Categories
photography

“i’m a fan of all things cheap and plastic”

JS: You still prefer (and will probably always prefer) film to digital photography. Why is this?

HPC: To my eye, there’s something integral to photography that’s not translating from film to digital. This isn’t to say that I think that digital is crap, but there’s definitely something missing.

I also think that a photographer’s relationship with shooting is quite different when it’s film and when it’s digital. If I buy fresh Polaroid film for my pinhole camera, it’s roughly $3.75 a shot. Shooting with an SX-70 is roughly $1 a shot. The choices that I make are an important and necessary part of my process.

With digital, you pretty much shoot ‘til your card’s full. I guess, I miss the ongoing interior editorial conversation that happens in my head.

taken from a recent interview with heather champ on photography and her web presence.

heather is one of those people i really admire: she started the mirror project (back in the day when i was trying to tame the zenit), takes magical pictures with different types of cameras (like the polaroids above) and is also the community manager at flickr.

check out her new ongoing project, polaroid 366: a polaroid a day for a (leap) year.

Categories
in portugal photography

d. manuel II, o patriota

depois do último post, procuro por “portugal” na galeria. dois insólitos resultados: uma infantaria em estranhos preparos (mas tão portuguesa) e uma foto do rei d. manuel II.

o último rei de portugal. eis que (mesmo sem ser monárquica) ver um rei português assim, a preto e branco, me deixa quase sem palavras face ao realismo e à próximidade temporal.

nas pinturas a óleo ou nos painéis de azulejos que nos habituamos a associar à nossa monarquia, tudo ganha uma nuvem de misticismo, de tempos longínquos… numa foto não. um rei nosso a meio passo, visto assim sem poses, no flickr.

[english summary: the post is about the last king of portugal, which i found in a flickr photo from the library of commons – and how unusal it is for me to see a portuguese kind on a photo. portugal’s monarchy ended in 1910].

Categories
photography

the library of congress colection on flickr

flickr has recently started “the commons” project, in colaboration with the US “Library of Congress”. Subtitled “your opportunity to contribute to describing the world’s public photo collections”, they ask users to help enrich the pictures with tags, descriptions and comments. the pictures were taken from the beginning of the century through the 40s and their themes spread accross several subjects, from ww2, to sports, railroads and aviation, women training, celebrities, political activities, world news, life in ny…

These beautiful, historic pictures from the Library represent materials for which the Library is not the intellectual property owner. Flickr is working with the Library of Congress to provide an appropriate statement for these materials. It’s called “no known copyright restrictions.”

Hopefully, this pilot can be used as a model that other cultural institutions would pick up, to share and redistribute the myriad collections held by cultural heritage institutions all over the world. (from the commons page)

now wouldn’t that be nice?

“Native Quarter, Shanghai” in the picture, also from the collection.

Categories
in china

say what?

a piece of chinglish hidden on today’s chinese lesson. can you see it? :P

say again?

Categories
links and ideas on the big screen

“my dream is for europe to become a huge melting-pot. we need to melt”


BONO: Your desire for Europe is extraordinary to me, but you’ve followed through on it. I mean, is this where the languages come in? Did you learn French and German at school?

EDDIE: I learnt French at school but stopped when I was 16. When I first visited France, I’d go into a bar or restaurant and say, “Qu’est-ce que ils?”. I’d just keep going with my broken French. My rule was, communication first, grammar second.

BONO: I’m amazed that you can do stand-up in French.

EDDIE: Absolutely. My dream is for Europe to become a huge melting-pot. We need to be a melting-pot. We need to melt. So my doing a gig in French is to kick the melting-pot up. I want to do gigs in German, Russian, Spanish. And Arabic, because I was born in an Arabic country and the 9/11 thing.

BONO: Do you consider yourself European?

EDDIE: I consider myself British-European, like there are African- Americans and Italian- Americans. You can be Irish-European. Whether you’re Northern or Southern Irish, there’s this umbrella of Europeanness. I think if we can make it work in Europe, it’s almost a blueprint for the future of the world. If we can get all these countries, with all their languages, coming together to work in some shape or form, then the whole world can work. And if we can’t get it working in Europe, the world has got no chance. Those are the stakes.

from an interview with eddie izzard to the independent. the man has a brilliant comedy style that we can’t seem to get enough of – plus, a political conscience, and a love for researching stuff on wikipedia. if you go beyond the death star canteen lego sketches on youtube, you’ll find a peculiar comedian, worth exploring.

photo by davemorris on flickr.