require adjustment for different lighting conditions and environments to maximize their performance. Calibrating your display lets you control what you see on your monitor and ensures colors are accurate and consistent day-to-day, image-to-image, or on multiple systems for print, Web or video output.
http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/pantone.aspx?ca=2



Digital Focus: Calibrate Your Monitor
Dave Johnson
Apr 22, 2003 2:00 am
Feature: Calibrate Your Monitor for Digital Images
A friend called me the other day with a digital photo problem. "I just printed a photo on good paper, and it doesn't look like what's on the monitor," he complained. "Why not? How can I get them to match?"

My buddy's problem stems from the fact that the two output devices--the printer and monitor--are calibrated differently. If you want what's on the screen when you edit a photo to resemble what comes out of the printer, then you need to correct one or the other so they're in agreement. It's easier to adjust the monitor (printers don't come with calibration tools), so that's what we'll do.

If you don't mind spending money, there are a few programs designed to help you calibrate your monitor. Pantone's OptiCal is the mother of all such programs--but at around $200, it's probably better-suited for true graphics professionals. LightSurf Technologies' $50 Colorific is a much more affordable color-matching and monitor calibration system
http://www.pcworld.com/article/110070/digital_focus_calibrate_your_monitor.html


Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The Seven Levels of Photographers: A Spiritual and Satirical Guide.

The Seven Levels of Photographers

A Spiritual and Satirical Guide. I summarize this into 2 levels here.
© 2007 KenRockwell.com

Full text here

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/7.htm


[excerpt]

Artist: Top Level 7 (equivalent to "Heaven" in Christian mythology)

This is the highest level.

An artist fixes his imagination in a tangible form called a photograph. He captures the spirit of place or person, real or imagined, in this photograph and the viewer responds to this.

Whore: Level 6   

A whore is an artist who sells his soul by accepting money or drugs for his art.

By lowering himself to this level his vision is compromised.

Amateur: Level 5   

People who earn less than half of their income from photography are amateurs. This has nothing to do with the quality of their photography.

Snapshooter: Level 4   

This is my mom and most people. These people want memories, as opposed to photographs or cameras.

Professional: Level 3   

A professional photographer is a person who earns his entire living (100%) from the sale of photographs.

Rich Amateur: Level 2  

These are amateurs who, by having too much money, buy lots of equipment which can fetter their freedom of expression. They are mostly men, and many are old or retired.

Equipment Measurbator: Bottom Level 1 (equivalent to "Hell" in Christian mythology)

These men (and they are all men) have no interest in art or photography because they have no souls. Lacking souls they cannot express imagination or feeling, which is why their images, if they ever bother to make any, suck.

These folks have analysis paralysis and never accomplish anything.

Online Expert or Armchair Photographer: Level 0 (these guys don't take pictures so they aren't a level of photographer.)

This level never existed before the internet, because cameras were never as exciting as sports cars or missiles for men to research.



Monday, May 11, 2009

Flickr Creates New License for White House Photos

Flickr Creates New License for White House Photos

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/05/flickr-creates-new-license-for-white-house-photos/

Official White House photos are now officially in the public domain, thanks to a licensing change made quietly over the weekend by the Obama administration and the photo-sharing site Flickr.

The White House began posting striking photos of President Barack Obama from its official photographer Pete Souza to the Web 2.0 site in early May. The White House chose to license them using the ultra-liberal Creative Commons Attribution license that lets people reuse, reprint and remix the photos just as long as they credit the original photographers.

But as Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other online commenters noted, that license won't work — even for Obama's official photographer — because government works can't be copyright.

obama karzai flickrSomeone must have been listening, because sometime over the weekend, the licenses changed, and now the photos are labeled "United States Government Work" and link to an explanation on copyright.gov. The White House, however, continues to use the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license for all third-party content published on the www.whitehouse.gov site.

The change marks a first for Flickr, which to date has not had a license for government works, other than a "No Known Copyright Restriction" license that is used on photos from its Commons project, which includes photos from some of the world's greatest museums and libraries. Those photos include ones from the Library of Congress, for instance, that never were copyright since they were made or paid for by the federal government

Flickr, a Yahoo-owned property, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the change and whether the license will be available for other portions of the federal government.

