Lazy photographers like my angles

If you follow this blog or my photos, you might notice that the shot below from Montenegro looks familiar. That's because it's the same as this photo that I took nearly three years ago.

Andrew Testa's photo for the New York Times on slide 14 of their annual where to go series is a more balanced and processed shot than mine, but just as lazy. Why do I say that? Because it's a shot from the road. I took mine from the window of a bus as I made an ill-fated attempt to go to Albania from Montenegro. He probably stopped the car, got out and took a second to take the shot, but it's basically the same thing; a shot from afar that doesn't actually dig in to the surroundings. It's no wonder that photography has little value when a casual photographer like me can get the same shot as someone from a respected publication.

Also not a wonder is why travel publishers are having less revenue. It's not just that print is dying, but the fact that if you look at that list the Times concocted, it's uneven and generally lame, but such is the theme as of late for their travel department, which honestly, they should just shutter out of embarrassment. Of course I'm guessing they're still getting a good deal of advertising revenue from it, from those companies that aren't quite "getting" the net just yet.

09 01 2010      0 comments

Tags: journalism, montenegro, photography

San Francisco in stun-o-vision

Naturally this came up on Laughing Squid in that this guy named Ben Wiggins decided to shoot stop motion video around San Francisco (and some other spots in California) with his super high resolution Canon 5D Mark II. The results are badass. Just watch the video below. My favorite bits are the fog banks rolling in and out as well as planes landing and taking off from SFO at night. Blow it up to full screen for extra special three minute evening at home.

19 09 2009      2 comments

Tags: photography, san francisco, video

This is my California

Amidst a budget crisis, special election for said budget crisis, the Governator, suburban sprawl, and all the other problems that my home state of California is facing in the here and now, there are those times when you just happen to be in place at the right time and see what you see below. This was from Highway 580 Westbound just past the Altamont Pass nearing sunset. It's the rolling hills and golden fields I remember from 25 or so years ago whenever my family would drive down to the San Francisco Bay Area from the Central Valley. Reminders like this are necessary from time to time to remind those of us who grew up in California why it is indeed such a great state no matter how many problems come its way.

10 05 2009      0 comments

Tags: california, photography

Kodak Gallery has gone Mafia on me

Last week I got a lovely email from Kodak Gallery telling me that I either needed to pay up and buy some yearly swag or risk losing all the photos I have stored on there, which is about 11gigs at the moment. This is apparently a new item in their Terms of Service agreement and I don't find it all that surprising because despite the fact that storage is quite cheap these days, it can add up quickly when you have millions of users swaddling gigs upon gigs of photos on your site.

While I only have buy $20 worth of product from them per year, I could honestly care less if they delete what I have there. I used to use KG to share my trip photos and I happened to like them a good deal more back when they were Ofoto. They served their purpose but now I post everything to the Photos section here. It just works out better so that I'm not entering in two places and people can check out the photos anytime they want. Sure, folks might steal photos, but I've given up really caring about that, since there is little money in photography these days. That's why I gave in and slathered a Creative Commons license across everything here.

But to be honest, the real reason that I don't want to bother buying photo products from KG is that their photo quality is pretty shabby. The printing is okay, but the paper is flimsy and it just feels cheap. I've gotten much better results from Oscar's here in San Francisco. Yes, it's more expensive than KG, but really, if you're going to go to the trouble of printing your digital files, print them right.

As a side note, anyone I know who hasn't printed what they want from my galleries on KG better do it soon because in a month or so, they will be no more.

04 04 2009      0 comments

Tags: internet, photography

Oh Goodie, a Westerner's Conflict Photos

First off, any photographer, writer, musician, artist, or pizza delivery guy that goes by one name like Rankin does, is bound to be an ass and a bit out of touch with the "real" world. By "real" world, I mean the one in which people like you and I watch things called, "Real World" because our lives are so inordinately mundane. Now, these one named people love to do things to show that they do in fact "get it" and obviously Rankin has done such an event or I wouldn't be bothering to write about him.

Twiddling his thumbs in what I'm sure is a sunny, West End breakfast nook one day, Rankin apparently got the idea to go to DR Congo and photograph people living in Mugunga refugee camp. You can take a look at the photos. They're good photos as would be expected from a high end fashion photographer. The thought behind them was to shoot the subjects in a high fashion manner so that people could better relate to them. This is of course where the controversy started because this is asinine. They're human beings. We can relate to them no matter what. But such is the generally inept approach toward Africa. If you feel like reading more commentary, then take a look at: Uganda Scarlett Lion, Wronging Rights, and to a lesser extent Chis Blattman. These are all excellent blogs by the way, which are worth reading on a regular basis unless of course you don't like sarcasm, in which case, what the hell are you doing reading my blog?

