The teenager argues that the composer should provide his sheet music for free to young artists so that they have strong music to perform for their own use. She claims that by providing the sheet music for free his work will reach a young audience who can’t afford and increase his overall sales through word of mouth. The tactic as I’m sure you’ve heard is called viral marketing, peer to peer marketing, or other meaningless buzzphrases where material is released for the public to use and share in order to create peer recommendations for the good or service. I’d like to focus on this idea of viral marketing in the arts and why its not the same thing as what the teenager is talking about.

Viral marketing works by releasing a piece of content into media channels which people can share. By sharing the branded content they create interest in the product that the content is part of or refers to. For media like music this would mean releasing a single or video on the radio, Mtv, youtube, and other channels where people could view and get interested in the product. As with all advertising this kind of outreach is done based on the theory of ROI, Return On Investment. By producing the shared content the producer is expecting that they’ll gain more sales in the long term than they loose by providing the content for free.

So the teenager is correct here. One of the ways that advertising is done is through the release of free samples for the public to consume. The problem is that the teenager hasn’t specified that some content be released for use, or if she did it was the content she wanted, not the content that the composer wanted to release. As I’ve been following the file sharing debate for years the argument isn’t for the limited release of content (which has been done for years, its called the radio) its for free access to the content. Free access to content removes agency from the owner of the content. All advertising is based on that magic phrase, ROI, and by not allowing the content owner to control the release of their content they have no way of seeking that return.

Releasing a single on the radio allows the content owner to give the public a taste of the product so that they will be interested in purchasing the entire product. That’s advertising. Releasing the entire album for download and expecting that some users will enjoy the music and reward the content producer by purchasing a copy (that they already possess) is busking. You’re giving it away and asking for a dollar out of appreciation.

As much as I’ve seen the argument for the free availability of content based on the word of mouth advertising argument I haven’t seen any studies done which support it. I don’t suspect there are any as such studies are difficult to conduct and quite expensive. Its also breaking the advertising model as the content owner is no longer in control of the dissemination of their product.

I’ve seen the word of mouth argument being used across all forms of media. I’ve had it used on me recently as an online fashion magazine wanted to public my photos on their paywall protected website without payment on the promise of exposure. Conversely I’ve heard about photographers who avoid community sites like flickr and only make their work available through flash websites which prevent the download of copies of their images as they see no value in allowing the public to see their work except through their branded portfolio site.

Word of mouth advertising is heavily used and has been for a long time. I make extensive use of flickr where my work can be seen and even downloaded (abet watermarked). The key is that this is a controlled release of content of limited value which points to the real product, either a license or a print. If the composer mentioned in the article above were to freely distribute his score, there would be no reference to a greater body of work, its all out there and its now uncontrolled.

If the teenager wanted to make a compelling argument, she should have suggested that a few songs be released through his website for non-performance use.  That would give the composer the word of mouth exposure while retaining control over his catalog as a whole. Ultimately its up to the content owner to decide how they wish to advertise themselves. The argument for free content undermines the right of the content owner to make decisions, even backwards, bad decisions.

Ultimately we do live in a capitalist society and labor is done at the expectation of finding a return on that effort.  While media itself is immaterial and as the author of the article linked above states, selling digital content does not diminish a physical inventory, the creation of that content was not done without effort.  Even if nothing physical is created when working in media the process of creation did occur which requires physical equipment, time, effort, training, a location for this to occur, other actors involved in the creation, and the food, shelter, and physical comforts of all those involved.

Finding compensation for creative work is a challenge and how it is achieved has and will continue to change as media and its distribution channels evolve.  That does not mean that creators need to allow their audience to decide how they will seek that compensation.

The writer picks out Alexx Henry who works in a strange space between photography and video.   I’ve heard it called motion graphics when I’ve worked in advertising in the past.

This is geared towards magazine features which will be available through the online version of an issue and focuses on the new(ish) tablet market which has been getting a great deal of attention with the release of Apple’s iPad.   The thought is that tablet computing will overtake the use of text readers such as the Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader as they provide the functionality of a mobile device in the same physical format for around the same price.   People don’t seem to enjoy reading magazines on their desktop or laptop computers but may change their behavior for a reader like device.

