Thank You For Your Business

Morning Walk

Does the World Really Need an 8MP Camera Phone?

I am usually amused when I run into photo equipment discussions that take themselves too seriously.  So I thoroughly enjoyed  “The Imperfectionist” article [see my 20 December 2008 entry below] about super model/photographer Helena Christensen’s use of  archaic camera phones, and other ‘krappy cameras’ in some of her commercial photography work.

Now for a  ‘follow up’ this appeared in the PDN blog:

“We recently finished writing a story about a pro photographer “obsessed” with taking pictures with the 2MP camera in his iPhone for the April issue of PDN’s Photo Source — sorry, no spoilers; you’ll have to read it when it comes out in PDN — when we saw an interesting piece of news from Samsung. The company announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain yesterday that it has released an 8MP camera phone, called the Samsung Memoir.

According to the announcement, Helena Christensen (yes, the Danish supermodel) is the the “first photographer to gain hands-on experience with the device, using it as her official phone and camera to shoot images during her travels in New York and Barcelona.”

You can see some of Helena’s images, including many which seem to be of her using the camera phone (WTH?), here.

Our interest isn’t so much with the phone or with the still fetching model/”photographer” Helena Christensen herself. We’re more curious about whether pros are actually using camera phones for anything other than taking quickie, idiotic snapshots.

Clearly pumping more megapixels into a camera phone is going to increase the noise-factor at least 8-fold, but what if some manufacturer actually does produce a tiny camera phone chip that can capture halfway decent pictures? Would you use it for more serious work? We’ve already seen how at least one iPhone photo by a citizen journalist ended up on the cover of several newspapers.

The photographer we interviewed for Photo Source — okay, his name rhymes with “Race Parvis” — told us he uses the iPhone’s digital camera as sort of a photographic “sketchbook” to gain ideas for his higher-resolution professional work.

Anyone else out there, aside from Chase, er, Race, and Helena Christensen doing anything similar?”

Cedar Key/WaterWomen Layout 66/67

I am working pretty hard scanning and making a layout for my WaterWomen/Cedar Key book. All the work in it will be from black&white negatives. Here April and Diana are pulling clam bags in the waters off Cedar Key [the Gulf of Mexico]. When wet, these bags weight well over one hundred pounds each.

WaterWomen & the Zeitgeist

This past weekend I had a chance to go home to Cedar Key for a couple of days and catch up with friends, and ‘take the temperature’ of what was happening in the community. Because of its rather remote location this small community has had its shares of ups and downs. Hurricanes, fires, economic calamities, all left a heavy imprint on the lives of the families living there. In the recent past the Florida net-fishing ban, which took effect in 1995, put an end to the livelihood of generations of local fishermen. Through a combination of foresight, hard work, and luck, it was quickly replaced with clam farming, which allowed the fishermen and waterwomen to continue working on the water, and begin making a better living than they had previously known.
Of course, with our current economic recession, clams have all of a sudden become a ‘luxury’ item on many restaurant menus, and their sales have plunged, returning hard times to the community. Despite working hard and long hours in a harsh environment, the clam farmers lack any kind of economic safety net, and have to go without health insurance, a guaranteed income, or decent retirement plans.
So, when I saw the Sunday NYT magazine featuring celebrity photographs in the ‘documentary style’, ” without the use of a stylist or hair or makeup experts,” I found the irony of it all a bit much. I had just taken a few casual portraits of one of my WaterWoman friends, assuredly without make-up or the help of a stylist, and found the resulting photo of a hard working woman, calmly fighting economic hardship, a lot more inspiring than any of the photos in the NYT magazine.
Could it be that the photo Zeitgeist had caught up to my style of portrait photography?

ps.  Here is a link to the online presentation of the NYT Photo Essay.

WaterWomen Book – a start

I sincerely hope that this is the last time I announce ‘getting started’ on my Cedar Key, WaterWomen book.  I have settled on a format and layout that pleases me much more than that of any of my previous attempts.  With much help from Alexandria I have also finally broken through my mental barrier of figuring out what constitutes my WaterWomen photos, and have broadened my scope to better contextualize the story.

Above is a preliminary two-page layout.

On the left is Nena Calvert, marching in support of a Florida State Senator.  Nena and her family were instrumental in bringing aquaculture to Cedar Key, a move that ended up saving the fishing families, and Cedar Key, when the Florida net-ban took effect in 1995.

On the right is Harriett Smith, to my knowledge the only woman fishing independently at the time.  Here she is taking on ice at the fish-house.