In my mind, a better approach would have been for Rankin to "arm" locals in the area with cameras and help them to shoot what they see from their vantage. While the photos wouldn't be artistic at first, they would be honest. Rankin's work is not honest. It's a fabrication and when something is fabricated through a camera, I can't stand it. It's one of the few mediums we have that allows us a window on to another time or place that we don't immediately have access to. This is the point of it; all else is secondary. If we're to "understand the plight" of the people living in the Kivus, then we really need to actually see people living in region and know who they are. As it is, this seems like an anthropological documentation of a foreign species. It fails on all levels except getting Rankin press and making him feel like he did some good by being there for two weeks.

This article is cross posted on Subsaharska

20 10 2008      0 comments

Tags: bukavu, dr congo, in to africa, photography, rwanda

An Impressive Retrospective of Rijeka, Croatia

It's usually the case the proper names of places get squat upon on the internet quite quickly. For instance: unitedstates.com, congo.com, and spain.com are all crap sites that someone is sitting upon to collect advertising money or until they get the right offer to buy it off of them.

So it was the other day that I was bouncing around various Croatian city names to see what came up. Much like the examples above, the variety of names that I tried were all being held by cyber squatters. For kicks, I tried rijeka.com which forwards you to this gallery page. While the gallery takes and insanely long time to load, it's worth it as it's one of the most comprehensive collection of old photos from Rijeka that I've ever seen. If you're feeling bored, got to the page, get a cup of tea/coffee, come back, and give it a look.

To give a little history, Rijeka is Croatia's most northern coastal city east of the Istrian Peninsula. It also happens to have one of the most boring names in the world as 'rijeka' simply means, 'river' in Croatian. This was derived from the original, Italian name for the town which was 'fiume', that also means, 'river'. Visitors to Croatia will know Rijeka as a northern hub for trains connections to the interior, buses to Istria (probably Rovinj or Pula), and the end of the line coming up from Dubrovnik. I've been there twice although my gallery is pathetic at the moment. Despite its grunginess and overall aura of being a port town, I quite like the place. I don't know if this comes from the fact that until the last century, it was a crossroads between Romance language and Slavic language speakers, as well as serving as the main port for the Austrian Empire, but there's something to it. Croats often call it a feeling of "rock n' roll".

If you ever pass through, spend a day checking out the few sites and getting in to the vibe of the town, which I like a great deal more than Split. If you never fancy yourself hitting up Croatia's main port city, then just enjoy the photos of the link above.

18 10 2008      0 comments

Tags: croatia, history, photography, the balkans

Back on the Indie Film Shoot

My friends, Hus Miller and Paul Kramer are making a movie together again. This is naturally an independent project which means that it is all coming out of their pockets and by its very definition and existence, is very ambitious. Such is the way of film made without a big studio. I've done it myself with mixed and definitely no commercial success at it, which is why I'm a web makin' man these days.

This last weekend was the start of shooting mymuddledme which is a film that Paul wrote as a feature that they're now shooting in a longer short format of around 20-30 minutes or so. The shoot is for nine days up in the Sonoma Valley region. For those who don't know, nine days is a long shoot for a short, independent film. By contrast, everything that Paul and I have done in the past is usually around 10-25 minutes in length and has been shot over one weekend or at most three. This makes for a few intense days, but when you're not really able to pay anyone, these are the breaks in scheduling. So, I have not envied Hus's role as producer (as well as lead actor) in pulling all of this together.

As for my role in all of this, I'm just kind of along for the ride. I'll pick up sandbags, c-stands, or a sandwich when the time calls for it, but more often than not, I'm taking production stills. This means that during that shoot, when I'm not eating a sandwich, I'm walking around, getting in everyone's way with the insistence that we must have a shot of this or that. It's a massive pain the ass for everyone while I'm doing it as I admit that it seems really unnecessary, but ever since I started doing this with my own shoots, like , I've found that stills are incredibly crucial when all is said and done. You need them for publicity which these days includes having a good website for your independent project.

10 08 2008      2 comments

Tags: film, photography

Taking Photographs in the Democractic Republic of Congo

Officially, it's legal to take photos in DR Congo, although for professional purposes you are supposed to have a permit. Unofficially, it's a scorned practice.