So can we expect the kind of motion graphics depicted above jumping out at us from the corner of our eye as our neighbor on the train flips through an issue of Maxim (or based on the typical content of lad magazines, busting out… emphasis on bust) on the train?

Don’t count on it.

If you visit the blog article I linked above, the second article shows the making of one of these features.  Notice that there’s a crew of 5-10 professionals for an editorial shoot.   Chances are that’s a shoot that cost the magazine several hundred thousand dollars.   Something tells me they can’t afford to do more than one or two shoots year unless the publisher is willing to dump money from outside the magazine’s budget into it in order to establish a strong presence in what they believe will be an emerging media market.

Meanwhile in the rest of the industry, we have articles like this one from The Online Photographer which reveals that Time Magazine, a most august publication splashed out an entire $125 for its cover shot which it pulled from a microstock site.  Yes, the cover of a national magazine was done by pulling an image from the same service that people who do banner ads for websites use when they need some filler photos.   I’ve  read enough accounts of photographers complaining that magazines are unwilling to pay for content and expect them to provide it for rock bottom prices or else they’ll simply butter some schmuck up on flickr and get it for free.   As I’ve been approached by several editors who informed me that they do not pay for photography and tried to get some of my work for free I can personally vouch for this trend.

Massively expensive shoots with extensive post-production work goes against this trend and most likely will result in photo editors finding their entire budget blown on a single shoot and being left with filling the rest of the year with a zeroed out budget.

Lifestyle magazines may find it useful to lose money at first trying to produce these kinds of features but I suspect that they’ll need to start forming partnerships with advertisers in order to support the massive production budgets these kinds of shoots require.  Or they’ll need to start charging money. We’ll have to see how product placement and in-line ads sit with viewers who are used to the idea of anything coming through a digital device be free and annoying advertisements can be blocked.

Its an interesting concept, but I don’t see it catching on until something can be done to reduce the production costs… which may prove stubborn.

Hudson river from Beacon Waterfront.

In September of last year I moved out of New York City where I had been living for about 13 years.

After some personal turmoil and a financial reckoning which included four months on the dole, it was time for a change.   Beacon, NY is  a small city of about 15,000 residents sixty miles north of NYC along the Hudson River.  The city is currently best known for the Dia Art Museum which houses contemporary artwork in a former Nabisco box factory.    And Pete Seeger who actually lives up the road in Fishkill.

I moved into town without knowing a soul.  I also moved into town as fall took hold and quickly moved into winter.   Today is the 12th of February, deep in the heart of winter.   Two days ago a blizzard covered the town in nearly a foot of snow which now lays on top of the ground which has been frozen solid since December.    In the morning I’ll take the train into the city for my job and will glide down a Hudson river which is encased in a layer of ice which is groaning and cracking under the weight of the snow.

Since moving to Beacon my photography has radically changed.

After living in an incredibly dense urban area, I’ve found myself spending a great deal of time alone.  That time has been spend exploring the several parks maintained by Scenic Hudson that surround the city and breaking into decaying  factories.   The human figure has largely disappeared from my photographs.   Although I work in the city I’ve been uninterested in my former bread and butter of street photography.   Instead I’ve been deeply moved by the environment of winter in the Hudson Valley.

Perhaps its a natural change.  After thirteen years of living in the most urbanized region in the country its only natural that I would seek out the pleasure of solitude.  I suspect this will change with the arrival of spring but for now I’ve deeply enjoyed having winter to myself.

The dock extending into the Hudson River at Beacon

Its been several months since I’ve posted to this blog.   My original intent was to focus on my practice of film based photography as I had been almost exclusively shooting film for about 3 years at that point.   There was even a time when I was renting a darkroom and spend many hours each week slaving over an aromatic series of trays, doing prints the old fashioned way.

As of December the 27th of 2009 I purchased a Pentax K-x 12.4 megapixel camera after a late night bender involving half a bottle of reasonably priced red wine, a stack of receipts, and an excel chart.    Quite simply, I can’t afford to continue shooting film at the rate that I enjoy shooting.   At my average rate of shooting, the very reasonably priced Pentax will pay for itself in savings over film before the end of March.

This was a rational economic decision for an entirely irrational pursuit.

