Shooting Wide Open

I finally got around to trying 500 px and the interface is much more up to date than Flickr, though the community seems more centered around viewing and liking than discussions and groups.

I threw a few photos up to see what their portfolio templates performed, and there are a couple of minimalist white templates that would work fairly well for a fine art portfolio. May be a good alternative to hosting your own portfolio site for those who want simplicity for free.

I came upon an article on Fiverr (Photographers Struggle to Sell Images for Five Dollars), which is, for lack of a better term, an inverse crowd-sourcing site where people offer a variety of services to be performed for $5. If you’d like to have a blue puppet inform your spouse that you want a divorce or let a total stranger make the tough decisions in your life, this is the site for you. But for the rest of us, it’s mainly a reminder of how much effort it actually takes to convince someone to part with $5.

Services range from the mundane (“I will send you simple e book about all major species of dogs from all over the World for $5″) to the supernatural (“I will look into your past and tell you about your last past life with accurate details for $5″) and bizarre (“I will take the blame for your fart for $5″). Some propositions I couldn’t help but click on just to reassure myself that nobody had taken the poor fool up on his offer (“I will drinking my piss for $5″). Others are just downright confusing (“I will mail you a huge hank of tangled yarn for $5,” “I will combine five of your friends faces to create a portrait of your average friend for $5″).

Most of the offers are along the lines of someone offering to do a song and dance in a funny costume, giving testimonials for companies or products, or voice actors looking for side income. There are so many people offering to sing songs and say short scripts in a variety of voices that I can’t help but think there’s a new media performance art project in here somewhere…

As the article states, most of the photo-related offers relate to teaching technique or troubleshooting, so there’s nothing to be gained there, but it’s fascinating to see what people think others will pay $5 for (“I will reenact a fight you had with your gf and end it any way you want for $5″). I wouldn’t even want these services for free! You’d have to pay me a lot more than $5 to accept them, yet apparently there are people out there who believe you would you pay $5 for someone to pretend to be your Facebook girlfriend for a week. Would you pay for someone to troll your archenemy on the internet? Would you pay for someone to tweet your link to a network of thousands of followers? Those are in fact the most popular packages – ones that sell social media exposure, SEO or backlinks to increase search ranking. The site is a demented portrait of the times that is amusing and a bit horrifying to browse.

You can’t blame people from trying though – apparently the entrepreneurial spirit is strong with us. Some offers are just desperate attempts to get paid for being who you are and liking what you like:

“I will watch a movie for you for $5″
“I will answer 5 questions about being queer for $5″
“I will graciously accept a cup of coffee for $5″
“I will send you five cute pictures of my cat for $5″
“I will send you a genuine rock from Maine for $5″

And then there’s the most blatantly sarcastic, best proposition of all:

“I will do absolutely NOTHING for $5″

Tommy Becker makes videos grouped into “albums” and pairs them with phrases such as “Pulling Down The Sky to Give You The Sun,” which is actually as descriptive as it is clever. I think that one is his strongest video, as the others overuse the Mac robo-voice in combination with not the best lyrics set to music.

I found Tommy’s work through what looks to be a brand new site called Art Micro Patronage, a site partly funded by a 2010 Southern Exposure Alternative Exposure Grant. The concept is centered on monthly web shows curated by independent curators who propose shows which then collect funding from viewers who donate to specific artists or works. Once you’ve contributed (possibly as little as $.50) you have access to the works you funded indefinitely.

There’s this perspective: End Online Panhandling. But I think any time someone says there’s too much of something on the internet, what they’re really complaining about is that the proper filters haven’t been invented yet. Personally, I like this model since you can contribute what you can afford to artists who may not get anything otherwise. It beats seeing a bunch of video stills because artists don’t want to give their work away for free. It’s affordable enough that I don’t mind paying for work that I can see elsewhere on the net.

As they say, “Donorship, Not Ownership.”

PhotoQ interviewed 9 photographers about the future of the business of photography in the age of decreasing prices and the digital boom, and put together a feature on Vimeo called Facing the Future.

“People will always want stories. People will always want storytellers. And today people want visual storytellers more than ever.” – Ed Kashi

“Frankly, if things hadn’t've changed, then I would’ve been worried, because there’s only so long you can live and do the same thing over and over again. What I find is that the last few years have given us freedom.” – Donald Weber

The interview with Peter Van Agtmael, is also excellent.

I combined everyday soap bubbles with exotic ferrofluid liquid to create an eerie tale, using macro lenses and time lapse techniques. Black ferrofluid and dye race through bubble structures, drawn through by the invisible forces of capillary action and magnetism.

The structure of the second video reminds me of the massive concrete structure researchers created by excavating an anthill into which they’d poured cement.

(via Petapixel)

These crowdsourcing websites just keep popping up! IndieGoGo is the latest one I’ve come across. They have a photography category. A different vibe than Kickstarter, which is more… serious, for lack of a better word, but also US only. But I know a couple of people who might be interested in a book about Asian metal scene…

Speak of Kickstarter, this is the perfect time to push you toward Pete Brook‘s Prison Photography On the Road project, which still needs your help. Let’s make it happen!

Dan Vanderkam has combined photos, time and place into one easy interface! It’s called Old SF and it utilizes the SF Historical Photograph Collection. Old is right since the most recent of these are form the ’70s and ’80s.

Could this be expanded to draw upon the collections of the California Historical Society as well as select current day photos? That would be an undertaking, but it would round out the idea very nicely. There isn’t inclusion of emphemera such as posters and menus and whatnot associated with the locations, but is another undertaking in and of itself. Makes me wonder if one day Google willl attempt this on a massive scale.

Refugees, Union Square, 1906

Visitors from Melbourne, Union Square, 1962

Oh Internet, you rascal, you.

The net’s not a place to hide anymore, but why should it be? Heck, maybe you’ll brush against some serendipitous renown through an unintentional collaboration:

Thank you home recording, thank you cheap digital video.

Now here’s a problem we never encountered while shooting film: Apple Patent Aims to Shut Down iPhone Camera Recording in Venues.

The software would recognize when the iPhone’s camera was in use. Infrared sensors installed at the venue would activate the software and disable the camera. Apple may be trying to placate broadcasters who have purchased exclusive rights to events. This would also serve as a way to curb posting of copyright material online by users who do not hold the rights.

The short article goes on to speculate whether Apple may try to monetize amateur shooting by allowing users to turn their camera back on for a fee.

What a mess. A hot mess resulting from the double whammy of digital technology and mass market penetration. And it seems applicable to all digital devices capable of signal transmission. Can you imagine shooting on an important assignment in a politically sensitive situation, and bam, someone turns off your camera? It’s a more direct version of restricting access, but luckily, as it goes with the digital arms race, count on the hackers to find a way to bypass the off switch. Let’s hope it doesn’t go down this way; just because it could doesn’t mean it will.

Keith Loutit‘s tilt-shift time lapses are amusing, especially this wrestling one.

That was the second time I’ve seen dancing in WWF fights. The first time?

I hadn’t realized it’d descended to this level of camp. But actually, isn’t it better than simple staged fights?

(Thanks Jeremiah and Ragnar.)