I’m a big fan of Twitter, it’s a pretty simple service and a great way to share thoughts with the “cloud” and interact with people, is even useful for organizations to get closer to their followers/clients/etc. Magnum Photos is one of those organizations that seems to know how to use it, and if your were paying attention to their Twitter account last week you may had seen the tweet shown above, where photographer Larry Towell spared some time to answer the questions of all of those interested in photography and photojournalism.
You can’t get more live than that, but you can still catch up with the virtual interview right here.
Not long ago I wrote a little rant in this blog about the shallowness of Flickr’s “award groups”, today decided to be a bit more constructive and point some that give you more than shiny awards:
Technorati Tags: flickr
One of the most interesting sides of flickr has to be the social and community features: anyone can create a group and build a small, or not so small, community around a given theme,feature,camera,etc. (just like I did for Nikon FM2 owners). Nowadays there are lots of groups available and eventually the rules for some have become more and more complicated, like: must comment/tag/favorite (any combination of those three actions) X photos for each Y photos added to the group’s pool.
The latest trend in flickr is “award groups”, where you “award” (add a corny, colorful, flashy and sometimes large image) an existing photo in the group’s pool or, much worse, invite a photo to the group’s pool. These “award groups” are a bit like candy: it may taste good but in the end candy will give you teeth cavities, become tired of all that sweetness (check the figure below) and get absolutely no nutritional value. In other words: these groups “pollute” the comments area, have almost no meaningful information and are useful only to feed someone’s ego.
PS- For a kick-ass, but not for the faint-hearted, group head to Delete Me Uncensored.
Technorati Tags: flickr
Throughout these years I’ve been in the digital photography world (four, since I bought my D70) one of the things that has been nagging my mind was the lack of a normal lens from Nikon targeted to digital SLR cameras. Something that’s almost mandatory the film world.
Until now the only option was the 30mm lens from Sigma, a nice lens but has the “problem” of allowing a f/1.4 aperture, which means it’s not that cheap. It seems Nikon finally woken up and released something with the same angle of view of those 50mm lenses in full frame film SLR cameras.
Traditional social bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious are great for finding articles and other text that other Web surfers have tagged as interesting.
For the visually oriented, the pickings have been slim. Now, however, a handful of photo-oriented bookmarking sites are emerging to entertain the eye as well as the mind.
Tag That Image: Visual Bookmarking Sites Worth Browsing [Bits Blog]
I haven’t tried
FFFFound (no invite for me) and only had a glimpse of what
vi.sualize.us can do, most of my experience comes from testing
we♥it.
Photo bookmarking, or visual bookmarking, it’s such a clever idea that you think “why haven’t anyone came up with this before?”. Nevertheless it’s a kind of service that’s still on its infancy and has some issues that aren’t solved:
- Browser integration- still no proper extensions are available, vi.sualize.us has a Firefox extension but they could go much further than that (I’m thinking of something as feature rich as the Delicious plugin).
- Current photo communities- how would such a service deal with the Favorites feature in photo communities like Flickr? Some kind of integration (if I’m a Flickr user then “favorite” that photo also) or think of at as a complete replacement? Because I still think I’m doing the same thing when “favoriting” a photo in Flickr/Zooomr or visual bookmarking in one of these services.
Either way I’m very curious to see how visual bookmarking services will evolve, and what others that may appear in the future can add to those already around.
Technorati Tags: delicious, we♥it, we heart it, ffffound, vi.sualize.us, visualizeus, social bookmarking, bookmarking
LX3 and my black cat, by dannysay
This weekend I bought myself a new toy!
For some time I felt the need of yet another camera, something between my fully featured but also bigger and bulkier DSLR and my ultra-portable, always available but less powerful camera phone. So when I started reading all the so many people thrilled I got curious about the Panasonic LX3, and a few reviews later I ended up buying it.
I haven’t tested it properly, but for now it seems it’s exactly what I was looking for: it’s quite small and portable, only slightly bigger than the regular compact camera, but with a helluva lens and a few other features aimed to please photographers.
Technorati Tags: lumix, lx3, camera
Gadling, one of my favorite travel blogs, realized that people have a “nasty” habit of taking photos while traveling, probably from looking at huge amount of pictures available at their Flickr group’s public photo pool. What they may have also realized is that some of them aren’t that good, and it’s always heartbreaking to see fabulous places shown in boring photos.
Whatever the reason may be, the guys at Gadling started a new series, entitled Through the Lens, where the basics of photography are explained in a simple way, specially target for backpackers with almost no camera skills. Their latest entry is dedicated to the simple concept of exposure, or how shutter speed and aperture diameter affect the amount of light that goes inside the camera and how a funny thing called ISO allows me to take photos with low light.
PS- With the valuable lesson you may even get a Photo Of The Day.
Through the Gadling Lens: apertures and shutters and ISOs, oh my! [Gadling]
When I went to this simple and isolated photowalk I couldn’t imagine it would grow beyond that sunny August afternoon, but the truth is it did, and now is becoming a blooming and exciting photography community that I’m very happy to be part of. If you live or take your photos in the Greater Lisbon area or the rest of the country, or even if you’re just nearby in one of the events, feel free to come along!
Portuguese Photowalkers main site and Flickr group.
My plans for tomorrow are simple: a worldwide wide photowalk! Not taking photos across the whole world (I wish…) but a challenge from Scott Kelly to have a photowalk around the world. I’ll do my part here in the Lisbon and we’ll be around Alfama for a couple of hours.
Photo by luispedron
Worldwide Photo Walk - Lisboa, Portugal
Update - I already have my photo walk photos available
Film photography isn’t dead yet. The guys at Epic Edits think the same way and created a list of ten reasons why film photography still is cool in their latest posted. Actually it’s an update to an earlier post written in a sarcastic tone which caused some confusion, I guess they should have chosen a title like 10 things I “hate” about film for that post to avoid misunderstandings.
10 Things I Love About Film [Epic Edits Weblog]
About myself