I think the new direction for this blog will be more focused on work in progress and my own thoughts on the practice of photography and submission to the creative impulse.

Rev. Billy demonstrates outside of AIG headquarters. April, 2009

This is a photograph of Rev. Billy Talen, a local activist, personality, and grassroots organizer who has earned global exile from the Starbucks company.   Here we see him with a megaphone protesting the government bailout of AIG across the street from AIG headquarters in NYC to a crowd of curious AIG employees out on their smoke break.  Other than the dozen or so fellow protesters and a few unemployed photographers such as myself this protest attracted no crowds and was only picked up by grassroots media groups such as IndyMedia which are largely ignored by the general public.

One would ask, why did he and a few other fellow travelers bother to come out on a chilly early spring day to stand outside of a building on Wall street and voice their opinion?

Why Bother?  And why did I bother taking his picture?

Why Bother? was to be the title of my Grandfather’s master’s thesis.  His thesis for his undergraduate work in chemistry, Who Cares? was well received and allowed him to start pursuing a master’s at UCLA before he was forced to drop out and start supporting his family.

At least that’s how he liked to tell the story.

He does pose two essential questions, Who Cares?  Why Bother?  Like most other guys who liked to think they were real smart I indulged in existentialism during my late teens and early 20′s.  This was mostly for the association with ultra-hip Left Bank lifestyle (something entirely lacking from the suburbs of Southern California), drinking enough coffee to kill a mastodon,  smoking hand rolled cigarettes, and sitting very close to girls who looked like they walked out of a Godard flick.  And why not?  There were tons of the books lying around the house I grew up in so I didn’t even have to spend any money to dig on Camus.  Just pull them off the bookshelf and dig in.

The literature I could get into but the actual philosophy texts put me to sleep within 45 seconds.  They were completely opaque.  In the days before wikipedia I could only rely upon the encyclopedia for guidance which I found similarly full of a flurry of words signifying nothing.  All I could comprehend was that it had something to do with the attempt to address the eternal question of Why Bother.  It was distinguished from previous streams of thought because they considered using God as an explanation to be cheating.

To a 20 year old with a typical lack of appreciation for subtlety seeking to establish their own identity at the end of the Reagan era this sort of barely understood nihilism was pretty cool.  Especially if you were attracted to girls who wore way too much eyeliner and had well thumbed copies of The Stranger poking out of their bags.

Over a decade and two relationships with cheerful farm girls who almost never wear eyeliner later I’ve found myself confronted with The Questions yet again.  This time around I have wikipedia and an entire universe of Nietzsche fan pages on geocities to help me dig it on a slightly more nuanced level.   I also discovered that The Questions were now being crowded by more mundane but also more strident little questions.  How do you intend to make money with this?  Where are you going with this?  Are you actually any good?  Is this an efficient use of your time? Is this art?  So this is what you’ve been doing with all that time you didn’t spend watching TV?  Proud of yourself yet?  Rather expensive isn’t it?  Shouldn’t you be saving the money? Why aren’t you trying to get a gallery show?  You’re at least using this to convince girls to take their clothes off I hope?

This of course had to do with the thousands of dollars and years of my life that I had devoted to photography.   This wasn’t my career.  It wasn’t even a way to make a little extra money.  It was a sinkhole that large amounts of cash, time, energy, and rodinal were poured into.  There was no end.  There was no goal.  There is no win to be had.  No victory.  No triumph.  Why?

Why Bother?  Who Cares?

As artists we’re left in a very quiet room by ourselves.  Usually this is a literal statement.  Art is often a solitary activity engaged in during the dead of the night.  Most of us won’t make any money.  We’re forced to rely on the dreaded Day Job to get by.  There is no practical justification for what we do.  Yet we keep at it.

I really don’t have an answer beyond stating that I wouldn’t like myself if I didn’t do it.

Why else would someone stare down a steel logo of a financial services company bolted to a 40 story building from across a narrow lane?

Rev. Billy outside AIG headquarters in NYC's financial district.

