Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category
Black is the new white
In the 19th century, blacks tried to pass for white.
But today, white women try to pass for black on Instagram so they can have more followers and be more popular.
Wow, she looks a lot older than 14
14 years, 9 months old in this photo.
Her aunt, Dawn, was in my class in elementary school and intermediate school in Staten Island.
Racist American Museum of Natural History, part 2
The Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda is the first thing you see if you walk up the big steps through the main entrance (past the security guard checking your bag who was never there before 2001).
This big room is like a huge love-fest for the racist white-supremacist Teddy Roosevelt. The only way to cleanse it is to take down all of the Teddy Roosevelt quotations and murals, and rename it the Barrack Obama Rotunda.
* * *
The white-supremacists would be much better off carrying around pictures of Teddy Roosevelt than Adolf Hitler. Teddy is still loved, by many, as a great American president. Although I suppose that would quickly change if white supremacists adopted him as their mascot. But still better to have a former U.S. president as a mascot than a totalitarian ruler of Germany who started World War II and killed millions of Jews.
Williamsburg flea market
There was a request for photos. Here’s one.
In 2009 I was looking at condos in this neighborhood. Big mistake not following through on that. I would have had substantial price appreciation, and had a nicer place to live for the previous six years.
iPhone 6 camera review
Photos lack fine detail because of heavy noise reduction. Very poor dynamic range causes the sky to be white. If you put the camera into HDR mode, this helps the sky problem quite a bit, but then I see a lot of weird artifacts in the HDR photo. And the photo I took this afternoon has lots of purple fringing and a weird color balance.
I’m not impressed. Definitely not a replacement for my Olympus E-P5.
In fact, I think the iPhone 5 has better image quality. The iPhone 6 is a step backwards.
A camera especially for women
You have to love the 1950s-style advertising at the Olympus UK site.
“A shopping tour in Paris or Milan is my favourite treat. I just love it. I’m addicted to elegant clothes, gold and high quality accessories as they show off my feminine side. That is just what I had in mind when I bought my PEN E-PL7. It suits my chic style. The camera’s slim silhouette, white glossy body and lovely hand grip complete my elegant look. It becomes the centre of attraction whenever I wear it”
“When I go out, my look has to be perfect – in an elegant style all my own. The PEN E-PL7 is made of premium metal enhanced with a leather-look finish that underlines my personal sophistication. The camera fits perfectly in my handbag even with all my other treasured accessories, thanks to its slim design. Every detail – the attractive grip, the placement of the dials – keeps me looking fabulous.”
“I never know who I might meet while shopping or enjoying the best seat in a café so I make sure I’m always prepared with my PEN E-PL7. It lets me take great selfies and is a cinch to use – take the LCD, which folds down and makes sure my hands don’t get in the way of the shot. A whole host of other bits and pieces mean my pictures come out crisp and beautiful.”
I love how Olympus stereotypes women as primarily interested in being the “centre of attraction,” “looking fabulous,” “shopping,” and having the “best seat in a café.” And being disinterested in any technical features of the camera such as its high-ISO ability or the ability to assign custom modes to the mode dial.
I predict that Olympus will get a lot of flak for this promotion and will take down the web page pretty soon. The politically correct way to market to women is to not be so obvious that you are marketing to them.
Photo of Hylan Boulevard
There was recently a request to show some photos of seldom-seen prole areas of New York City. This is a view of Hylan Boulevard, a major north-south thoroughfare on Staten Island. Normally there’s a lot more traffic.
NPR says that photography is racist
According to NPR, photography is racist.
When Syreeta McFadden was a child, she dreaded taking pictures after a family photo made her skin appear dulled and darkened.
“In some pictures, I am a mud brown, in others I’m a blue black. Some of the pictures were taken within moments of one another,” she , digging into an “inherited bias” in photography against dark skin.
No wonder why blacks do so poorly on the SAT. The racism of Kodak and other big corporations must have lowered their self-esteem and prevent them from correctly answering math and reading questions.
A lot of [the design of film and motion technology] was conceived with the idea of the best representation of white people.
Some of you are wondering whether or not this matters? The author of the article says it does:
I think it matters because we’re talking about a saturation of images of darker skinned people that somehow we’ve accepted in our popular culture that kind of diminishes our humanity, and we’re in an era where we’re seeing a wider representation of black and brown life, particularly in American life.
How to get paid $15,000 to self-actualize
There’s an article in Forbes about how some broke hipster-type from Brooklyn made a $15,000 one-day haul when he pleaded on Instagram for followers to buy 4 x 6” prints of his photos for $150 each.
And the hipster-photographer in question does only street photography. That’s something I sort of gave up on because I got a lot of flak about how the genre is akin to voyeurism and violates the rights of the unknowingly photographed (although, theoretically, it doesn’t violate anyone’s legal rights). And I didn’t think there could be any profit in it.
Of course $15,000 isn’t a large amount of money. Not in New York where a decent apartment costs more than a million dollars. But to someone who makes minimum wage toiling away at a crappy job like cooking food at McDonalds are cleaning toilets, getting a whole year’s worth of 40-hour-per-week salary for just selling a few photos probably seems like a really great deal.
Even more importantly, this story demonstrates that even the minor fame of having 20,000 online followers can translate into real money and probably a middle-class income if that guy can repeat his sales haul about three times a year. 20,000 is a relatively small number of people considering that there are 7 billion people living in the world, meaning that only one person in 350,000 follows his Instagram feed. Although his number of followers have doubled since the Forbes article was written, which demonstrates how fame generates its own publicity which in turn generates more fame.