As for ordinary web surfers, there is still no way in Flickr to add your work to the public domain — the Attribution license is still the closest you can get. Being president, it seems, still has its privileges.

See Also:


Flickr Creates New License for White House Photos

Epicenter The Business of Tech
Flickr Creates New License for White House Photos

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/05/flickr-creates-new-license-for-white-house-photos/


[EXCERPT]

Official White House photos are now officially in the public domain,
thanks to a licensing change made quietly over the weekend by the Obama
administration and the photo-sharing site Flickr.

The White House began posting striking photos of President Barack Obama
from its official photographer Pete Souza to the Web 2.0 site in early
May. The White House chose to license them using the ultra-liberal
Creative Commons Attribution license that lets people reuse, reprint and
remix the photos just as long as they credit the original photographers.

But as Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other
online commenters noted, that license won't work — even for Obama's
official photographer — because government works can't be copyright.

Someone must have been listening, because sometime over the weekend, the
licenses changed, and now the photos are labeled "United States Government
Work" and link to an explanation on copyright.gov. The White House,
however, continues to use the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license for
all third-party content published on the www.whitehouse.gov site.

The change marks a first for Flickr, which to date has not had a license
for government works, other than a "No Known Copyright Restriction"
license that is used on photos from its Commons project, which includes
photos from some of the world's greatest museums and libraries. Those
photos include ones from the Library of Congress, for instance, that never
were copyright since they were made or paid for by the federal government.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Yours truly....


_MG_0439, originally uploaded by The MediaMentor.

In Chelyabinsk, Russia on assignment for CESO ceso-saco.com
with
Yudin Andrey Nikolaevich
Chelyabinsk, Russia
Email: sunfoto@mail.ru
Telephone: 8(351)33-73-88 Fax:
Cell Phone: 8-908-080-23-88
Web Site: www.sunfoto.ru

Наш адрес: ул.Колхозная, дом 36, кв. 201 Ост."Ул.Краснознаменная" (проезд трамв.) или ост. "Пр.Победы" (проезд маршр.), начало Северо-Запада
Телефоны: 233-73-88 (моб)

Yours truly...


_MG_2697, originally uploaded by The MediaMentor.

In Russia on assignment for CESO ceso-saco.com

Photo by
Yudin Andrey Nikolaevich
Chelyabinsk, Russia
Email: sunfoto@mail.ru
Web Site: www.sunfoto.ru

Наш адрес: ул.Колхозная, дом 36, кв. 201 Ост."Ул.Краснознаменная" (проезд трамв.) или ост. "Пр.Победы" (проезд маршр.), начало Северо-Запада
Телефоны: 233-73-88 (моб)

The Megapixel Myth & Film vs. Digital Cameras

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm

[excerpt]

The Myth

The megapixel myth was started by camera makers and swallowed hook, line and sinker by camera measurebators. Camera makers use the number of megapixels a camera has to hoodwink you into thinking it has something to do with camera quality. They use it because even a tiny linear resolution increase results in a huge total pixel increase, since the total pixel count varies as the total area of the image, which varies as the square of the linear resolution. In other words, an almost invisible 40% increase in the number of pixels in any one direction results in a doubling of the total number of pixels in the image. Therefore camera makers can always brag about how much better this week's camera is, with even negligible improvements.

This gimmick is used by salespeople and manufacturers to you feel as if your current camera is inadequate and needs to be replaced even if the new cameras each year are only slightly better.

--------

Film vs. Digital Cameras

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/filmdig.htm

"I find that it takes about 25 megapixels to simulate 35mm film's practical resolution, which is still far more than any practical digital camera. At the 6 megapixel level digital gives about the same sharpness as a duplicate slide, which is plenty for most things."


Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Vancouver 2010 invites Canadians to share their photos and words ..

Vancouver 2010 invites Canadians to share their photos and words ...
... Nunavut, Northwest Territories and Yukon. In addition to the Cultural
Olympiad's government and corporate partners, CODE is proudly supported by
the Canada Council for the Arts and the National Film Board of Canada. ...
<http://www.vancouver2010.com/en/news/news-releases/-/66648/32566/r4a56k/vancouver-2010-invites-canadia.html>
Vancouver2010.com - News Releases
<http://vancouver2010.com/>