I’m excited as I can now switch back and forth between the three major formats, 35mm, medium format, and large format.  I tend to take Mr. Natural’s approach to photography in that I like to use the right tool for the job.  There are however often grey areas where the right tool is not immediately appearent.  I recently shot the NYC Pride Parade with a Hasselblad.  Most would have used a 35mm to capture a rapidly moving street parade and afterparty but my personal approach is to focus on individuals so I feel that using the medium format allows me to work in my preferred 6×6 format as I’m okay with taking my time with each shot.  My reasoning for using the Hasselblad has nothing to do with the image “quality” (although the lens has the best “look and feel” out of any lens I’ve ever used) or the ability to print BIG (if I wanted that I wouldn’t be developing with rodinal now would I?), its based on purely qualitative feelings.   The trouble is the advent of the 15+ megapixell full frame sensor has spawned the dread “quality” wars.

The quality wars ask if the new Canon or Nikon top of the line cameras can compete with medium format.  The conventional wisdom that a 35mm sized sensor could never meet or exceed the quality of a medium format sensor.  More area is more area and more area means higher quality.   Yet the numbers  thrown around by manufacturers often present a confusing series of contradictions.   If Nikon and Canon have more megapixels and reported higher dynamic range than the medium format backs offered by Leaf or PhaseOne does that mean those stuck up pro photographers are a bunch of dummies for investing $20,000 in a digital back when they can get similar peformance from a $2600 35mm body?   Are those snotty film people finally going to sit down to a steaming dish of crow?  Will those 4×5 people loose their claim to “ultimate image quality”.  And yeah, if the numbers say that 35mm is better, why hasn’t Leaf and PhaseOne started waving the white flag?     Why are we even shooting film if the quality of digital equals or surpasses it?

I lament the continued lack of scientific education among the general populace.  The point of learning chemistry in high school is not to prepare you for a career as a crystal meth on-demand producer but to introduce you to the concepts of approaching a problem and finding a solution through a logical, repeatable, and easily communicated process.   Its about looking at available data and drawing conlusions.

This would be perfect for questions like, “how does the Canon 5D compare to Velvia 50 shot through a Mamiya RB67″.    This is a very real problem for the photographer in the quest for maximum performance per purchasing dollar.   The Canon 5D does feature an extremely high quality sensor which may provide equal results with slide film being shot through a medium format camera.   There’s a huge price differential.  A factor of 10 if you’re talking about picking up a L series lens or two for the Canon along with the body against the average $400 cost for a used RB67 setup.   How are we to stack up the two in terms of image quality?

Except Ultimate Image Quality is not important.  One of the most important steps in approaching a complex problem is to reduce variables by eliminating the unimportant ones.  If one is on the market for a car based on fuel efficiency and safety standards, the available range of colors is not a concern.  It can be bright pink and it will not get any more or less miles per gallon.

Ultimate Image Quality is important if you’re printing at 30×40 inches and plan on viewing the print from 10 inches.   Most 30×40 prints are placed so that you won’t get within 5 feet of them even if you’re feeling nosy.   Not very many people will ever be called upon to produce a print of that size yet I see countless electrons being expended in bickering over which format has the ultimate in image quality.   If you’re a landscape photographer who gains income from making extremely large prints then there is a compelling interest in knowing if its time to hang up your film camera.  Chances are you’re not going to give up the view camera because the 35mm or medium format doesn’t offer the same perspective control.   Other professional photographers are less worried about ultimate image quality as about the ability to rapidly turn around a job which makes digital a no brainer.   More factors which would outweight image quality are weight, availability of services (labs that can do E-6), cost of ownership, existing equipment, and shooting style.  Even reviews by professional landscape photographers who do reguarly print at 30×40 will cite the ease of use and low cost of ownership (but extreme cost of entry) before launching into an in-depth review of pixel peeping image quality.  For the rest of us, we just have to worry about cutting the mustard, not smiting it.

My pentax K100D produced some very nice 8×10 images with its 6 megapixel sensor and my ancient Canon 300D produced images which were spread acrossdouble pages in a magazine.    I’ve never run across a photo editor who expects to see 16×20 images except at a portfolio review, and that’s only so they can review your work within 60 seconds or less without putting on their glasses.   Gallery owners do ask for large prints but the vast majority of photographs are not sold in galleries and the vast majority of photographers will never be shown in a gallery.