This is the problem that I've been running in to while being here. If you want to take a shot, you need to be stealthy about it. Using point and shoots is advisable over hauling out the 30D with the 2.8 aperture lens on it that makes it looks like a gun.

If regular people see you taking a photo, they will get in your face about it. This can vary by region though. In the west, they are much more antagonistic than in the east, probably because the west has more people sitting on their asses with little to do but harass people.

The police are the worst of all. They won't let you off without a bribe. Friends of friends have actually been taken down the police station only to argue their way out of bribes though, as it is legal to take pictures. This is a practice that you just want to do for the purpose of being right as they'll detain you for for several hours before you get out of there. Passing off a dollar's worth of Francs will make life go a lot smoother if cops get in between your camera and a shot.

This attitude about taking photos dates back to the Mobutu times when it was absolutely forbidden to take pictures in what was then Zaire. As is the case with just about every aspect of modern society in DR Congo, these old habits are hell to kill off and thusly people get offended of your taking photos of things. Even if it's something as silly as taking a picture of an empty street, someone will get offended in the end if they see you, which can drive you crazy because it makes you think that they should focus more on fixing their streets than harassing a tourist with a camera.

So, here is the problem for me. I like to have photos to emphasize my blog posts, but for this series on DR Congo, the photos are going to be limited. Some will have them and some will not. I will have a nice selection of photos in the galleries once I get to posting them from Spain though.

It's a real shame that people are so assinine about this, as the country is beautifully colorful and the people vibrant and full of life despite their endless hardships that they've had to endure.

01 05 2008      2 comments

Tags: dr congo, in to africa, photography

Hot Photo Feed Action

Ever think to yourself, you know, I really like the photos on Hudin, but I could do without the articles? Is there some way that I could just have access to new photos when they're posted and not have to bother with actually reading anything?

Well friends, I now give the option to just have a feed of the photos I post, because after all, they are something like 95% of my traffic it seems. You can just subscribe to this feed or you can click on the RSS icon anywhere in the photos section.

It's clean. It's fast. I give it to you. Soon there will be a dump of quite a few more photos in there, so stay tuned to all that's good from Hudin.

22 02 2008      0 comments

Tags: photography, site update

Pillow Fight 2008: A Salute to the Observer

Yeah, I was out there with all of the rest of them; the observers. We all had our cameras and we were ready for the action that was San Francisco Pillow Fight 2008. It's in its third year for the city and has grown to a pretty sizable event. I slacked out last year and didn't go, but managed to walk the five minutes from where I was working to see it this time around.

It's a fun thing and a great way to work through any Valentine's Day angst before going out for the evening. People enjoy themselves and they bash the crap out of each other. But, by and large the one thing that I saw was the ring of people that were taking photos on cameras or cellphones (ergh...), and people filming the thing. It seemed like there were more spectators than there were participants. Number One Fan and I were planning to participate, but couldn't find any pillows that we felt like destroying, because destroyed your pillow will become. I was shocked as to how many pillows blew up and then of course with the explosions, came the feather down which was nasty to say the least. It ultimately didn't matter as everyone was really enjoying it despite the inability to breath or see.

But still, there's the issue of all of us just watching, which admittedly cuts down on the potential fun that everyone could be having. Scoring this point home so eloquently was a fellow walking around in a purple outfit saying, "Bloggers! This is not a spectator event! Get a pillow and get in there!" He could not have been more right, especially as I'm proving now by racing home to put up a 2008 Pillow Fight Gallery and write this article about it. And yes, I do see the irony in this. I'm a blogger and thusly I spread irony on my toast for breakfast.

In the end, I find the blogging aspect a fine endeavor, but there's a simple way to cut down on the amount of photographers and videographers like this guy and that's to have the fight an hour later. The light was pretty sketchy at 6, but with a huge aperture and 1600 ISO you can still get off good shots. But in just 30 minutes or so, it all goes to crap and you've got to use a flash, which just doesn't work well on fast moving, large crowds like this. Toss in all the feathers floating around and you get some really lousy shots which would hopefully equal more people fighting. Of course, without the voyeurs watching them, would you lose the participants as well? It's a funny society here these days.

Next year, if I go, I think I'll leave the camera at home and pillow-up early on. I'm just a littler terrified because there are folks who come fully masked up (I laughed when I first saw them until I couldn't breathe), padded out, and armed with some nasty, stanky pillows and even leather couch cushions, which I think is unfair. There are some rules to Pillow Fight, to which I would add a sixth: 'If you come to Pillow Fight, you have to fight."

14 02 2008      2 comments

Tags: photography, san francisco