Flickr star: madcappp

In lieu of posting my own material, which will come in time, I'd like to highlight people who inspire me.

I keep a close eye on Flickr, so I know when users I like have made new posts to the site. Madcappp does not put up photos very frequently, but I see a relation between these long intervals and his quiet compositions.

I know that for every image that makes it to Flickr, there must be plenty of imperfect ones. Still, I prefer to imagine that the time between posts corresponds to the conception and realization of a single idea.

Of course that's not the case, but who's to know the difference? The value of keeping an uncluttered photostream.

"Beautiful"

The photo in question. Decide for yourself

This blog may be focused on photography now, but that's no reason to stop hating on Boing Boing. Their latest affront to my sensibility is titling a post about HDR photography in Japan "Beautiful high dynamic range photo from Japan."

Am I supposed to accept that Boing Boing is the arbiter of what is beautiful on the internet and what is not? Given the relatively wide range of influence that Boing Boing has, it worries me that they are would be so downright lazy in their writing. Just say it was "cool," guys! That's all we need from you!

Goal for 2008

I'm going to start making prints. Here's my current process for creating photos from negatives: drop film off for processing, have it scanned, go back home and unload the files, touch the files up in GIMP, upload to Flickr.

A couple of things are wrong with this process. In the first place, it's $10 a roll to get scans from 35mm prints. That's not totally unreasonable, but it looks much less attractive when you realize that this is the price for the absolute lowest resolution - no more than 250K per image. This is nowhere close to the quality that would be required to make even a 4x6 print. It's not even that suitable for posting online!

I want to stop thinking in terms of Flickr, which means doing away with these puny files I get from Photoworks (local lab here in San Francisco). I recently had one print made from a negative, and there's no comparison whatsoever with the digital version. Quite simply it produces an entirely different effect. So, how to make the leap?

It might be nice to have a darkroom, but that's not very realistic at this point. Instead I'm going to invest in the next closest thing, a film scanner:

The lamest picture ever posted to MCV MCV

This is the Nikon V-ED scanner, which the one I'll probably get. I'm convinced that a film scanner is the best way to start making prints. Unless you're printing in a darkroom, high-quality scans are a must for making prints, and they happen to be very expensive if you're having a lab make them.

It's true that I'll have to rely on Photoworks to do the printing (and the processing too, yeah), but I'd prefer to spend $3 whenever I want a nice 8x10 rather $25 each time I shoot a roll. If I do everything right with monitor calibration there should be a 1:1 correspondence between what's on my screen and what gets printed. One step at a time, no need to worry about getting a photo printer for now.

Do I have a goal for what I want to do with these prints? No. Not yet...

The Library of Congress joins Flickr

That's very exciting news! Anyone can tag photos, too.

Portrait at night, Japantown