The majority of photographers will never sell a print. Ever.  Why? Because no one cares about their children except themselves.  To them, their photographs are invaluable.  They’re memories.  Memories are not printed out at 30×40 inches subject to intense scrutiny.   They’re carried in wallets, placed next to monitors in the office, and clutter up the living room.  Even professional photographers will see their work printed more often on an 8×10 magazine page or on a website than on a the side of a bus.  If you closely inspect many poster sized advertisements you’ll notice that they really were not meant to be enlarged to that size.

What’s the difference between a Canon 5D and a 6×7 slide?   Who cares?   Instead of worrying about the far edge of image quality people should be more concerned about how they actually use their camera on a day-to-day basis, not how they would use their camera in a wet dream.  The largest print I’ve ever made was 16×20 and felt that its was quite frankly, excessive.   It would have been just as nice at 11×14 and it was a landscape.

Apples and oranges are meant to be enjoyed on their own terms, not forced into confrontation with each other.  Apples won’t cure scurvy and oranges make for lousy pie (but great tarts).  Asking which one tastes better is pointless.  You can compare their fiber content or their Vitamin C content but that ignores the point of consuming either of them.  You will not exclude one from your diet by choosing the other.

Personally, if pushed for an answer I will say that I will always prefer my ’57-69 vintage Hasselblad 500c over any Canon 5D Mark II on the grounds that the 5D has too goddamn many buttons.   For my purposes, I just prefer the simplicity and look and feel of Fuji Acros or Tri-X developed in Rodinal.   That’s what matters to me.

This rubbed a number of flickr users the wrong way as evidenced by this entry where the power of social networks was engaged to give Zjawinski a piece of their collective minds.  The Times reacted in what I felt was a positive manner by recognizing the response to the article and then speaking to a number of legal experts on the issue of fair usage.   It engaged the audience, treated their concerns as valid, and sought the input of experts on the subject to try to come to some sort of conclusion.   The conclusion is essentially that you’re looking at an area greyer than a Scottish fog bank that’s spent the last two seasons locked in a basement abusing steroids and lifting weights but there are precedents that personal, non-commercial usage could in many cases fall under fair use provisions of copyright law.

Like many issues in law this all fun and games and idle intellectual speculation until someone gets sued and a judge (and perhaps jury) finds themselves required to listen to two lawyers lock horns, pick a winner, and then assign damages when appropriate.

I’ve discussed copyright and protection of your images online in the past so I’ll just put forward a few quick thoughts about this specific issue.   At the center of the complaint is the feeling that Zjawinski was encouraging the public to steal.  If a visitor downloads a photo from a flickr stream and prints it out for their own personal usage they’re depriving the photographer of a sale.

There are a few practical issues to consider.

Did the photographer provide a method for the visitor to purchase a print?  Is there an etsy, paypal store, or other online method for purchasing a print without having to email the photographer unsure if they will ever respond?   E-commerce is about instant gratification. Has the photographer responded to their customer’s needs for a seamless motion between desire and acquisition?

Has the photographer provided a full resolution copy of their image?  If you allow people to download a copy of your image that could easily be printed out at 8×10 at 240 to 300 DPI then are you surprised if people do so?  That’s a far larger resolution than could be displayed on any monitor.  Why wouldn’t someone choose to print out a copy of your image if you’ve so thoughtfully provided them with an image that is of full print quality?

Legal considerations aside, if you’ve provided an easy way for a visitor to print out a copy of your own work without making it obvious how to contact you to purchase a print, is it surprising if they simply make their own print?

If you’re dealing with a grey area of usage then its best to be proactive and establish the usage patterns that you want.   If you want to sell prints, sell them.  Let people know they’re for sale and establish a system that makes it easy for them to purchase them.  If you just want to share your photographs and restrict usage entirely, take steps in that direction.  Finally, if you feel like offering your photographs for usage by the community for their creative ends, there are a number of licenses that you can provide them under. Flickr offers a number of tools to accomplish any of goals and make it readily appearent to a knowledgable, non-malicious user what usage pattern you wish to establish.

