Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2012/12/03

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Subject: [Leica] Sarcasm filter on...
From: mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)
Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2012 17:45:11 -0500

So Polaroid pictures are "over exposed" and that was done on purpose or
somehow worked out for the best in the interest of someone's concept of
nostalgia?
This is just dumb stuff. Just plain nuts. Neither interesting Sarcasm  or
any kind of humor works all that will if the base line is the writer doesn't
have a clue what they are talking about.

Dr Land deceives better. As did the countless commercial photographers who
used Polaroid as key took in crafting an image.

Since when does throwing ones hands up and going "whatever" make for
interesting criticism?

Mark William Rabiner
Photography
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/lugalrabs/


> From: Jay Burleson <leica at jayburleson.com>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:25:04 -0800
> To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Subject: [Leica] Sarcasm filter on...
> 
> Capture a Light-Field and Digitally Manipulate It, It'll Last Longer
> BY LORE SJ?BERG 12.03.12
> 
> Original at: 
> http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/12/alt-text-light-field-camera
> 
> Cameras have, for over a hundred years, occupied kind of a strange place
> in the pop-tech landscape. Capable of producing sublime fine art, yet
> more often used to produce largely indistinguishable pictures of
> preschoolers crying while wearing a party hat, it's hard to name another
> medium that would create such a high-profile gap between high art and
> painful dreck until the invention of karaoke in the '80s.
> 
> Since the Brownie camera came out --- around the time President McKinley
> and Queen Victoria died unexpected and extremely expected deaths
> respectively --- there have been various technological attempts to
> bridge that gap and make a camera that turns anyone into Ansel Adams or
> Annie Leibovitz without having to develop film, learn what an F-stop is,
> or look at Iggy Pop naked.
> 
> One of the major steps toward this ideal was, of course, the creation of
> the instant camera, which put the entire process of photography, from
> film to picture to your grandchildren going through the photos in the
> attic after you're dead and wondering who the crying child in the party
> hat is, into the hands of the end user. It also gave OutKast a killer hook.
> 
> Part of the success of the Polaroid camera, of course, is that the
> creators had the foresight to make sure the resulting pictures strangely
> off-color and overexposed, giving them what reporter Edward R. Murrow
> called "a hip, retro look, evoking the mix of nostalgia and alienation
> that characterized, you know, right now." Influential Depression-era
> photographer Dorothea Lange expressed her hope that in sixty years the
> aesthetic of the Polaroid would be adopted by millions of
> upper-middle-class young people and incorporated into photos of their
> new back tattoos.
> 
> The most recent addition to the pantheon, or perhaps parthenon (I always
> get those mixed up) of photograph technology is the "light-field"
> camera, which takes a picture where you can digitally adjust the focus
> of the photo after the fact. This brings us closer to the point where no
> thought or consideration has to be put into a photo at all, which of
> course will increase the quality of amateur photography tenfold. It will
> also allow people to claim that traditional, fixed-focus photos are
> "warmer" and spend thousands of dollars on recreations of plastic-lens
> point-and-shoots so they can brag to their friends.
> 
> I do hope that this trend continues, and that future cameras will
> further eliminate the need to make decisions while taking photos.
> Presumably at some point technology will be so advanced, and storage so
> cheap, that we'll just continually take 360-degree photos of every event
> we go to, and then advanced photographic AI will sort through them to
> find shots where your friends are passed out in funny positions.
> 
> And, at some point beyond that, our lives will be routinely recorded and
> automatically uploaded to social networks, along with plaintive begging
> for people to "like" them. There are, of course, profound privacy and
> cultural issues that tag along with such panoptical technology, but I
> think we can all agree that it will lead to some really cute cat pictures.
> 
> ;-)
> -- 
> Jay,
> 
> Want to be a better photographer?
> Stand in front of more interesting things...
> Jay Burleson Gallery <http://jayburleson.com/leica/gallery/index.php/>
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information




Replies: Reply from imra at iol.ie (Douglas Barry) ([Leica] Sarcasm filter on...)
In reply to: Message from leica at jayburleson.com (Jay Burleson) ([Leica] Sarcasm filter on...)