For the photographer who wishes to provide their photographs only for viewing, you can set your flickr account to disable downloads.  This is not a complete solution but it strongly communicates a level of control that you wish to have over your work.  For the photographer with an eye to sales, only posting low-resolution photos which would make a very small print (mine are 800 on a side, which is about 2.3-3 inches at common print resolutions) is a very sensible first step.  Watermarking as I’ve discussed in the past is another easy technique to claim ownership and discourage certain kinds of usage.  Openly announcing that your photograph is for sale and operating an online store to make it easy for visitors to purchase your work is essential.  Don’t claim that you’re loosing sales unless you’re offering a product for sale.

The reality is that fair use is a contested area in legal opinion and practice.  When there is ambiguity, its essential to establish your desired outcome.  There are tools provided by flickr to make it very clear what your intentions are.  When someone violates your clearly established wishes, then feel free to jump down their throat.  Until you make that clear declaration people will rely on their own judgement.

Hooters. Tits. Boobs. Jugs. Knockers. Garbanzos. Funbags.  That which brings all the boys to the yard.

Ain't she something fellas?

Saturday was the Mermaid Parade at Coney Island.  The Mermaid Parade means a lot of girls running around wearing not much more than body paint.  A lot of girls running around in bikinis or less means a lot of crowds and a lot of people with cameras.   The crowds are pretty thick so people rely on flickr and other photo aggregation sites to let them see what they missed.  As the above photograph had the greatest number of hits (by a factor of two over the next most popular photo, which also involved a girl in a swimsuit) it doesn’t take much imagination to determine what they feel they missed out on.  A glance at my most viewed photos on my flickr stream only confirms this.

I’m not proud of this nor am I dismayed.

Hit tracking is one of the tools that people can use to make decisions about the kind of content they’re trying to present to the public.  According to my hit tracking I should go out and take more color photographs of women in bikinis and burlesque performers.  A little investigation shows that I should go further and post photographs of women with no clothing on.  Preferably performing sexual acts.  An even deeper look would tell me that I can dispose with the need to take photos entirely and can simply repost pornography that I found elsewhere on the web.  This would maximize my hits and minimize my effort.  Yes, its a violation of copyright but who bothers with that these days.

Sex grabs eyeballs on the internet.  Its very difficult to get accurate statistics but I would not be surprised if the majority of the traffic on flickr is concentrated on their collection of amateur and pilfered commerical pornography.   Yet if you visit Flickr’s explore page which highlights its most “interesting” photos you’ll notice that there’s narry a nipple.   Instead you’re greeted with a variety of landscapes, portraits, macro shots, still lives, and the occasional travel or documentary photograph.

If flickr spends most of its processing time churning out blowjobs, why don’t they feature them?  Even behind a credit card based age verification system?  Why shouldn’t they cater to their adult users who obviously crave adult content.

Sex might get you a lot of views but it doesn’t sell.  The number of hits a piece of content might attract are also highly misleading as indicators of success.

Getting 1,000 hits on a saucy photograph of a well put together young lady may inflate my ego but it has never done anything for my career as a photographer.  Instead my collection of well tagged and carefully titled and described photographs of dancers and musicians have.  The number of hits on one of my shots of Vangeline Theater at the Howl Festival will never, ever come close to those of my most popular photo of a young lady in a seashell bikini that I took at my first Mermaid Parade but it has appeared in the NY Post, Time Out/NY, and was used by the Howl Festival to promote itself.  Based on sales and outside interest my most successful photographs are of local events and performers.

In terms of flickr’s revenue stream they’re well aware that the majority of the users who are primarily interested in pornography are not interested in becoming paid members.  They will gladly be subjected to ads in order to endlessly shift through content, delivering huge numbers of hits, consuming system resources, but generally not adding content of any value or otherwise meanfully contributing to the flickr community.   The people who do buy memberships are people who use flickr to share their work, help promote their creative endevors, and enhance the community by commening on other’s work, posting to groups, and pulling outside users into the website through search results and social networking.

In the end numbers mean very little unless you put them into context.  5000 views on a photograph is meaningless if it has never generated any interest in the rest of my work.  I’ve provided 4800 units of cheap thrill and perhaps 200 units of loving her outfit.  Similarly seeing someone with a million hits on their flickr account is equally meaningless.  Have those hits resulted in useful contacts?  Has it generated sales?  Does it enhance their networking efforts?  Do they even get a word of appreciation or just a rapidly spinning hit tracker that adds up to nothing?

…and my favorite photograph so far from the Mermaid Parade doesn’t involve any tits.

Looking for Sunshine, 2009 Mermaid Parade.

Its a month dripping with interesting things to do, happenings to attend, people to observe, and fine weather to enjoy.   My personal favorite events to photograph, the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island and the Queer Pride Parade in Manhattan usually fall on the same weekend resulting in complete collapse sunday night as my sunburned flesh gives in to fatigue.   This year they fall on consecutive weekends so at least I’m spared back to back days of street high energy street shooting.

While many older and perhaps more serious photographers scorn it, I enjoy flickr a great deal.  After an event I like to see what other people took away from it.  Even people who consider themselves snappers with point and shoot cameras can often surprise themselves.  Let’s not forget the legions of avid amateurs who have high performance machines tightly gripped in their right hands and a decent amount of proficiency at Photoshop or Lightroom to boot.  Thousands of cameras will converge on the same scene and all go home with gigabytes of dirt cheap memory cards filled to the brim.  Even without a camera nearly everyone has a phone with a built in camera which are surprisingly good for snapshots in bright sunlight.

And they’ll post every single pixel of it into their photostreams.

Cream has a way of rising to the top but when its got a lot of shit in the way it might take days, weeks, months, or years to do so.  I’m being overly judgmental but I think its important for people to realize that when they post things to a public people do want to look at them.  Photographs have many purposes one of which is information.

There’s a term from electronics called “signal to noise” which has crept into common usage.  Quite simply its the ratio of useful stuff to distraction.   When someone comes home from an event and uploads 500 photos to flickr using the bulk tool to label them all “Figment Festival” or whatever event they just went out to which features 400 pictures of people’s backs with no sense of place they’ve just made it very difficult for someone to find out what happened at the festival.   Multiply the 500 photos by the thousand people who brought their camera and you could easily have half a million photos of an event within 12 hours of its occurance.  Even if a thousand people only post 10 photos each that’s an astounding amount of information to sort through. If you’re a performer who wants to contact a photographer who has some photos of their performance, you’re suddenly looking at a Sisyphean task which only grows more onerous as more and more memory cards are unleashed.

This isn’t a matter of aesthetics its a matter of being a good member of a community.  Flickr is a community of users.  Its just not the people on your contact list, its the general public.  Perhaps its just a matter of my most liberal of liberal arts education putting exotic ideas in my head but being part of the community means doing good for that community.  How can you increase the utility of the community?  How can you enlighten, share, teach, communicate, show, and delight?

By not posting a bunch of shit that people have to sift through to find the nuggets of information they value.

I’m not asking for people to judge their photographs on artistic merits before posting.  That’s my personal hangup.  What I am asking is that they realize that they’re not alone.   A little thought and a little bit of typing can easily improve the utility of any community like flickr for the general public.  Simply tell us what it is and be honest.  No one asks for great art, but when they search for something they do want to be given an answer.  Ask yourself, does this photo tell me anything.  What does it say?  Label it as such.  When you ask for an apple, you want an apple, not an egg.  Be sure to extend the same thoughtfulness to others.

As I’m writing this there’s unrest in Iran.  The government has been attempting to shut out foreign journalists to control the flow of information.   Individuals using social networking sites have been able to get around the government blockage and have been telling their stories to the rest of the world.  These are just a bunch of students and young professionals who have the same facebook account you do.  Now they find themselves in the middle of a contested election that has started the largest series of protests since the ousting of the Shah.   Just normal people.  Who want to speak.  And want you to hear.

Photos are important parts of their stories.  Be a little thoughtful and make sure that each channel is clear so the signal can be heard.

Example of dramatic use of wide angle lenses for everyday activities.

Originally I picked up the Russian made Zenitar 16mm lens for my Pentax K100D as a way to get a very wide angle lens without shelling out a great deal of money.   The K100D has a 1.5 crop factor which gets you an approximate 24mm lens.  As I refuse to buy digital only lenses my only other options were the Sigma 20mm which is a dissapointing 30mm with the crop factor or pick up Sigma’s 15mm Fisheye.  The Zenitar is available for $175 through Kiev USA while the Sigma fisheye is $750 through B&H.  There was no question which one I was going to pick up.

After reading a number of reviews I decided that the distortion would be minimized by the crop factor on the lens when used with a digital camera. I also read about a number of quality control issues which lead me to a decision not to purchase a lens through a Russian dealer.  This proved to be an excellent choice on my part as the well known infinity focus problem is not the only issue that can arise from these lenses.   A day after I placed my order a gentleman from Kiev USA called to let me know that the lens would be a few days late in arriving.  They had inspected the lens and discovered that it was missing an element which they needed to pull off another lens.   Without that element the camera would never focus.   That alone was worth the $50 price differential between ordering the lens from the US dealer.

The use of a 24mm lens are fairly straightforward.  Architecture.  Landscapes. Group portraiture.  Environmental portraiture (when you’re planning on a large print so the subject isn’t lost in the details).  Please note that I said environmental and group portraiture as wide angle lenses, rectalinear or not, are extremely unflattering to one’s subject.   Portraits with the Zentiar are at best good for a giggle as the lens will make it look like the subject is bulging out from the center of the frame.  The only setting I’ve seen this used in an acceptable way is with rock and hip hop band portraits.   The Zenitar settles rather easily into the “acceptable” uses but it should be emphasized that it is not a rectralinear lens and there is visible distortion even with the crop factor. The distortion can be minimized through compositional choices as seen below.

Elk View, West Virginia

Here using a portrait format and placing the subject in the outside 1/3rd of the frame minimized the distortion.   Experimentation showed that horizontal lines just above and below the center axis showed the most distortion.   Creating a line that runs the length of the frame and is parallel to the frame’s edge will emphasize the curvature of the lens.  By avoiding straight lines you can usually ignore the fisheye effect.  As the usual use of a wide angle lens, namely landscapes, often involve straight lines this may be unavoidable at times.   If you’re disturbed by this then you should have shelled the bread out for the rectalinear lens and not mucked around with cheap former soviet block optics.   On the other side, if one uses a little care the curvature can  used to emphasize distance or height as with the trees arching upwards in the below photo.

Property Line, West Virginia

I have since sold my Pentax K100D and now only possess a Pentax Super ME which is a little gem of a walking around camera.  As this is a traditional 35mm camera there is no crop factor and the majesty of the fisheye effects comes into blossom.   No  amount of twisting the camera, kneeling in front of your subjects, or pushing an element to the edge of the frame will get around the curvature.  You will need to learn how to roll with it.

Chinatown Parking

There’s really no advice that one can give for how to work with a fisheye lens.  Cropping can remove the worst of the distortion as you mimic the crop factor of the digital sensor but that’s about it.   When using the lens on a full frame sensor or on a film body there are a few little points that one should be aware of.  The main one is fingers.  If you grip the lens around the hood there’s a good chance that your fingers will end up in the frame.  So one should be careful and grip the lens will behind the shade.   The lens is so wide that even wide open at f/2.8 anything further than a meter or two will be in focus.  There’s really no need to focus, just set it at infinity, set the f-stop to a comfortable f/8 and click away.   The lens is not the sharpest on the planet and shooting wide open will be relatively soft.  I have a tendency to develop my film in Rodinal which obscures fine detail through increased grain so I can’t speak to the absolute resolving power of the lens.  Just assume it sucks and don’t worry about it.   If you’re worried about the resolution of fine details you should not be shopping for cheap, novelty lenses.  Go get an 8×10 and stop bothering us.  Demanding performance out of a sub-$300 35mm lens is a waste of everyone’s time.

To wrap up this review, the Zentiar is a fine way for people using a camera with a significant crop factor as in the bottom tier of DSLR’s to get a taste for wide angle photography.   Its a taste and only a taste.   If you want to get serious about landscapes or architectural photography I’d strongly suggest saving money and investing in more expensive equipment.  Landscapes are not a subject for the faint hearted or those on a tight budget.   I will strongly encourage anyone interested in the lens to purchase their lens from a vendor in their country with a return policy.  The quality control on these products is lacking so getting a maladjusted lens is a strong possibility.

Its a fun addition to your lens collection.  Its up to you to decide how much fun is worth.